Franchise Ball Champions League

Introducing: Franchise Ball Champions League

In an effort to do something with all those extra game sim tokens I have laying around, I am starting something new this season. The Franchise Ball Champions League (FBCL). Similar to the UEFA Champions League, so wonderfully known in the world of football (Soccer), we are starting a fun new competition where we pair up the best of the best from previous seasons to see who the ultimate champion is.
Every season, we will take the league winners, the teams with the best regular season record in each league (second best if the league winner is the #1 seed), and some extra teams, and create a multi-format Champions League using the in-game Simulator Engine.
This format will be as follows
Qualification (not yet active)
Group Stage
Knockout Bracket
For the first few seasons, there will be a very small Qualification tournament, if we even have one, as we work to prove this can even work, and as we look to understand how many sim tokens we actually have/need. However, all qualified teams will make the group stage. For this inaugural season, all qualified teams (outside two wildcard teams) either won their league, or had the best or second best record in their league. We are also removing inactive teams from this. So if the day we checked you were inactive for 7 days or more, we will remove you from the FBCL Qualification List. This could be harsh since some teams take a break after being eliminated, but we need some sort of method for this.

Once in the group stage, we will split into groups for a round-robin format. This inaugural S141 Champions League has 4 Groups of 6 teams. All teams qualifying for the group stage, will play all teams home and away, meaning 10 games played. And we will use your team's current lineup and current rotation to figure out who bats and who pitches. (Example - Game 1 = 1st starter, Game 2 = 2nd starter, Game 7 = 2nd starter, etc.)
After each team plays all group stage games (this season the group stage is 10 games), the top 2 teams in each group will advance to the knockout rounds where they will play in a predetermined bracket based on their position in each group. Each knockout round is a Best of 3, Best of 5 or a Best of 7 game series. The best of 7 game series is reserved for the Finals, and the Best of 5 game series is reserved for the Semi-Finals. All other rounds will be Best of 3. For this season, each round will start with each teams #1 starter. (In future iterations, the starter will be picked based on the number of games played in the knockout round. So a team that sweeps in a best of 3 will start with their #3 starter against a #4 starter for a team that went 3 games in the knockouts. However as of now, we will start each series as Starter # 1 v Starter # 1.)
The games will be simulated by members of the FBCL Governing Body using their in-game tokens. These members are currently just the FBCL Commissioner (Washington DiamondBucs) but will likely expand to 2-4 additional members and be 3 or 5 total members in the FBCL Governing Body. Members will be long standing Franchise Ball teams, and Executive Members which have the additional tokens to regularly do these simulations regularly. During Group Play, no Governing member (aside from the Commissioner) will sim a group with their team in it to ensure fair play. We may also stream our sims from time to time.
While there will be results posted on here from time to time, the majority of this will be completed over the FranchiseBall Discord and all Results will be kept in a google document where only FBCL Governing Body Members can edit (but all Discord members can view updates and progress and discuss)
Future goals are an expanded tournament size (currently 24 and will hopefully increase to around 64 teams), qualification playoffs for additional teams (Which you will still need to qualify for with regular season performance) and possibly wild card slots given to teams especially active in Discord since this will primarily run over Discord.
I hope this is a fun wrinkle for all teams to enjoy, whether as a participant or as a follower. There are no tangible prizes for participation or for winning but you will get some clout and props from members on Discord and maybe even some folks in-game here.
So, come on over to discord, be more active, and join the FB Community as we make this really fun wrinkle to FB!
Cheers
-Diamondbucs