Ok, I guess I understand the gist of the scheduling concerns, and this actually wasn't my preferred method for determining seeds, for some of the reasons mentioned.
I do wish that this debate had occurred before the vote to decide how seeding would be handled, but maybe folks didn't fully think about the implications then. I am certainly open to discussing changes to the seeding methods if that is what most coaches want to do.
I don't really like the idea of having 1 seeds play 3 or 4 seeds (if seeding is actually supposed to be related to the relative strength of the teams) since the lower seeds could reasonably expect to lose to all their higher seeded opponents. I recognize that the 2 season conference record average may not be a very good barometer of the relative strength of a team for the next season or even 2 seasons away, so I'm open to suggestions.
Regarding relegation, I hadn't thought of conference RPI, but that is a perfectly cromulent method to choose as well...
I will hold off scheduling, etc. ti later in the season next season. This will give us a chance to see how the 1st iteration really does affect NT chances, etc. Its possible that folks' concerns won't really be an issue, although there are clearly some seeding issues that could be addressed either way.
EVERYONE PLEASE LEAVE GAMES 1-5 FOR SEASON 65 OPEN TIL WE FIGURE THIS OUT!
Keep the feedback coming.
*The voting breakdown for seeding options was 13-11-8. Maybe we should have had another round of elections among just the top 2 finishers so that those 8 people that voted for option 3 (I was one) would get a vote on the others. I do think that having each conference have a commissioner that submits the rankings (seedings) and letting each conference decide for themselves what criteria to use to base that on makes a lot of sense, as long as there is someone in each participating conference willing to take on the role.
mmt and llama, would something like that make more sense for you all? I'd hate to see folks abandon the idea so quickly. This has been quite challenging to put together, but a lot of fun, and its great to see so many great coaches all involved in one big tourney...