Story by: Kris Wright
While we as a league are still young, we need to begin organizing and establish ourselves as a real league.
Our first step should be to set up conferences, which would set up my next idea of requiring teams to play one or two games throughout the season in order to play at Nationals. Host teams spend way too much time and money to plan Nationals to have teams who aren’t serious cancel at the last minute and make the hosting team pay for it.
The conferences would also give more meaning to every game and every rivalry. However, the conferences would not affect Nationals since every team plays one or two games. What it would do is make conference tournaments and give more bragging rights to other teams. It would also make regular season games more meaningful to the standings and to the players.
Finally, we can add more meaning to tournaments leading up to Nationals. Tournaments like the Michigan Dodgeball Cup or the Kentucky Classic can turn into conference championship tournaments rather than round robin tournaments and can be played in March rather than January or February. But the original round robin MDC and Kentucky Classic can still happen in order to preserve tradition.
While some of these conferences contain potential teams, it’s just to give an even number of members.
Potential Conferences
Michigan Conference
Saginaw Valley State University, Delta College, Central Michigan, Michigan Tech, Eastern Michigan University, Michigan State University, Ferris State, Grand Valley State University
Ohio Valley Conference
Kent State, Ohio State, Bowling Green, Miami of Ohio, Western Kentucky, Kentucky, Louisville, Virginia Military Institute, Georgia Tech, Penn State University, University of Cincinnati
Mid West Conference
Depaul, Western Illinois, Wisconsin – Platteville, Nebraska – Omaha, Nebraska – Lincoln, Iowa State University, Moody Bible Institute