The impact of a season ending tournament....​

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I included an overriding rule to give postseason playoff games primary emphasis in the Ernst Zermelo rankings.

 

The rule is as follows:

 

The team winning the league playoff becomes the highest ranked team only among the teams that actually participated in the playoff.  

 

For example, let's assume Team D finished with the highest Zermelo value among the 12 teams that participated in a particular football league playoff. Team D had the 4th best Zermelo value overall at the end of the season. Teams A, B, and C are fantastic teams that cannot participate in the national playoff, and finished with the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd best Zermelo values ­­ a rare scenario.

 

Team G (one of the lower seeded 12 teams that participated in the playoff with the 8th best Zermelo value) ended up winning the 4 round single elimination tournament. Since Team G won the playoff, Team G leapfrogs over Team D (Team D finished with the highest Zermelo value among all 12 playoff participants) and is awarded the #4 spot. The final top five spots in this example would be as follows:

 

1. Team A

 

2. Team B

 

3. Team C

 

4. Team G

 

5. Team D

 

Teams that elect not to participate in the playoffs because of their finances, or are ineligible to participate in the playoffs, can still be ranked higher than the playoff champion in the final rankings.

 

If the playoff champion leapfrogs into a higher spot (which may not be the #1 spot), their Zermelo value still remains "as is".  The leaping team will have an asterisk next to their name indicating an overriding situation has occurred. In addition, there will also be a short writeup at the bottom of the rankings report explaining the rare overriding situation.