First, I thought I’d walk you through the seeding process for my league’s toilet bowl. To summarize, the 8 teams that don’t qualify for the playoffs have a tournament and the seeds for that bracket are done per the following tiebreak process.

1. Overall Record
   
2. Head to Head Record of Tied Teams
   
3. Total Points Scored
   
4. Total Points Against (Most)
   
5. Coin Flip

• The Santa Monica Slappers (7-6)
  
• The Fighting Oompa Loompas (7-6)
  
• A Team Like That (7-6)
  
• Palmetto Parrotheads (5-8)
  
• I Am McLovin (5-8)
  
• Ron Mexico and the Justice League All Stars (5-8)
  
• Thanks for Nothing Reggie Bush (5-8)
  
• Screamin’ Cheetah Wheelies (5-8)

As you can see by the records I had some serious multi-team tiebreakers to wade through. I had three teams tied for the top three seeds and five teams tied for the bottom five seeds. This process was also important to my league because it would determine the draft order for next season. What I’ve tried to illustrate below is a step-by-step application of my tiebreakers for each seed.

Toilet Bowl Seeding

1. Overall Record - Tie
• Santa Monica Slappers (7-6)
• The Fighting Oompa Loompas (7-6)
• A Team Like That (7-6)
2. Head To Head Record - Fighting Oompa Loompas eliminated
• Santa Monica Slappers (2-0)
• A Team Like That (2-
• The Fighting Oompa Loompas (0-
3. Head To Head Record of Remaining Teams - Santa Monica Slappers
• Santa Monica Slappers (1-0)
• A Team Like That (0-

1. Overall Record - Tie
• The Fighting Oompa Loompas (7-6)
• A Team Like That (7-6)
2. Head To Head Record - A Team Like That
• A Team Like That (2-0)
• The Fighting Oompa Loompas (0-

1. Overall Record - The Fighting Oompa Loompas (7-6)

1. Overall Record - Tie
• Palmetto Parrotheads (5-8)
• I Am McLovin (5-8)
• Ron Mexico and the JLA (5-8)
• Thanks For Nothing Reggie Bush (5-8)
• Screamin' Cheetah Wheelies (5-8)
2. Head To Head Record - Palmetto Parrotheads eliminated
• Palmetto Parrotheads (1-
• I Am McLovin (3-
• Ron Mexico & the JLA (3-
• Thanks For Nothing Reggie Bush (3-
• Screamin' Cheetah Wheelies (2-
3. Head To Head Record of Remaining Teams - Ron Mexico and the JLA AND Thanks for Nothing Reggie Bush eliminated
• I Am McLovin (3-
• Ron Mexico and the JLA (2-
• Thanks For Nothing Reggie Bush (2-
• Screamin' Cheetah Wheelies (2-
4. Head To Head Record of Remaining Teams - Screamin' Cheetah Wheelies
• I Am McLovin (0-
• Screamin' Cheetah Wheelies (1-0)

1. Overall Record - Tie
• Palmetto Parrotheads (5-8)
• I Am McLovin (5-8)
• Ron Mexico and the JLA (5-8)
• Thanks For Nothing Reggie Bush (5-8)
2. Head To Head Record - Palmetto Parrotheads eliminated
• Palmetto Parrotheads (1-
• I Am McLovin (3-
• Ron Mexico & the JLA (3-
• Thanks For Nothing Reggie Bush (2-
3. Head To Head Record of Remaining Teams -Thanks for Nothing Reggie Bush eliminated
• I Am McLovin (3-
• Ron Mexico and the JLA (2-
• Thanks For Nothing Reggie Bush (1-
4. Head To Head Record of Remaining Teams - Tie
• I Am McLovin (1-
• Ron Mexico and the JLA (1-
5. Total Points Scored - I Am McLovin
• I Am McLovin - 839.9
• Ron Mexico & The JLA - 798.8

1. Overall Record - Tie
• Palmetto Parrotheads (5-8)
• Ron Mexico and the JLA (5-8)
• Thanks For Nothing Reggie Bush (5-8)
2. Head To Head Record - Palmetto Parrotheads eliminated
• Palmetto Parrotheads (0-
• Ron Mexico & the JLA (2-
• Thanks For Nothing Reggie Bush (2-
3. Head To Head Record of Remaining Teams -Tie
• Ron Mexico and the JLA (1-
• Thanks For Nothing Reggie Bush (1-
4. Total Points Scored - Ron Mexico & The JLA
• Thanks For Nothing Reggie Bush - 755.4
• Ron Mexico & The JLA - 798.8

