How can I properly indicate a "day off" in a tournament using "sports terms"?

When showing a tournament calendar with an odd number of teams, how can I say (in sport terms) to indicate the team that is not playing on a given match day?

For example a tournament with five teams (A, B , C , D, and E):

A vs B

C vs D

E "has a day off"


I know this as a bye, as in Team E has a bye this round.

The term appears to have originated with cricket, in which a bye is a run scored when the batsman has not hit the ball. This phrase was later applied to tournaments in which a team advances without playing.

In North American usage, at least (certainly in American and Canadian football, baseball, and American professional soccer, and many collegiate sports), it has been further extended to gaps in the regular season when a team does not play, either because there are an odd number of teams in the league or because, in the case of the NFL, there are more weeks in the season than games for any team.


I have seen rest day being used to describe such days in newspapers. Not that the team would be taking a rest on that day, though.


Idle is a term that is sometimes seen in sports pages. It is particularly used in the case were the schedule is not rigid, such as basketball or baseball. Not every team plays every day, even if there are an even number of teams.

When National Football League teams don't have a game, that is referred to as a Bye week. In the playoffs the word "bye" would mean that you are exempted from that round, whereas "idle" means that is your day off. "Idle" is used when college football teams don't play for a week.