randomize etc?

I'm trying to make a small script that I can use for randomizing teams and stuff, I have one field where I enter how many teams, one for how many in each team, and a <textarea> to write down all the players in. This is where my brain stopped working, first I was thinking about using split, but I don't know how when there isn't a predefined number of variables to split it into, how do I do this? and when I have separated them into variables, how do I put them into arrays? or maybe that's not a good way to do it? I don't know, and the heat in my room is killing me, can't think clearly :) Håkan