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*A Winter of Discontent II - Baron1898 - 08-06-2022
![[Image: Final-Logo.png]](https://i.ibb.co/1zKJHv1/Final-Logo.png){kind=logo}
A Winter of Discontent
The Darkest Days in League History
Volume I | Volume II
Part IV: Sim Jose
Editorial note: Even more so than many previous sections, many of the events recounted here – particularly in the beginning – are very reliant on frustratingly limited evidence and the accounts of a few participants, oftentimes only one. Keep this in mind.
Flashback once again to the end of Season 11 and the start of the offseason. The long-serving simmer and streamer at the time, timeconsumer, announced on December 5 that he would stepping down from the simmer position by the end of Season 12. This announcement post, and whatever further details were in it, are lost to the sands of time.
![[Image: 6jL0tpf.png]](https://i.imgur.com/6jL0tpf.png)
![[Image: 048wh1G.png]](https://i.imgur.com/048wh1G.png)
Credit to the Wayback Machine and jcink moderator logs, respectively
There had been some tension existing between TC and Head Office for a while. Because simmer was a) an incredibly demanding position, b) vital for the league's function, and c) in short supply with few backups, timeconsumer had quite a lot of leverage over HO. He had talked previously about stepping down, so HO pressured him to write down the sim rules, which he was very reluctant to do. There were complaints that said rules were not written down anywhere. Furthermore, TC was prone to adding or changing the rules unilaterally. Any rules proposed by HO and approved by the GMs could simply be vetoed by TC if he didn't like them or thought they didn't work well, which ruffled the feathers of HO members the wrong way.
Further Listening: HO/Simmer Struggles
Late on December 4 in GM chat, @infinitempg provided the stream cards for the upcoming DSFL Awards Show stream scheduled for the next day. Dwyer, who also served as the Awards Head, noticed a small typo in one of the cards. He asked first infinite and then Raven to fix the issue, but infinite had to go to sleep and Raven wouldn't be able to fix it until after work. Dwyer then skipped his college classes the next day and stayed awake until noon on the 5th to correct the error and edit it into the stream presentation.
That same day, TC got into a fight with Oles, the topic of which is unknown. Afterwards, he cancelled the awards stream only a couple hours beforehand and posted the retirement thread seen above. Upon waking up, Dwyer was absolutely furious with both TC and Oles and cursed them out in GM chat. An impromptu awards show was held in a text post on the forums, complete with unused slide graphics from a stream derailed by what @Jiggly_333 called "unforeseen circumstances".
Further Reading: S11 DSFL Awards
HO had one season to spare before they lost their only simmer. Oles was the sole member of HO able to sim games, and he already had his hands full with the DSFL. The solution to this conundrum came as a similar sort of remedy to the HO intern: the simmer assistant. On December 16, HO hired three simmer applicants to an assistant role: @Sweetwater, @Keyg_an, and @AsylumParty. Ideally, at least one would learn the ropes of the job from timeconsumer on his way out and prove competent enough to take over his position full-time.
The situation was something of a mess. Timeconsumer was not particularly interested in mentoring his replacements. Keyg_an never did any work, and Asylum fizzled out from the position when he chose to focus on school. It became apparent very quickly that Sweet was the one to stick, in part because there was no other option. Either Sweet was going to be the simmer after Season 12, or the NSFL wasn't going to have a simmer altogether.
With the simmer position in flux, the season itself got underway. The reigning champion Second Line faced a serious decline as they entered into a rough rebuild. This created opportunity for the other three teams in their conference – the Otters, Outlaws, and Sabercats – who all had optimism for the season ahead. The former two teams especially were viewed as favorites for the title.
The first four games of the season then came as a shock. The Sabercats, who were 1-13 the previous season, started the new year with four straight victories, including one apiece against Orange County and Arizona. The latter team, on the other hand, was sitting dismally with a 1-3 record. Were the Outlaws simply unlucky and suffering from the suspension of Andrew Reese (yes) or were there darker forces at work?
This is where our main storyline came back into the spotlight. Kolbe believed that Arizona's unfavorable results on the field were undeniably linked to his ongoing feud with Oles. In a fiery thunderdome post, he looped SwagSloth's harsh punishment and the lack of punishment for Oles' supposed conspiracy against kolbe with the sim results, heavily implying that TC was rigging the games against Arizona for the benefit of HO.
Key Reading: How to Get Exciting Sim Results
In case his true target for scorn was unclear, kolbe immediately said the following in discord after posting the link to his thread:
Quote:Full disclosure: I don't think TC would cheat. However, as I said in my report on To, by not punishing him or removing him they allow doubt on EVERYTHING that happens in the league now
Although his intention was to cast reasonable doubt on all HO decisions, not just the sim results, multiple commenters flooded in to dispute that such rigging allegations were in any way reasonable. TC himself mocked the idea that he would kowtow to the whims of Oles; Dwyer sarcastically remarked that he obviously wanted the Outlaws to fail, given that he founded the team. @iseedoug, the GM of the Sabercats, found kolbe's claim ridiculous and touted the much-improved team and testing in San Jose as reasons for their undefeated start.
