Savannah chosen first, Little Rock last in D-League 'Schedule Lottery'

The Fifty-Four teams that will begin play this weekend in the UWFFL Spring 2014 Developmental league participated in a "schedule lottery" to determine each team's schedule on Tuesday.  A pre-determined schedule was released in which the teams, arranged in six nine-team groups, will have the order of their opponents arranged.  Last week teams were placed into six mostly geographically arranged groups.

This reporter hurriedly scribbled down the results of the
lottery, unaware that everything would be presented
in a media handout minutes after the event was concluded.

Selected first was the Savannah Sledghammers, and fifty-fourth and last was the Little Rock Diamondbacks. By the order selected, each of the nine teams in each group was assigned a letter, from A to I.  The first team selected from each group was designated "Team A", and so forth until the ninth and final team to be selected from each group was designated "Team I".  After Savannah was selected, Cincinnati was chosen second and became 'Team A' in Group D, while Philadelphia, Mississippi and the Crown Royal Blacks from Winnipeg rounded out the top five.  Montana was selected sixth and became 'Team A' in Group F, and after six choices, each group had one team selected.  Delaware, chosen thirty-seventh, was the first team to close out its group and was designated 'Team I' in Group B.  Rhode Island was chosen 49th and became 'Team I' in Group A, and Boise, Dayton, Springfield and Whitehorse were chosen fiftieth through fifty-third before the Diamondbacks were the final team selected, and became 'Team I' in Group C.

These selections are largely academic and will have little to no impact on the results -- each team will play the other eight teams in the same group once, for an eight game schedule that will be played over a seventeen week period.  The first weekend of games will begin this Saturday, with twelve games featuring teams from Groups B, D and F.  The season will conclude with the seventeenth weekend of games on July 5.  Eighteen teams from the Developmental league, the teams that finish in the top three places in each group, will be placed in Division II this fall, while the teams that finish in fourth and fifth places in each group will be placed in Division III.  The remaining teams will be eligible to return next Spring for the 2015 Developmental League season.

The six group winners, along with the two best-finishing second place teams will compete in a three-round playoff for the UWFFL D-League Championship, with the first round on July 12, the semifinals on July 19 and the Championship on July 26.  Any ties for regular season group champion or wild card finishers will be broken by either head-to-head results or total votes, while any ties that have any bearing on placement of a team into a Fall league will be settled with tiebreaker games, also to be played on July 12, 19 or 26.

There won't be much time for turnaround, as the Division II sixteen game regular season begins on August 2. Division III will begin their inaugural season on August 16, while the UWFFL Bowl XIV Champion Minnesota Mustangs will begin their title defense a little later as the UWFFL Division I regular season will begin on September 6.

Among this weekend's marquee games are Charlotte at Greenville in Group B and Omaha at Dayton in Group D.