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+---- Thread: *Before the Butchers (/showthread.php?tid=37476)
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*Before the Butchers - Baron1898 - 02-05-2022
Introduction: A Jiggly Story
Perhaps more than any other location in the league, the city of Chicago has been a lightning rod of controversy from nearly the beginning. Multiple efforts to establish a sim football team in the Windy City have created turmoil and drama, a grand saga principally divided into two acts. This article will examine the first part of the story: the rise and fall of Chicago in the DSFL, a city struggling to find its footing and ultimately falling to the wayside by the tragic end of the first act.
The most convenient framing device for the entire story is also its most polarizing and central character: @Jiggly_333. Jiggly’s continual struggle to secure a team for Chicago, a city he very obviously loves, kickstarts most of the events that follow. Although this story does have a lot of touchy interpersonal conflict (albeit from nearly half a decade ago), I will do my best to recount it in as impartially a light as possible.
Part I: Football for Chicago
It first begins with news of an expansion. The NSFL would be growing from its inaugural six team format after Season 1, adding two new teams to the league. Jiggly, who was serving as co-GM of the Orange County Otters at the time, was already interested in getting a team in Chicago. He stated later,
Quote:From the moment that I joined, it was very apparent that I wanted to play for a team in Chicago. If no one else was going to make it, I was going to put it there myself. When JBear and I received full command of the ship, we considered relocation, but soon realized it was waaay too early for that.
Jiggly was one of many prospective GMs who applied for one of the coveted expansion teams in the offseason, proposing the Chicago Sting and procuring a logo. He was unsuccessful in his pursuit. The spots went instead to @RavensFanFromOntario (who for a reason I cannot discern is commonly referred to as HFFO) and @adam2552, creating the Las Vegas Legion and Philadelphia Liberty respectively. The Legion, of course, went on to have their own incredible drama and eventual rebranding, which makes for great reading but is not particularly relevant here. Jiggly remained with the Otters for Season 2, going 8-6 with a playoff loss to the @ErMurazor multi-infested Arizona Outlaws – another fascinating but irrelevant drama.
But Jiggly would get another chance. Another, more significant expansion was coming in Season 3: the creation of the Developmental Simulation Football League, or DSFL. With six new teams all needing to be made from scratch, Jiggly was practically guaranteed a GM spot due to his interest. Again quoting Jiggly,
Quote:They needed GMs. Baller contacted me first. The actual conversation is apparently lost in the ether, as it was on Discord and it’s apparently been deleted. But the first idea that he gave me was that the DSFL (not yet named anything) would be in Europe. He gave me right of first refusal over where I wanted to place my team… But, they decided to keep it in North America and I was getting my Chicago team.
Leaving the Otters GM role, Jiggly found his first co-GM for the DSFL Chicago team: @Muford. They decided to center the team’s identity on the Blues Brothers, announcing on August 6th, 2017 the formation of the Chicago Blues, whose logo was… not blue at all. Described by one commenter as “a fidget spinner w/stars”, the logo was actually based on the municipal device of Chicago. The announcement of the team was received positively otherwise, and the first season of the Blues went well, finishing with a DSFL-leading regular season record of 10-4.
Before the season even started, however, there would be some turnover at the GMing position. The hire of @7hawk77 to Head Office created a vacuum at co-GM for the San Jose Sabercats, and Muford stepped up to serve as his replacement, leaving Jiggly without a co-GM for the Blues. He took around a week to look for and talk to potential replacements, asking every applicant to answer questions in their application ranging from mundane background information to “Comfort Level with the .gifs I use” and “Opinions on the City of Chicago”. He also specified in his job posting that
Quote:Know that your job description is to basically handle a lot of the things, because I am very sporadic about caring about things. I can help give you your "GM Apprenticeship", but it'll probably be a trial by fire for you. Just a fair warning.
That, dear reader, is called foreshadowing.
Part II: An Asterisk Game
After a week of deliberation, Jiggly eventually found Muford’s successor in @RedCydranth. The pair finished out the aforementioned inaugural season of the Blues and went into Season 4 preparing to face the San Antonio Marshals in Week 1.
