Expansion!

The FFLUM announced today that it has awarded two expansion franchises for the 2007 season. Josh Ringen and Matt Scherger were introduced to the league as the new entrants for '07. They will being building their rosters through an expansion draft in April or May, and then will draft along with the rest of the league in August.

Because of the expansion, the league will look a little different in 2007. There will be two divisions with 5 teams in each. Divisional realignment is a possibility, with a couple of existing franchises possibly relocating as well. Along with the expansion comes a slightly unbalanced schedule. Each team will still play home-and-home within its own division, but home-and-home against the opposite division will be limited to just one team - the remaining non-division teams will all play just once during the regular season.

To keep strength of schedule numbers from skewing too much, teams will play two games against non-division opponents who finished equally in their division standings the previous year. Thus, A division champion team will play the opposite division champion in a home-and-home series, while playing the other teams in that opposite division just once. (Translation: good teams have to play an extra game against another good team; bad teams get to play one more game against another bad team.)

The list of players made available for the expansion draft will be posted on April 1.