Only if you are removing 1 team, then you can change it to a BYE. If you delete more than 1, if you don't renumber the teams, your lane schedule will not be correct.

Thanks Kerry.  Does that still apply even if I manually pair the teams each week?

The numbering will always be consecutive numbers starting with one.  So you will not see a gap.

 

You have a couple choices. You could either follow the numbering convention we have or you follow it, but put the desired team number as part of the team name.

 

When dropping teams, it's always suggested to minimize the number of teams being reassigned team number.

 

I'll give this example.  Tonight's league has 16 teams, with team 2 dropping this week and team 14 as a Bye.  Intuition says to drop 2 and drop 14 and let all the teams slide up.  Problem is that all but Team 1 get reassigned to new team numbers, making it a headache for envelopes and other things.

 

The best way, using this example, is to swap places with 15 and 2, then swap places with 16 and 14.  If you do this correctly, when you look at the team rosters, a total of 4 teams will be reassigned new team numbers.  Then you can delete the last 2 teams, since they are the teams going away.

 

 

Christy, I will reply to your comment down here so I can add a hyperlink. I hope I'm not reading too much into it, but based on your comment: The USBC has a 6-team schedule here that BLS also uses (it was as it was adopted by the ABC over 100 years ago). I link it as a guide only, but the notion of manually pairing every week...I don't think I quite get it unless you're doing that extra work (as Lance described above) just to appease a treasurer. (I will state right out that a Treasurer is as important to a league and has an also enormous responsibility, so I mean absolutely no disdain at all...in fact, I am Sec/Treas in one league.)

 

You can have position rounds wherever you wish; often they are done at the end of a round robin (5 weeks for a 6-team league, you clearly understand the concept) so as to round out the rotation to an even number of weeks. You could do a position round for week one and bump every rotation back one week, but how do you determine what teams are in first, second, third, etc. before any competition? (unless you use last season's standings as a first-week guide, I suppose.) But BLS will insert a Position Round anywhere you want and just move pairings back one week every time you do that, and the blanks on the linked schedule are there for a typical placement (as I said, after each round robin was completed) but per USBC, they are completely optional and can be placed anywhere.

Reading this thread reminds me of a problem I found where BLS does not WARN you that a problem might happen.

 

If you are deleting team or teams (or merging two teams), or adding teams in the middle of the season, you can run into the problem of where the BLS software switches between two different "USBC schedule" which tells the BLS software which teams will play which teams on which lanes for x number of weeks.  This schedule does NOT change if you go from an odd number of teams (ie you have a BYE team), or when you delete a team and the delete team doesn't turn into a BYE team.  The BLS software simply switches from the one schedule to a different one, and it doesn't care if the new schedule makes sure that all teams play against all the other teams or not. 

 

  I'm the secretary of a small league (12 teams), so each team will bowl against every other team in our 15 game season.  I had to merge two teams at week 6 (luckily with changing only one team number), and we found that right away we had teams bowling against teams that they had already bowled against.  If we had stay with the new "USBC Schedule" that we got shifted to in week 6, we would have had some teams play each other 3 times (not counting position rounds), and one pair of teams that would never meet.  I had to manual figure out how many times teams bowl against each other, and then come up with a new schedule.  By this time I figured out what was happening, I only had 6 weeks left, but I was able to build a new schedule that was a fair as possible to all teams.  I ended up using Excel to map out the two "USBC Schedules" and used it to identify how often each team pairing occurred.  I wasn't able to find any programs (or web sites) out on the Internet that would take the already bowled schedule and redo the rest of the season scheduling for me (at least none that were free).  When I first delete the team, I just expected BLS to modify the schedule to make sure that all teams play against each other, I didn't know that it was dumb here, and it just used a fix schedule and had no idea what effect deleting or adding a team would do to the schedule. After doing some research into finding a solution to my problem, I realized that I shouldn't expect that the BLS software would do that (it not a simple problem when your change the schedule in the middle of the season).  For bigger leagues, It probably not as much of a problem if two teams never meet, or meet twice, but for smaller leagues, it could make a big difference if 1st and 2nd place never meet during the normal schedule, or just as bad, having the same two teams meeting many times, and then again in position rounds.  The end results could be skewed since you are no longer having a true round robin pairing.

Carl, I can very much relate. My league started the 2012-13 season with 27 teams (thus bowling the 28-team schedule with one BYE team). One team had various "issues" occur both between teammates and over a member's payments...that team withdrew after forfeiting week 9, I think...the new schedule took us to 26 teams and over the several weeks immediately following, there were several occasions of teams repeating a match-up, and some that never met, partly because of six scheduled position rounds. At least, both BLS-2013 and AMF/Advantage scorekeeping matched teamscheduling, with me doing the team deletion per each system's proper method therefor (Advantage is an older system incompatible with BLS).

 

This season, at the last minute, we started with 29 teams, the 29th asking in at the last minute. About noon before starting week 5, I got a call from team 29's captain noting members quitting and himself, out for surgery...he felt it best to withdraw the team. I was fortunate enough to be able to take an hour off the end of my work day to get to the lanes...at least, deleting the highest number team meant that the remainder could keep their numbers, but that everyone would be bowling on different lanes and in at least one case, against the very team they had bowled the previous week.

 

All I was able to do was text the other officers to let them know what I was going to have to do, as I would have to devote considerable time at the center re-printing sheets for week and configuring Advantage to the new schedule...it worked well with a few minor gripes that I pretty much expected. And yes, again both BLS-2015 and Advantage matched on schedule. Having a Facebook page for the league did help as more members over time use media for updates and this time, many showed knowing that they would be on a different lane than previously expected.

 

The notion of changing the schedule to reflect a revised number of teams is really the only true workable solution. There is no Commonly Asked Question (CAQ) in the USBC rule book as the only rule coming close is 104d which deals with uneven number of teams, and it only addresses teams being added to the league. But if applied to a change, I would contend that USBC, if its Rules department were called, would agree that the undesignated statement following CAQ 104d/3 (at the bottom of p. 37, 2014-15 Playing Rules located here) would apply, and it reads "No matter which option the league chooses, the schedule must be changed to reflect the new number of teams now bowling in the league."

 

I have the respect of my league's members, and I frequently tell them and the president/VP that regardless of what happens, the best course of action is to adopt the new rotation and go forward. I say that I could opt to not include a week that has many repeat matches, but that any attempt on my part to do that would be manipulating the schedule, which is something I just won't do. The 2012 issue removed an "undesirable" team and while it wasn't said, the idea that the lesser of two evils (a reschedule, or continuing to have a bad team present) prevailed. This season's withdrawal fortunately happened earlier and I was able to make changes.

 

Should BLS have a blatant warning when the number of teams changes? Perhaps. But, in the 13 seasons I've used the prouduct and participated on support communities, I don't recall seeing a request for it. But they generally are open to suggestions. The big thing we as users have to remember that it may be simple in our eyes just to insert a warning dialog, but anytime something is modified in a product, it could affect how other things function which wouldn't necessarily be known until after an update is released and a problem detected.