The Blues were not prepared enough, however, because neither Jiggly nor RedCydranth entered their send-down players into the requisite spreadsheet before the sim started. The game was simulated, and the Marshals won twice, despite the Blues having a player on their game roster, Dustin Atkins, who was at the time suspended under suspicion of being a Noble multi (more fun unrelated drama). Jiggly found out about the incorrect roster and raised a complaint, but a re-sim was refused… until the game file failed to save anyways and a re-sim was deemed necessary. Jiggly successfully managed to wrangle his actual send-down players onto the new roster in place of Atkins, and despite the decrease in TPE, the Blues actually won the third sim.
However, Marshals GMs @kckolbe and @iamslm22 cried foul. The league agreed, deciding that the originally simmed result would stand because the game was only re-simmed due to software issues. Jiggly responded to the mess with a Thunderdome post called The Asterisk Game, in which he unceremoniously fired RedCydranth and lamented Head Office’s decision:
Quote:So first thing I'll admit is that this whole situation is definitely my fault. I, a very lazy GM, didn't do a thing I was supposed to do. While there were other circumstances surrounding me including anxiety issues and depression, I also had hired a Co-GM who apparently has decided to go back on promises that they'd help out when those things struck… Well, I guess being the leader of an inactive army gets hard sometime. But it would've been nice to have gotten some help. So Red, consider this your pink slip.
The post ignited a firestorm of drama in the comments. One ongoing discussion centered on the validity of choosing to re-sim and then taking the results of the first two games anyways; Jiggly’s argument focused on accepting the final result as the valid one, while most of the comments sided with HO, arguing that the corrupted file was outside of the simmer’s control and should not impact the result of a game where the Marshals were beating the Blues quite badly. There were a multitude of complaints in the thread, including from both San Antonio GMs, about Head Office’s general sluggishness to deal with the situation once it had unfolded despite a very similar precedent in the NSFL.
But the more relevant and revealing portion of the drama was kicked up by this quote from Jiggly:
Quote:I don't care about winning. Winning and caring about winning in a developmental league is stupid. No offense to kolbe and slm, but the reason I'm fighting this is because they're so adamant on winning and seemed so arrogant about this game that I wanted to see the shock on their faces as the Blues won the last round.
I don't care about winning games or the championship. That's just bonus brownie points to put in my sig. I care about the people involved.
Multiple comments took issue with this statement, most notably from the Marshals GMs, slm and kolbe. They blasted Jiggly for his attitude, slm stating that “it isn’t cute or fun that you don’t give a shit” when the Marshals were able to both play rookies and win at the same time. A long statement from kolbe levied multiple accusations against Jiggly’s GMing, including not having once updated the spreadsheet over two offseasons, spending a second round pick on a kicker, being the only GM to take a contract above the minimum pay after GM pay was announced, paying only 1 million in salary to active players, and fostering a dead and inactive locker room.
The last point specifically can provide some context to the previously mentioned, and glossed over for dramatic effect, 10-4 season, and some context as to the general anti-Jiggly fervor that many commenters in the thread openly wore. Let’s go back to the Inaugural DSFL Draft, consisting of three mandatory send-downs by each NSFL team and the league’s inactive free agents. Selecting in serpentine order, and having started with the 6th and final pick in the first round, the Chicago Blues selected:
Pick 6 – Jazzy J, OL @JasieJ. 5 posts total in the league, never earned TPE. Later found guilty of being an Er multi. Every drama in the early NSFL is inseparably linked with at least three other dramas.
Pick 7 – Stephon Simpson, K @Ganjaroller. 18 posts total in the league, got up to 76 TPE.
Pick 18 – Lightskin Thor, DT @DefensiveJesus. Inactive for over a month by the time of the draft. Got up to 70 TPE.
Pick 19 – Teez Tobin, RB @Geh. 20 posts total in the league, never earned TPE.
Pick 30 – Mark Strike, QB @OwlStrike13. Got up to 193 TPE. Active for a bit, went inactive, came back but persuaded by Jiggly to stay inactive so he didn’t have to pay him. He comes back later in this story.
Pick 31 – Artist Boogie, CB @A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie. Last visited the forums a week after the DSFL Draft, got up to 57 TPE.
