[IBL] 2026 IBL Season

[Russell Peltz]

Hello all,

We go into this offseason with six teams without owners.

In many recent years we've had one or two teams under caretaker control,
and with much appreciated help from caretakers, it's not much of a problem.
But we can't operate normally with six.

Therefore we've made the decision to play the 2026 season with 20 teams.
The following four teams will be contracted:

Round Rock Gryphons
Occidental Millers
Sparkle City Sluggers
Baltimore Sand Crabs

The other two teams, the Everett Grays and Monrovia Madness, will be
run by caretakers until we can find replacement owners for them.

The players from the contracted teams will be put into an expansion pool and
not used in the 2026 season.  We will make every effort to try to find four
new owners so that we can return to 24 teams for the 2027 season.  If we are
successful, then the added teams will stock their rosters with a draft from
the expansion pool.  They will also have tier 0 status in the regular draft.

If we are not able to find enough owners to reinstate the teams for 2027, and
it appears that we will not be able to return to 24 teams in the foreseeable
future, we will reevaluate and determine what to do with the players in the
expansion pool.

The divisions for 2026 will be:

AC East: EVE, KAT, NJR, PHI, SFL
AC West: BOW, BUF, MAD, MCM, WMS
NC East: NYK, SDQ, SFP, SKY, WIS
NC West: BFD, CAN, GTY, SEA, SLG

Each team will play 18 games vs. their own division, 12 games vs. the other
division in their conference, and 3 games vs. each team in the other conference.
Personally, I am happy to have interconference games in the schedule again.

We decided on a playoff format with four Wild Card teams in each conference.

The division winners get a bye for the Wild Card round.

In each conference, the #1 seed Wild Card team will host all three games of a
best-of-three series against the #4 seed.  The #2 seed will host all three games
of a best-of-three series against the #3 seed.

The Wild Card winners will advance to the Division Series, which will
be best of 7.
The #1 conference seeds will decide which Wild Card winner they want to play.
Then there will be a best-of-7 Conference Championship and IBL
Championship as usual.

The four Wild Card losing teams will not be considered as playoff
teams for purposes
of determining their draft tier in upcoming seasons.

Brent will be sending out information about the draft lottery.  The
contracted teams
will be included in the lottery, so that traded picks can be accounted
for properly,
but those teams will not participate in the draft.

Thanks,
Rusty