Militia Cheerleader Explains the Playoffs, Part 1

Remember last year when I was all “blah blah WFA sucks at explaining playoffs blah blah they’re incapable of disseminating information blah”? Well, meet the new year, same as the old year. Same in terms of obfuscation, that is – not format. The playoff format is brand new and spectacularly bizarre. (Don’t spend too much time trying to decipher that thing there – I’m-a break it down much better in this post.) Rather than spend paragraphs and paragraphs going into how strange it is, I decided to sum it all up in a haiku:

Dear playoff format:
you make tax law look easy
in comparison.

So as your Militia Cheerleader is a bit of a data nut and a huge fan of infographics, I spent a bunch of time analyzing the bitty bits of information about the 2013 WFA playoffs that I could gather, and to the best of my knowledge, here’s the deal:

There are 13 divisions in the WFA; six in the National Conference (mostly eastern half of the country) and seven in the American Conference (mostly western). Some divisions get to have the winning team have a first-round bye (i.e. they start playing in the second round of the playoffs) and for others, the winning team plays in the first round. Some divisions have the runner-up team also going to the playoffs; some don’t. Some divisions compete for two wildcard spots, some compete for one, and one has no wildcard bids at all. Yay!

Basically, there are six models that a division can follow, ranging from the “best” (winning team has a bye, runner-up team plays first round, two possible wildcard spots) to the “worst” (winner has a first round game, no runner-up spot, competes for one possible wildcard spot). Whilst it is, to many people, a bad word in the world of women’s football, I don’t know what else to call these but tiers. Isn’t that what a tier is? A division is considered to have better teams and thus deserves to have a better placement in the playoffs. I think that’s tier-worthy? If you have a better idea of what to call these different treatments, please let me know. But for now, here are the six tier structures, along with the divisions in each:

For a list of which teams are in which division (along with a notation of tier for each), check this puppy out.

Now, here is the part where I tell you the limitations of what I can tell you. Basically, I can tell you the what, the where and the when, but I can’t tell you the how or the why. Which is to say, I know that the Division 1 runner-up team will be playing a wildcard team from Divs 1/2/3/4, but I cannot tell you how those teams will be chosen and I certainly can’t tell you WHY they’re chosen that way, or what the reasoning behind the differently-tiered structure was.

It would be very helpful to me to know the criteria for how winners, runners-up and wildcard teams are to be chosen, including the specific tie-breaker rules (very important!!), but at this point I don’t know any of that. Your Militia Cheerleader is not, of course, a player, coach or owner in the WFA and as such, those who are may have more information than me. Dear everyone: feel free to pass it on over. I’m militiacheerleader with a gmail address, and I protect my sources (although the idea that something as basic as “how a team makes the playoffs” would be considered confidential information is beyond ludicrous to me).

So for those of you who would like to start filling out your WFA playoff bracket with your own predictions, knock yourself out (and have fun guessing which Div 1/2/3/4 wildcard team will play which runner-up, ’cause I got nothin’): PDF | Excel

I’ll be back with more when I know more! If you see anything here you know to be inaccurate, or have clarifying questions about any of it, lemme know. If I can help, I will. Possibly in haiku format.