Pick 42 – Bert Macklin, LB @Mr_Brightside11. 4 posts total in the league, never earned TPE.
Pick 43 – Wizard Stephen, WR @WizardStephen. 5 posts total in the league, never earned TPE.
Pick 54 – Josepher Kamby, TE @WindyChi. 1 post total in the league, never earned TPE.
Pick 55 – Pablo Sanchez, S @baltimoreravens. 6 posts total in the league, got up to 57 TPE.
It’s obviously unreasonable to expect every pick to be active, especially given the somewhat slim pool of hand-me-downs and inactive free agents. But only one of these draftees was even sporadically active, QB Mark Strike, and he was encouraged to stay inactive when returning because that would mean Jiggly could keep paying him as an inactive.
But DSFL teams aren’t only composed of draftees. The Chicago Blues would also sign a few free agents on the waiver wire that year:
- Atahualpa Romero, RB @Atahualpa. 5 posts total in the league, never earned TPE.
- Haruki Ishigawa, LB @ExemplaryChad. Pre-trade deadline waiver wire pickup, consistently active throughout the season.
- Fresh Booter, WR @PoloPro. Post-trade deadline waiver wire pickup, and reportedly an enthusiastic locker room presence. Again, becomes more relevant later in this story.
ExemplaryChad and PoloPro defied the general trend, both being great active waiver wire pickups for the team. The Blues also conducted one trade with the Marshals, swapping out their drafted RB Teez Tobin less than a week after the draft for LB Matt Edilio, who posted only 7 times but did manage to get up to 57 TPE along the way. Can’t really say that either team won here. Another quote from Jiggly sums it up quite tidily:
Quote:Muford and I were wholly unprepared for the first draft and we winged it. Bad idea. We ended up with basically no actives.
Despite all of this, and having essentially one active player for most of the year, the Blues somehow went 10-4 on the year, sputtering by on a lot of sim luck but failing to bring home a Relicum Trophy (the Ultimini’s original name). Since they finished with the league’s best record, they actually drew the sixth and last draft slot in the Season 4 Draft, regardless of the postseason results. Let’s see how Jiggly and RedCydranth did in their first draft together:
Pick 6 – Fresh Booter, WR @PoloPro. Their waiver wire pickup late in S3 came back as their first selection in the draft.
Pick 11 – Tegan Atwell, CB @Jiggly_333. GM create, since the Blues desperately needed secondary help.
Pick 18 – Peg Leg, K @hockeyis66. Yet another kicker drafted highly by the Blues, Peg Leg was a semi-active user who got up to 164 TPE. Hall of Fame kicker Dean Jackson would be taken two rounds later.
Pick 24 – Dustin Atkins, WR @'dustyatters'. Never played a game for the Blues because of the whole “Secretly Noble” thing.
Pick 29 – Jackie Jordan, CB @voldy273. 7 posts total in the league, got up to 54 TPE.
Pick 30 – Eric Forman, CB @mking22. 17 posts total in the league, got up to 75 TPE.
Pick 36 – David Turner, RB @killagod47. 2 posts total in the league, never earned TPE.
With ExemplaryChad having been drafted 3rd overall in the NSFL Draft and called up by the Colorado Yeti, the Chicago Blues were running on fumes here. Their only actives were Jiggly’s own character and PoloPro, with a semi-active kicker and quarterback. And here we can circle back to the outrage that erupted over the first game of the season, with fellow DSFL GMs criticizing Jiggly’s laissez-faire management of the team and the dearth of activity compared to other teams in the league.
Interestingly, RedCydranth himself would pop in later in the thread, sharing his own point of view and echoing Jiggly’s sentiment of valuing players and activity over wins. He claimed that he received no notification from Jiggly that checking the player spreadsheet was his responsibility and asked Jiggly to be clearer with future co-GMs over what exactly was delegated to them.
Quote:I trusted that he had done everything he was supposed to, to get us ready for the week. If he had said "Hey, could you double check the rosters." or basically anything, I'd have done it. I'm the type that will step up if asked to do so, but won't seize control and overstep my duties. Since I wasn't delegated the task of double checking Jiggly's work, I didn't think it was necessary. Perhaps that is on me. My fault for not knowing that was a duty of mine, I guess.
