Not to derail the tourney discussion, but on the earlier topic of league pyramid shape and t***ing, I think both problems would be solved if promotion/relegation were 6 up, 8 down instead of 4 up, 2/4 down. The current system operates on the Peter Principle. Everyone slowly gets pushed up to the level of their incompetence, and with little chance of dropping back down, they either t*** to ensure relegation or quit out of boredom/frustration with annual 90+ loss seasons. I gave this a bit of thought and settled on 6 up, 8 down for these reasons:
- More movement - Judging from forum complaints (and t***ing behavior), people with bad teams in higher leagues would rather drop down and earn more points to improve, and people avoid improving their teams in lower leagues to avoid advancing too quickly. Having more teams moving up and down the pyramid both reduces the need to t*** to drop down and reduces the fear of incremental improvements to move up. People can keep the pedal to the metal and see whether their team can hack it in a higher league, with the comfort of knowing that they'll land right back in the lower level if the answer is "no."
- Playoff t***ing - As people have noted, t***ing in the regular season helps people move down a level, but t***ing in the playoffs helps people avoid advancing and keep racking up record-setting PP earnings in a lower level with a laughably dominant team. Having 6 teams advance means each sub-league's best regular-season team is guaranteed to advance (as well as the 2 LCS teams), so t***ers could not avoid promotion simply by throwing a few all-important playoff games. If they insist on t***ing, it would be in the regular season at the cost of some portion of the PP winnings that motivate the behavior in the first place.
- Tapered pyramid - If and when the league pyramid ever reaches its steady state, the ratio of the size of one level versus the next level down is the ratio of the number of teams promoted/relegated from each league. The current system has more promotion than relegation at most levels, meaning teams are constantly moving upward, technically toward an inverted pyramid. The current structure is not really an inverted pyramid but a uniform column, because new teams keep starting at the bottom and 4 up, 2/4 down is relatively slow. If it were 6 up, 8 down, each level would be 75% as large as the one below it (meaning, e.g., 30.4% in Iron, 7.2% in Perfect), and teams would reach the appropriate level faster.