MartindalexC

Problem with your idea is that it completely undermines the whole idea of a promotion/relegation system, atleast in my opinion. Divisions are made to evenly distribute the skill level of many teams so that the skill range is maintained in each subsequent division. If each team has a 'veto' it means that the 3rd placed team could decide that rather than to challenge themselves in a higher division, they could sit back and dominate those in their division atm. However by veto'ing the promotion for their team the next team must be able to get promoted, this just opens the door for a large skill range to develop not only in the division above but in the current division. (Which is something people should be opposed against, a larger skill gap means more landslide games) Additionally think about this hypothetical, if every team from the 3rd placed team all the way to the 20th placed team all used their veto in one season, based on the idea that they don't want to advance only to get dominated in the division above, what stops the 21st team from advancing because the teams who all finished higher in the season don't want to take the opportunity to move up? This hypothetical 21st overall team would get beyond smashed in the higher division, leading to lower parity in the division (Especially so if one team is the proverbial whipping boy) If you play well enough to finish in a promotion spot in a division, you should get promoted regardless of whether you feel you are 'up to it' or not, purely from a parity point of view. Furthermore your reasoning for why one team wouldn't want to get promoted is another perfect example of why divisions are inherently flawed for online gaming like this. There is nothing stopping teams from disbanding if they get promoted and don't want to lose more than they win, then reforming a new team to default to the old division (This is where an individual player rating system would help immensely, kind of what Billy mentioned earlier however such a system would be extremely subjective and unreliable imo). Finally, in regards to parity I think we will never reach a full blown equal league. With teams like Northern Stars, Sjukstugan, Synergy Hockey etc, they may be a bit of ambiguity about who at the end will win the league, but ultimately it will always involve the same few teams (Deviation will obviously occur but for the most part you could have a very good guess about who the final will be made up of). So trying to make a league, where only a select few can / will win, attractive to those who are just not skilled enough is a very tall order.

As Billy has eluded to, drawing up divisions is good in theory but when carried out it's very difficult to actually maintain. There is no real 'correct' way to structure it as there will always be positives and negatives, that said imo the biggest hurdle with divisions is creating an incentive to keep teams together and in the system. For instance if say you have a pre-tournament in order to try and categorise teams into divisions, those that are on the borders of each supposed division and get put in the lower categories will undoubtedly lose motivation to play. Now that isn't speaking about every single player as there will always be individual differences that make certain people unique, however it's a necessary generalisation if you want to think long term. The same can be said if there isn't any divisions, for instance the more teams you have, the higher the likelihood that the skill range will broaden, leading to more and more lopsided games, which also result in a lack of motivation from the players involved (Again, a wild generalisation but for the most part it is true. If you put up a poll of which type of game players prefer "Close or a blow out", I would predict with quite a bit of confidence that 'most' would go with the close game option). I'm kind of rattling off into tangents but since I'm an undergrad in psychology, this kind of stuff (social psych) is interesting for me. Anyway, my main point is that going forward any decision made should be made with quite a bit of research (Eg: Who to assign as 'commissioner' (Billy hates 'TGMA' ) is a pretty big deal as he'll / she'll be the figure head of the league and as such should be very approachable amongst other things) and not on a whim, however a certain air of authority is needed otherwise people start pushing the boundaries / challenging said authority.