Jiggly would make a new announcement later that day, stating that he and RedCydranth’s leadership styles were “too alike” and led to disaster when things needed to be done. This time around, instead of a protracted GM search, Jiggly announced that he already had a candidate for co-GM lined up and approved: PoloPro, the waiver wire pickup and first round draft pick.
For Season 4, though, this would only be the start of the troubles for the Chicago Blues. In a complete reversal of the prior season’s results, the Blues would go 5-9 for the second worst record in the league, missing out on the playoffs entirely. Furthermore, bad news lay on the horizon. The DSFL had been too much, too soon, and the league was not pulling in large enough draft classes to fill every team with active players. Jiggly’s memoir credits HFFO with the idea that would save the league and spell doom for the Blues: contraction.
Part III: Contraction and the Coyotes
It was announced officially on December 15, 2017 that the DSFL would be contracting from six to four teams. The San Antonio Marshals, Tijuana Luchadores, Portland Pythons, and Kansas City Coyotes would get to stay on as real teams; the unlucky two remaining, the Norfolk Seawolves and Chicago Blues, would be converted into bot teams, since the sim engine didn’t let the league have less than six teams. The players on the Seawolves and Blues would be dispersed to the other four teams, and the bot teams would have GMs interested in learning the ropes of GMing and of the sim.
Jiggly was not interested in running a bot team. As PoloPro stayed behind to run the bot squad in Chicago, Jiggly jumped ship and joined @124715 in Kansas City as the co-GM of the Coyotes. But unbeknownst to the public at large, Jiggly was not joining the Kansas City Coyotes and never intended to. It was announced a week later that Jiggly had joined Numbers only under the condition that the team make a move to Chicago. His mindset was laid bare in this quote from half a year later:
Quote:At this point, I had already known that I was going to end up being removed at some point. I was just trying to delay it as long as possible while setting up something of a legacy in the form of a team to stay in Chicago.
The Chicago Blues, meanwhile, would not share the city for long. Not long after Jiggly’s announcement, PoloPro constructed a hasty rebrand and relocation for the team as the Palm Beach Solar Bears.
The other Chicago team was facing some issues with its rebranding. The announcement was muddled and confused, ill-received in the court of public opinion. The team didn’t even get new logos or endzones in the sim. Jiggly’s Coyotes (or Los Lobos, as he sometimes and very confusingly called them) placed last in the league with a 4-10 record. Ironically, the Palm Beach Solar Bears won the Ultimini that year.
Jiggly, by his own account, was burnt out and disengaged from the league after losing his Blues franchise. He planned to resign at the end of the S5 season, but his hand was forced by Head Office, who cited complaints and criticisms from his players as justification to fire him mid-season and implement the new GM as quickly as possible. Later that same day, Numbers announced that the Coyotes would be moving back to Kansas City. There was no team left in Chicago.
Conclusion: Where Are They Now?
The former Chicago Blues would stay a bot team in Palm Beach until the enormous S15 draft class added enough players for DSFL expansion once again. They eventually rebranded again into the Myrtle Beach Buccaneers and then into the present-day Bondi Beach Buccaneers, having been to five Ultiminis and winning four over the franchise’s history. PoloPro resigned as the GM of the bot team after Season 6.
Since returning to Kansas City, the Coyotes have remained there ever since. They have been to eight Ultiminis, with their sole win coming in Season 12. Their first Ultimini appearance was in Season 6, the first season after Jiggly’s tenure, ultimately losing to the San Antonio Marshals.
The Coyote’s starting quarterback that year was none other than Mark Strike himself, the former Blues starter. After being taken in the S5 Dispersal Draft and riding the bench for the year, Strike became active again and took his team to an Ultimini appearance, winning DSFL MVP and Most Outstanding Player in the process.
Slm didn’t see out Season 4 as the San Antonio Marshals co-GM, accepting a job with HO and leaving kolbe as the sole GM in San Antonio in what would end up being an Ultimini-losing season. Kolbe left the Marshals midway through Season 5, and would leave the league around a year later due to unrelated but incredibly riveting draft leak drama.
