Announcement | February 19, 2022
We lost quite a few teams this season, and this left the Tuesday night team count at 14 total teams. When breaking up the two Tuesday divisions, the Right Flipper wound up with six teams, and the Right In-Lane wound up with eight. Six is kind of a low number, but it isn’t the end of the world. What that means is that, in a 10-week season, every team plays each other twice — once at home and once on the road. However, since there were only four venues in that breakdown — two teams at Buttermilk, and two at Jackbar — it meant that every visiting team had to visit those two bars twice. I winced at the idea. It just didn’t seem to be too much fun, so, I made the executive decision to combine all of the Tuesday night teams into one 14-team division.
With 14 teams, no one team will play a single opponent more than once. However, each team will not play 3 of the teams in the group (note that who you play and don’t play is a random determination). At the end of the season, the top eight teams will make the playoffs. This will mean there will be three rounds of the playoffs, starting the week after our final regular season match. The goal in doing this is not punish any of the teams formerly in the Right In-Lane, but to open every team up to meeting new people, playing at new bars, and, hopefully, having more fun. When I looked at the final schedule I thought, “gee wiz, I wish I played on Tuesday night.”
I got so excited about this idea that I was VERY close to collapsing the two divisions on Monday night as well. However, given the Monday night team count, and the stigma that the Upper Playfield continues to have, I refrained from making the move. In the end, I wanted to see how it all works out this season, and put the idea to a vote for next season.
I realize that I had announced a 4th trophy for this season, but with the loss of teams I feel it’s best to put that idea on hold. Instead, we will once again have three trophies, but there will no longer be a Monday/Tuesday crossover championship. There is an Upper Playfield Trophy, a Left Flipper Trophy, and a Right Flipper Trophy.