Has Anyone Done a 50-Team Preseason Tournament?

Florida Tiger · 02-10-2023, 07:34 PM

Taking an idea from the big tournament that North American soccer has (MLS and the Mexican league), I decided to get rid of spring training for the upcoming season and have a big tournament for all 50 teams in the North American, South American, Asian, and European leagues in my game.

Ideally, I would like to do this in the middle of my regular season, as the real-life soccer does. But futzing around with the schedule in OOTP baseball is challenging enough, so I just decided to do the tournament before the season.

All I've done so far is set up the teams and brackets. It's November in my game, and the "Nike Spring Classic" is scheduled to take place in March.
The tournament is divided into five 10-team pools, with teams from all leagues. Each team is scheduled to play their pool opponents twice, for a total of 18 games.

I don't know if the tournament feature will support this many teams, or the format I have, so I wanted to see if anyone else has done something similar.

Florida Tiger · 02-10-2023, 10:29 PM

I actually got this to work, and it was really pretty fun. It beats the monotony of a generic spring training. My team got to play other major league teams from the other league (I don't have interleague play), as well as teams from Europe, South America, and Japan.

First thing I did was calculate it would take six weeks to run a tournament of this type: with five 10-team pools, each team would play two games against each team in their pool: 18 round-robin games, plus three rounds of playoffs (the five pool winners, plus three wild cards). So I had to start the tournament the first week of March. Also:

I shortened spring training from the default five weeks to two weeks. Spring Training started literally the day after the tournament started, so I will have to watch this going forward, because I don't want a team playing a tournament championship and a spring training game on the same day.
I then moved my regular season from the first week of April to the first week of May.

I did forget to adjust the regular season start dates of the Europe, Asia, and South American Leagues, but none of their teams made the playoffs, so it didn't matter much. But I would need to fix this going forward, because one of their teams might make it to the playoffs some day.

Florida Tiger · 02-10-2023, 10:31 PM

Interestingly, a team that has played for almost 50 seasons in my league but has never made the playoffs, the Houston Mustangs, won the first Spring Classic.

BBGiovanni · 02-11-2023, 11:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Florida Tiger

Interestingly, a team that has played for almost 50 seasons in my league but has never made the playoffs, the Houston Mustangs, won the first Spring Classic.

This is the kind of thing that's so great with tournaments. In one of my saves I had a world championship after the national championships, and it was fun to fight through the national championship and start all over against the world teams. And amazing how hard it was to win both in the same year!

Anyway, in one of my saves I have an international tournament every year before my season(s) start, and it's great. In your case, if you do that make sure it is resolved before spring training starts. And of course don't forget to turn off the WBC if you have it on.

I'm with Florida Tiger, ST is boring and weird since it's not customizable. If we could replace ST with a "developmental tournament" I would.

02-10-2023, 07:34 PM	#1
Florida Tiger Minors (Triple A) Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: St. Louis (Formerly Orlando) Posts: 221	Has Anyone Done a 50-Team Preseason Tournament? Taking an idea from the big tournament that North American soccer has (MLS and the Mexican league), I decided to get rid of spring training for the upcoming season and have a big tournament for all 50 teams in the North American, South American, Asian, and European leagues in my game. Ideally, I would like to do this in the middle of my regular season, as the real-life soccer does. But futzing around with the schedule in OOTP baseball is challenging enough, so I just decided to do the tournament before the season. All I've done so far is set up the teams and brackets. It's November in my game, and the "Nike Spring Classic" is scheduled to take place in March. The tournament is divided into five 10-team pools, with teams from all leagues. Each team is scheduled to play their pool opponents twice, for a total of 18 games. I don't know if the tournament feature will support this many teams, or the format I have, so I wanted to see if anyone else has done something similar.

02-10-2023, 10:29 PM	#2
Florida Tiger Minors (Triple A) Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: St. Louis (Formerly Orlando) Posts: 221	I actually got this to work, and it was really pretty fun. It beats the monotony of a generic spring training. My team got to play other major league teams from the other league (I don't have interleague play), as well as teams from Europe, South America, and Japan. First thing I did was calculate it would take six weeks to run a tournament of this type: with five 10-team pools, each team would play two games against each team in their pool: 18 round-robin games, plus three rounds of playoffs (the five pool winners, plus three wild cards). So I had to start the tournament the first week of March. Also: I shortened spring training from the default five weeks to two weeks. Spring Training started literally the day after the tournament started, so I will have to watch this going forward, because I don't want a team playing a tournament championship and a spring training game on the same day. I then moved my regular season from the first week of April to the first week of May. I did forget to adjust the regular season start dates of the Europe, Asia, and South American Leagues, but none of their teams made the playoffs, so it didn't matter much. But I would need to fix this going forward, because one of their teams might make it to the playoffs some day.

02-10-2023, 10:31 PM	#3
Florida Tiger Minors (Triple A) Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: St. Louis (Formerly Orlando) Posts: 221	Interestingly, a team that has played for almost 50 seasons in my league but has never made the playoffs, the Houston Mustangs, won the first Spring Classic.