In the preliminary round, each team will play all of their games on one field. There will be six to ten teams in each division, so every team will play from five to nine games in the preliminary round. If there are two divisions, then the top three teams in each division go to the finals. If there are three divisions in the preliminary round, the top two teams in each division will go to the finals. If there are four divisions in the preliminary round, the winners of each division will advance to the finals, along with two wild card teams, determined by their total score in the preliminary round.
All games are center flag, with live flag rule.
All bracketing is done by computer, and is statistically fair. There are no coin flips for goal selection. The computer guarantees that neither team will play from one end of a field a second time unless their opponent has played from the opposite end previously. We received a great response two years ago when we allowed the teams to select their own prizes, and we are again going to allow prize selection in 1998. After the top six teams select their prizes, all of the teams who did not make it into the finals will automatically be entered into a general drawing to distribute the remainder of the prizes.