Bye (sports)

For another use of the term in the sport of cricket, see Bye (cricket).

A bye, in sports and other competitive activities, most commonly refers to the practice of allowing a player or team to advance to the next round of a playoff tournament without playing. This is generally the result of having a number of entrants in the competition that is not a power of two (i.e., not 2, 4, 8, 16, etc.); any such tournament must eventually arrive, through elimination, at an odd number of participants at some point, thus necessitating the bye. In large tournaments, sometimes the best-ranked players or teams get a bye in the first round(s), to reward them with less risk of elimination, as well as on the basis (particularly in seeded tournaments) that they would be most likely to eliminate the worst seeds anyway. Byes can be applied equally to single-person competitions and team sports, and well as to single-game eliminations and best-of series eliminations.

In round-robin tournament competitions where there are an odd number of competitors each round, usually just one would get a bye. Thus during no round would all teams be able to play. However, by the completion of the tournament each team would have played the same number of games as well as having sat out for the same number of rounds during the tournament. In a Swiss-system tournament with an odd number of players, one will get a bye each round, but not all players will get a bye.

There are multiple ways or reasons to get byes such as random chance, the opponent is unable to participate, the team gets it due to positive or negative past history, the team is handicapped etc..

Other uses

Gridiron football and Major League Baseball

• In a typical use of the term, the National Football League rewards two division winners from each of the two conferences which possess the best regular season record with a bye in the playoffs. This is necessitated by the current 12-team playoff structure. Eight is the next lowest power of 2, so four teams must be eliminated in the first week to get down to eight teams. Beginning in 2012 or 2013, Major League Baseball will join the NFL in having byes, which will be awarded to all division winners. There will be 10 playoff teams in all of MLB (6 division winners + 4 wildcards or 3 division winners per league+ 2 wildcards per league), so 2 teams will be eliminated to get the number down to 8 while the byes are in use. National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League each allow 16 teams in their postseasons, and since 16 is a power of two, no teams receive byes. The CFL also grants a bye to its two division winners, directly to the division finals as four other teams compete in a semi-final week.
• In both Canadian and American professional football leagues, the term "bye week" refers to any week during the regular season in which a team does not play a game. Each NFL team will have one "bye week" during a normal season; this is placed on the schedule between Week 4 and Week 10. The NFL has used the bye week since 1990 so as to extend the regular season schedule to 17 weeks. In 1993 each NFL team had 2 bye weeks. Traditionally, the Canadian Football League and Arena Football have scheduled byes only in seasons when they have had an odd number of teams in their leagues. However, the CFL introduced a scheduled bye week for its eight teams for the 2007 season.

Australian football codes

At present in Australia's National Rugby League (NRL), each team has two byes each season. During the representative period of the season (such as the State of Origin), byes are generally scheduled to the clubs that are expected to have the most players involved in the representative match (such as the Brisbane Broncos, Melbourne Storm and St. George Illawarra Dragons), in the round preceding (or following) the representative fixture, to allow those clubs to sufficiently rest those players and prevent them from fielding a weakened side. On the competition ladder, teams are awarded two points (equivalent to a win) during their bye week.

The Australian Football League, which comprises an even number of teams, gives each team one bye week near mid-season.

In both leagues, and under many other professional and amateur sports leagues in Australia, higher placed teams earn byes during finals, to earn an easier passage to the Grand Final as reward for finishing higher on the ladder.

References

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