The conversation in the replies then pivoted into a fiery back-and-forth between kolbe and Oles, courtesy of the following discord posts shortly after kolbe's article had been linked there:
![[Image: ryiXLoy.png]](https://i.imgur.com/ryiXLoy.png)
After kolbe brought this up in the thread, Oles answered back that bovo did not build the sim file or put players into it. Therefore, he did not have the sort of day-to-day control over the file necessary for HO sponsored cheating, and he had clarified as such in the discord exchange. This was nonsense from kolbe's perspective. Since Oles didn't clarify until after @speculadora's response, it wasn't actually clarification at all. Oles was just trying to weasel away from another lie.
Further Reading: Cambridge Dictionary
But this went far beyond the immediate issue at hand. Oles and kolbe had one of the longest sustained back-and-forths I have ever seen in a forum thread. All the personal history, the enmities of an entire year, all came boiling to the surface so violently that the thread eventually had to be locked. No amount of quoting could do the exchange justice, and I highly encourage you read the thread for yourself.
Refocusing on the sim drama specifically, kolbe responded to iseedoug's comment by congratulating him for the hard work before implying that he knew "how low your chances were of beating us in ARI were." @Daybe was incredulous and wagered that San Jose had had better than even odds of victory in Arizona. Recent HO retiree and then-Arizona GM DeathOnReddit was counter-incredulous of Daybe's claim. After all, despite being 1-3, everyone knew Arizona was a much stronger team than San Jose. The Sabercats had just gotten lucky… right?
Wrong. Iseedoug revealed that the Sabercats were testing at a 57% win rate. Furthermore, manic posted a media article later that day independently investigating the SJS/ARI game using the sim file from week 2. Out of 200 simulations, manic tested San Jose as winning 104 of them. The matchup was essentially a coin flip and the actual result from the game corresponded well to the tested values manic received. He said:
Quote:The chances of HO tom foolery are essentially zero. In fact, I know with 100% certainty that slm himself (who is NOT a member of HO) oversaw the simming of week 2 (as he does most weeks) to ensure everything is on the up-and-up.
(On a side note, as someone who has done a ton of testing for this season, the sudden emergence of San Jose as a talent should surprise no one. They’re the real deal.)
Key Reading: What Really Should Have Happened in Arizona
Kolbe acknowledged that losing to San Jose wasn't unreasonable. What was unreasonable for him was the four weeks in their entirety, since surely a team as good as Arizona wouldn't lose three of those games (two at home). But as manic put it in a reply, and as anyone who has been in this league knows, "sometimes the sim just does whatever the hell it wants." Pinning a bad stretch on malicious abuse of power is irresponsible.
When kolbe pivoted again to attacking the lies and abuses of Oles as the real issue, the latter user stepped in to dispute him. Oles saw kolbe's endless accusations as defamation of character and based entirely on some misspoken moments. Kolbe in turn was infuriated by Oles acting blameless and refusing to accept any wrongdoing from this saga. @Symmetrik, presumably as sick of this endless argument as everyone else, cut right to the chase with this zinger:
Quote:can we just perma ban kolbe for fucks sakes he has to make every thread about his massive hate boner for TO like christ shut the fuck up
What safeguards did Head Office have in place to prevent a rogue simmer from rigging the results of games? Technically none, at least in writing. Because there were always murmurs of rigged games, HO had set up a semi-unofficial system where someone would watch TC as he simmed. Generally, this ended up being slm since his schedule aligned with TC's; slm watching TC sim week 2 was confirmed by both manic and slm himself in the thread above.
Sweet very quickly assumed the responsibility of simming and streaming games – potentially as early as week 3 – and the same sim-watching practice was extended to him. Hypothetically, anyone in HO who was online at the time could take the responsibility. In practice, it usually ended up being Oles and Muford. The three users, along with a few other users in the league, often stayed up deep into the night playing video games with each other. Whenever Sweet decided to sim, the other users would take a quick break while Oles and Muford watched him set the DCs and playbooks, sim and send the game files, and return to their games.
The problem was two-fold. First, all three of the users were on the Sabercats. Second, the success of San Jose this season was surprising to the league at large. Neither of these points are conclusive evidence of fraud – there was no rule requiring the simmer and watcher to be on different teams, and the Sabercats' results on the field were in line with their testing. But putting them together, and likely with some element of stubbornness around preconceptions of San Jose's strength, meant many GMs grew anxious of foul play.
Some members of Head Office, particularly bovo, felt the same way. He formed a secret group chat with Dwyer, Raven, and slm to discuss his suspicions that Oles, Muford, and Sweet were tampering with the sim. One faction of HO forming a group chat accusing the other of cheating would have been catastrophic for league health if it went public. In Dwyer's recounting, he wanted to get the chat removed to keep events civil, but when no one else left, he was afraid of being left in the dark should he leave the chat. At the same time, he attempted to maintain conversation with Oles and Muford and placate both sides to find a peaceful resolution.
