I would like to propose for next season that the division winners be seeded in the playoffs as 1~4. The other 12 teams in the top 16 finishers would be seeded in the order of their final points from 5 through 16. This has been suggested in the past. I think it would add some interest to the regular season play within the divisions. There would be some tangible benefit to a team for winning a division.
Obviously this will never effect the team finishing at the top at the end of the regular season. For teams finishing 2, 3, and 4 the difference could be moving to seeds 5, 6, and 7 for the playoffs. However, it would be unlikely that the top 4 teams at the end of the season would be from the same division.
In 5 of the last 7 seasons there has been 1 team in the top 4 that was not a division winner. In 2 of the last 7 seasons there have been 2 teams in the top 4 that were not division winners. In each of these seasons the winners of divisions that did not place in the top 4 finished between 5 and 8.
This would change the opponent in the first round of the playoffs for those teams but those teams would still have home table during the first round of playoffs. The teams are placed in the divisions by a random draw and the schedule outside of the division is basically random. The order of finish at the end of the regular season is influenced by the random nature of the schedule.

. . . yes soooo much more meaningful than a division trophy. i like the direction this is going. keep fleshing it out.
paparazzi

I think this is a wonderfulIdea, it would be like a football bracket.

would it then be better to have more matches against one's own division rivalsduring the regular season, home and away against all the teams in your own division, and the rest from other divisions? Just a thought, you could make the season a little longer so you still get to play as many different players as possible

I think there's some good ideas here, a few thoughts though;The consequence of this is to lessen the importance of regular league wins and heighten the importance of the playoffs; this is not necessarily a bad thing.
We have seen in the past several top teams in the same division; it happened this season. If you want to win the championship you have to beat everyone so this is arguably not a problem. However, this may have the effect of knocking a very good team, who are maybe 8th or 9th overall, into the best of the rest bracket, which could be considered unfair on them, and on the smaller teams.
Is there any way we can seed the teams at the start of the season? Perhaps that way we can distribute the divisions more evenly.I know it's difficult because of new teams and whatever but I think it's worth considering.
I'm all for making the divisions have some kind of meaning, at the moment it's a page I rarely if ever look at. CM

One way of attempting a balance in the divisions would be to place teams based on the position the team finished in the previous regular season. It might look like:High Ball Low Ball Stripes Solids 1 2 3 4 8 7 6 5 9 10 11 12etc.
New teams could be placed after this placement is completed.
Johnny, also had a very viable idea by drawing 2 from the top 8 for each division, then 2 from the next 8, etc.
Either way would provide more focus on the regular season division races while still make the overall league playoff champion meaningful.