ABCs of the AWFL

So maybe you know the Tigers, you know about the players, but do you know the league?

I don't blame you. I know that when I first came, I certainly didn't know a lot about the league or how it even works. I mean, sure, I did know a little bit about general football terms and brackets and all that, but I was never exactly the biggest sports guy myself.

*Bit more about who the Carolina Tigers play with and what exactly it is that they're playing in.

Now the Carolina Tigers play in what is called the American Women's Football League, or the AWFL for short. Within the league, there are a total of 34 teams, all of which play other teams within their conference and further within their regional division. The idea is that it splits the teams to play those closest to them.

There are two conferences: The Southwest and the Northeast, and they are further split into the Gulf and Apex Divisions for the former, and the Great Lakes and Atlantic Divisions for the latter. The Carolina Tigers participate in the Apex Division, and over the course of our season, we play against six other teams within our division and conference.

Now, the teams that win the most games and perform the best within this season will have a chance to participate in the league's playoffs. For those of you who follow things like the NFL or the NCAA, this should be rather familiar to you because the AWFL, for the most part, operates nearly exactly like those leagues but simply on a smaller scale.

Indeed, the 7 best teams from each conference participate in a single elimination bracket consisting of 3 rounds: Wild Card Round, the Divisional Round, and finally the Conference Championship. If you manage to get past all these rounds and stay in the tournament, you can play in the AWFL Super Bowl equivalent: The Emerald Bowl (Game to be held in San Antonio, Texas this year).

When going from the regular season into the playoffs, naturally, not all teams play quite the same, and depending on how well a team may perform, they might be given a seed. A seed is a way to properly balance the bracket, and the better your team does, the higher you're seeded. For instance, let's say the Tigers manage to win all six of our games within the division. It's highly likely, therefore, that we might be ranked as the first seed. But a team that barely manages to scrape by with 3 wins and 3 losses, they might be ranked as the 7th seed, or least likely to win the tournament.

This is partly why performing well is highly important in these beginning stages of the season, to make it easier once the playoffs really start. It also determines who it is you play exactly in those playoff rounds.

So, for this upcoming season for the Tigers, our first real goal is to do as well as we can during the regular season, so we can continue on to those playoffs. For all the Tiger fans out there, make sure to really make some noise to push them forward and onward to the Emerald Bowl.

Go Tigers.

Who we'll be playing in the upcoming season, be on the lookout!