Haruki Ishigawa played 11 seasons in the NSFL, 10 on Colorado and a final in Baltimore, and ranks 19th overall for career tackles with 998. He received one vote for the Hall of Fame.
RedCydranth would quickly get another job, filling roles as a co-GM and a scout for the Orange County Otters during their Ultimus threepeat from S4 to S6 and later serving as @speculadora’s co-GM from the end of S9 to the end of S12. His first player, Marc Spector, would eventually be inducted into the Hall of Fame on the S16 ballot after having been nominated on a number of previous ballots. The user behind RedCydranth passed away tragically in late February of 2020 from complications of cystic fibrosis.
Muford would step down from the Sabercats co-GMing position midway through Season 7 after having been there for over four seasons, getting traded to and finishing out his player’s career in New Orleans. He would take a position with HO in fall of 2018.
Jiggly stepped away from GMing for a time, finishing a long career with Tegan Atwell and eventually recreating in the class of S14 as a quarterback named Rose Jenkins. He never stopped advocating for a team in Chicago.
The Blues and then the Coyotes had failed to find purchase in the Windy City, victims of some unfortunate timing with league contraction as well as mismanagement in the draft and of the locker room. But the story was not over. And in March 2019, the largest draft class the ISFL had seen since its beginning would set in motion events that would rope Muford, Jiggly, and a whole new cast of characters back into the wild tumult of Chicago.
(Which I may or may not write sometime in the future.)
RE: Before the Butchers - zaynzk - 02-05-2022
I love these types of history post, this was quite an awesome read
RE: Before the Butchers - Oles - 02-05-2022
Write about the lead up to the butchers because i wanna be featured
RE: Before the Butchers - unconfident - 02-05-2022
Very nice read, would love an article about the butchers as well!
RE: Before the Butchers - infinitempg - 02-05-2022
This is a fantastic article about the *really* early days of the league - was fascinated to learn some of these details!
I think there is a bit of glossing over what was truly a good Chicago Coyotes team in terms of users, we just did not get it done on the field - bovovovo was obviously a presence in the league before hand but myself, speculadora, and AzhekAhriman (who became a member of HO for a bit) were all new users on that team. Arguably the only other big-name new users from that class were SuperSquare04 (to Portland) and PaytonM34 (to Tijuana), so I'd call that a draft success for the Coyotes.
RE: Before the Butchers - Baron1898 - 02-05-2022
(02-05-2022, 10:49 PM)infinitempg Wrote: This is a fantastic article about the *really* early days of the league - was fascinated to learn some of these details!I'll admit that I didn't examine the Coyotes roster as closely as I did the Blues, mainly because my focus was centered more on the Chicago/Jiggly aspect and because the on-field results, and HO citing player discontent, is what led to Jiggly's mid-season exit and the abrupt end of the narrative. But also because I was just trying to wrap up the article at that point lol. I really appreciate your input.
I think there is a bit of glossing over what was truly a good Chicago Coyotes team in terms of users, we just did not get it done on the field - bovovovo was obviously a presence in the league before hand but myself, speculadora, and AzhekAhriman (who became a member of HO for a bit) were all new users on that team. Arguably the only other big-name new users from that class were SuperSquare04 (to Portland) and PaytonM34 (to Tijuana), so I'd call that a draft success for the Coyotes.
RE: Before the Butchers - slate - 02-05-2022
Excellent read, learned a ton of stuff about deep league history that I never would have known about. The Asterisk Game thread is also an amazing read.
RE: Before the Butchers - DarknessRising - 02-05-2022
Love love love love articles exploring history that no one anymore would even know of.
As much as the article bangs, i think my favourite part is seeing a over 4 year ago thunder dome post being viewed but an array of people lmao
RE: Before the Butchers - NicholasTheGreat - 02-06-2022
TIL that @UberBJ isn't the worst GM in the history of the BBB Franchise
RE: Before the Butchers - Raven - 02-06-2022
Great read, always love reading back on the history of the league.
RavensFanOfOntario being reffered to as HFFO is because their username in the SHL is HabsFanFromOntario, as that's what they were already know as it just stuck I guess.