1. Overall Record - Tie
• Palmetto Parrotheads (5-8)
• Thanks For Nothing Reggie Bush (5-8)
2. Head To Head Record - Thanks For Nothing Reggie Bush
• Palmetto Parrotheads (0-
• Thanks For Nothing Reggie Bush (1-0)

1. Overall Record - Palmetto Parrotheads (5-8)

As you can see, many of the seeds went through multiple iterations of the same tiebreak rule. You may wonder why that is? Well, through years of experience and even screwing things up at least once, I’ve learned that there are multiple ways to interpret these tiebreak procedures. In order to clarify how tiebreaks are applied, I looked to the NFL system. In the NFL when multiple teams are tied, the goal of the tiebreakers is not to identify the best team of the group, but to eliminate the worst teams until only two teams can be directly compared.

For a good example of this let’s examine the steps for seed number five. At this point, four teams remained for this seed based on overall record. The next applicable tiebreak is head to head record of the tied teams. As you can see in the steps above, one team had an inferior record and was eliminated from the seed and the head to head record were re-applied to the three remaining teams.

What doesn’t happen is that the two teams with the best head to head record move to the next tiebreak of total points scored. Though the results in this case would be the same (Both McLovin and the JLA emerged from the iterative tiebreak steps), that doesn’t always hold true and this is where confusion generally set in. Again, it’s critical to define in your rules if your tiebreakers are applied per NFL rule or per some other method. Just to clarify, the NFL rule for multiple team tiebreakers is that the tiebreakers are applied in order until a team or teams are eliminated. At that point the tiebreak process starts again from the first step with the remaining tied teams.

Another important thing to remember is that when you are seeding teams for your playoff is that you seed them one-at-a-time. I was in a league one time where three teams were tied at 7-6 for two playoff spots. These three teams were all 1-1 against each other head to head. The next tiebreak was total points scored with Team A having the most, Team B the second most and Team C the least. The commish seeded Team A in the 5th spot and Team B in the 6th spot based on total points. This was simply wrong. You have to apply the tie-breaks to each seed separately. What should have happened was that Team A should have received the 5th seed based on total points. The tiebreaks should then have been re-applied to Team B and Team C for the 6th seed. In this case, Team C beat team B head-to-head and should have received the 6th seed, leaving Team B out of the playoffs. But because the commissioner incorrectly applied the tiebreakers and seeded 2 teams with one tiebreak, the wrong team was eliminated.

In retrospect, after this season, I will be moving to total points as the primary for multiple team tiebreaks. The head-to-head concept is nice, but it’s really only applicable when you are dealing with two teams and typically the team with the higher total points scored is likely to be the better team. It will also greatly simplify the seeding process in most leagues.

Time for a great question that I saw on the message boards this week.

Q) Three teams finished in a tie in my league for two playoff spots. The team that was eliminated went back and re-verified every score by hand of all three teams and discovered that an error was made earlier in the year. Passing 2-point conversions were not properly scored by the league website. As a result, one of the tied teams should have taken a loss and would therefore not have been in contention for a playoff spot. The commissioner verified that passing 2-point conversions had been inadvertently set to zero points at the beginning of the season. He also stated that since the website is the official scoring system, that the results would not be changed. However our league rules require a league vote for any rules changes. Shouldn’t the commish correct the scoring system and rescore the season?

A) WOW, that just brings up a ton of issues and conflicting rules. Again, this situation screams for written rules, not just setting up the scoring system on your league’s website. In my league, the entire league would have to be re-scored because the scoring system would be out of compliance with the written league rules.

Since there is no other documentation of the scoring system I would say that the scoring system as entered by your commissioner stands as your league rules for the year. Simple right? Not quite. Because the league requires a league vote to change any league rule, this means that whatever scoring system was in place prior to this season serves as your written league rules. Thus last year’s scoring system should apply, as there was no vote to change the system. So despite the hassle and headache this will cause, I would have the league re-scored with the passing 2-point conversions set at last season’s level.

This also brings into play a host of issues about owners verifying their own results and weeks being closed out at a certain point in time. However I believe that the scoring system should be consistently applied based on the league rules and if corrections have to be made to prior weeks to accommodate that, then so be it. I also think owners need to do due diligence to verify their own scores in a timely matter. But again I think that the accurate application of the scoring system trumps that responsibility. The thread is on the board and there is excellent discussion both pro and con for reversing the entire season’s results. I’d encourage you to read it as, for the most part; there were very intelligent responses, which you don’t always see on message board banter.

That all I have for this week. Next week I’ll try to discuss those unique rules that make leagues more fun. Again, if you have some in your league, please get them to me.