We did this in our big money scratch league in CA, and I think it works well, keeping everyone excited till the end of the year:
We had 32-36 teams usually, had 3 divisions by random draw. Divided the year into thirds. Begining of each third we randomly redraw for divisions.
At the end of the year, the 3 division winners from each 3rd were seeded into the playoffs 1-9 (or less if one team won more then one divsion title). We then added in 2 Wild Card teams based on most points without winning a division. Then on the Saturday before the last night of league, every team not in the playoffs came in and rolled a "Last Chance tournament". It was 3 games total pins. We took the top 6 teams out of that and they then rolled two game matches using the league point system (we gave a point for total which was disegarded in this format) until we were down to the final teams (nubmer depends on how many spots were available because of multiple division winners) until we had a total of 12 teams in the playoffs. Now in order to put some weight to the regular season, in our format, the #1 overall seed (a division winner with the most overall points) was automatically seeded into the final match and the rest bowled basically a step ladder type format (on the Sunday after the Last Chance tourney) until there was one team left to challenge the #1 seed. The championship match then took place during the last night of league, while everyone else rolled a sweeper night.
I would tweak this not not seed the #1 overall team into the finals, but do a bracket type format where #1 bowls #12, #2 bowls #11 and so on. Then in round 2, the highest seed rolls the lowest seed left and down, so #1 would roll #6, #2 would roll #5, etc. Then in round 3 the highest seed left gets a bye, the other 2 teams roll and the winner rolls the team that sat out that round. This way you still put value on the regualr season ( bowling the "weaker" teams in the bracket, the chance for a bye in round 3) but the #1 seed isn't locked into no worse then second like in our league.
For points I always like the Peterson type system - 1 or 2 pts for beating your man, then a number of points for team game. We do an 8 pt/game system in our scratch league 1 pt for beating your man, 4 pts for team game, nothing for totals. But if you want to do the playoff format you must have an odd number of points, so that you can avoid ties in the 2 game rolloffs (as much as possible) so you can add a pt for team totals as well.
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Jorge300
