Tournament scoring question - 7 teams

[Galagore]

Our conference is changing teams next year, and we will only have seven involved in our conference tournament. We are working on how to handle the bye in the first round. Scoring is unfair to the teams that don't draw the bye, not scoring it is unfair to the teams that do. Has/does anyone else been in this situation and/or have any suggestions on how to handle it?

[MattM]

5 hours ago, Galagore said:

Our conference is changing teams next year, and we will only have seven involved in our conference tournament. We are working on how to handle the bye in the first round. Scoring is unfair to the teams that don't draw the bye, not scoring it is unfair to the teams that do. Has/does anyone else been in this situation and/or have any suggestions on how to handle it?

Our current Conference structure is 7 teams.  In the last few years, we have seeded the Top 4 wrestlers and then drew in the rest.  This helps with distributing the Bye better than if you seeded 5 or 6.   After seeding the top 4 we have randomly drawn in the team that gets the Bye before placing the non-seeded wrestlers in the bracket.  And then make a note of that.  That Bye school is then exempt from receiving an other Bye (when at all possible) until the rest of the school has also received one.  We open the Bye possibility to all 4 seeded wrestlers to ensure if a team has a large amount of 1 and 2 seeds they aren’t being negatively affected by drawing a first round Bye too many times.  Basically pull their name out of the options before you draw.  Obviously due to the nature of hoe some seeded brackets fall you end up having to give a team the second a Bye before another team may get their first one, but it often pans out OK in the end as long as you keep track of who has received a Bye as you progress through the weights. In a perfect world, each of the 7 teams should receive the Bye twice.  But due to some seeding circumstances, occasionally a tram may ends up with 3 Bye's and another with only 1 Bye.   That is the fairest system we have been able to manage for a 7 team tournament.  You can decide if you then want to score placement points for the Top 4, 5, or 6 finishes.  We decided giving placements points for 7 was a little much.  

Edited April 4 by MattM

[jetwrestling]

The ACAC Conference Tournament scores the bye as a Forfeit to prevent any advantage/ disadvantage for the luck of the draw.

The 1 or 2 seed is the one who gets the Bye.