for each team. This allows for travel teams to play all their games on the road, and gives every team in the league an extra home game for each travel team in the league. Although this scheduling formula determined each of the 10 teams' respective opponents, the league usually did not release the final regular schedule with specific dates and times until the winter; the CIFL needed several months to coordinate the entire season schedule so that, among other reasons, games are worked around various scheduling conflicts. Playoffs The CIFL has gone through many teams, so the playoff format was changed several times throughout the years. In the league's first season, 2006, the playoff format featured a 1-4 seed based on their W-L-T records. The one seed hosted the four seed, and the two seed hosted the three seed. The winners advanced to the Great Lakes Bowl I, and the highest remaining seed hosted. Due to expansion in 2007, the playoff format was expanded to eight teams making the playoffs. The top team in each division would clinch homefield advantage throughout the playoffs. The rest were wild card teams that are seeded second through fourth. From that point, the matchups would remain the same as the previous year, with the exception that the winners of each divisional playoff would meet in the CIFL Championship Game. In 2009, the league returned to its original format of a four-team playoff. This stayed in place until 2012, when the league decided to just have the regular-season first and second seeds meet for the championship. CIFL Championship Game history All-Star game The league put on an All-Star game once, in its inaugural 2006 season. Teams In its early years, the CIFL was a very unstable and somewhat informal organization. Many teams entered and left the league annually, with the worst instance of teams exiting occurring when the new Indoor Football League was formed and the league lost five teams. The league fielded at least six teams in each year of its existence, gaining and losing teams each year from both expansion and teams shifting leagues. The Saginaw Sting was the franchise with the most time in the league; they completed their fourth season at the end of 2014. The Erie Explosion was the league's oldest team; it has been in operation since 2007 and joined the league in 2013. A potential for a merger