I would not be opposed to moving up to 16 teams. I'd prefer to stay at 12, rather than move to 14 permanently though. If for no other reason, I like the format of four-team divisions. I wouldn't be opposed to adding another whole division, but I wouldn't want to screw with our current division set up (don't ask why I'm so attached to it when I haven't even played a season yet, or created any division rivalries).
I would say we could add two teams next year if we so desire, and two teams the following year to get to 16 total. To counteract the probably situation that the new teams would have slim pickings to choose from for talent, we could put the two of them in the new division, and have a two team division. This would caues schedule problems, but it would gurantee that at least one of them would make the playoffs, giving them incentive even if their talent pool is less than spectacular. The following year the two other new teams gets put into the division to round things out. To even out the fact that one of the two newest teams isn't guranteed that one will go to the playoffs, we will have experience on the expansion draft and may be able to make it better for those teams.
As for how to run the expansion draft, I think we could have a list of protected players, but we can lose no more than one each team. I would say we should be able to protect a certain amount of players, instead of having to make a list of a certain amount of players. That way, a team with a whole lot of good players under contract will lose one since they can only protect three, but a team that has say only 5 players under contract and only thee good ones, will be able to protect all three good players. This leans the balance towards the existing teams, instead of the new teams, which I would be in favor of. It will all balance itself out in the long run. If new teams complain that they don't have a good enough talent pool to compete, we can remind them this is a basically free league.
The other thing I would bring up is that we should need to adjust our rosters and rules. With 16 teams, we would need to go to a "team quarterback" type situation, where each team drafts the quarterbacks from two teams. Otherwise, if team A signs three quarterbacks, at least one team is guarenteed to only have one starting QB to choose from. Also, I would think we would need to expand, yes expand, our rosters since backups become even more valuable the larger the league. The more teams are around means fewer scraps to pick up during the season. We shouldn't need to be contrained too much in our rosters to insure our best players by being able to hold on to their backups.
Those are my thoughts.
|