Other perspectives are less kind to Dwyer. From the view of Oles and Muford, Dwyer tried to play coy about the existence of a secret chat dedicated to trashing them and Sweet relentlessly. In trying to play both sides from the middle, Dwyer only ended up worsening the divisions between them. It was around this same time that Dwyer was angling to get rid of both slm and Muford. The latter, who Dwyer called average at his job, avoided being fired because Dwyer feared that Oles and/or Sweet would step down in turn and essentially fold the league.
On January 17, 2019, HO added two new hires: Trautner, who had been interning for around a month at this point, and manic, the author of two unrelated articles from earlier points in this story and previously the Baltimore Hawks co-GM with slm. Both were added to the secret chat. To lend perspective to the climate of the league at the time, within a week manic felt demoralized and ready to quit the NSFL entirely because of how much abuse and disrespect HO received from the community.
Problems with the sim didn't cease either. On February 18, in the middle of Season 13, the Otters hosted the Outlaws at home and beat them handily, 27-12. But there was something strange about their lineup. Safety Jaylen Broxton, normally put at the LCB position, was left at both LCB and MLB, where Rickey Ramero usually played. Broxton played the game at linebacker, and in his place in the secondary the sim filled in Jonathan King, an inactive old cornerback who last played serious snaps in S10. A player who isn't on a team's DC can end up taking the field in rare game situations. But King played 74 snaps in the Arizona game. In 100 test sims conducted by TC, who was in the Orange County war room at the time, King saw 96 snaps across all of them, averaging less than one per game.
How did Broxton end up playing linebacker? No explanation was forthcoming. After the stream, Sweet posted the sim file with Ramero and Broxton at their correct positions. To the Otters GMs and others, this was a blatant attempt to cover up a pretty egregious mistake. @speculadora approached Dwyer to complain about the situation, and he was far from the only GM unhappy about the situation at hand. But given the fragility of the simmer position, there was very little anyone could actually do about it.
Within hours of GMs complaining to HO about the sim antics from the Otters-Outlaws match, they began to discuss ways to solve the problem by making the entire sim-watching process more official. These included mandating at least one watcher from a different team and changing the simming times to a more scheduled affair. Dwyer felt that the optics of the situation would look better if the process was fixed, even though he said in HO chat that he didn't believe the cheating accusations.
Oles, Muford, and Sweet were playing a game together when this conversation happened. Muford was incensed that HO was essentially calling Sweet a cheater without ever reaching out to him or talking through his side of the story. He told Sweet that HO was shit-talking him and planning to alter how the streams were done because they thought he was rigging games. Oles confirmed Muford's account. Livid, Sweet stormed into GM chat and tagged either Dwyer in particular or HO in general, saying that if they had something to say they should say it to his face.
Dwyer and the other members of Head Office asked Oles and Muford why they leaked the chat to a non-HO user, and they responded that Sweet should've been involved in the first place since he would be affected by their decision. In Dwyer's mind, this was a gross overreach. It wasn't HO's responsibility to include every single person impacted by their work, and it certainly wasn't the purview of either Oles or Muford to take such action unilaterally. Dwyer brought up the pair's previous outrage over the GM chat messages leaked to kolbe.
By now, the divisions within league management had grown nearly unbridgeable. Oles, Muford, and Sweet were still furious over how HO had tried to go behind Sweet's back to change the rules and accuse him in essence of rigging games. Many others, particularly bovo and slm, accused Oles and Muford of only being in HO for personal interests. Compounded both by the sim rigging controversy and the earlier affair with kolbe, relations between the users involved were practically venomous.
Kolbe was having his own issues with the sim. His player, Kevin Fitzpatrick, was input wrong into the sim in preseason and played at lower experience than he actually had. Despite the issue being reported in the preseason errors thread, Fitzpatrick played the first six games of the season with incorrect low experience.
On January 4, kolbe went to the NSFL general discord to plead his case. Muford brought up that QB Joliet Christ had had the same problem the season prior, and that experience didn't actually matter much for players outside of receiver and corner, especially not when the difference was only one EXP. Kolbe disagreed that Christ had not been impacted. He asked multiple times for sim testing to prove the impact it would've had on Arizona's first six games, despite users like TC and speculadora saying that testing ultimately wouldn't be able to prove anything with such a minute difference. They saw Arizona's woes as a simple case of sim luck; kolbe was ironclad in his paranoia that HO was covering up their meddling.
Meanwhile, Er began to write media articles styled after the old Sim God articles of TC. In his thunderdome post, kolbe had posted that TC's cessation of these articles after Season 11 was one more piece of evidence pointing to him rigging the sims. Er's articles are not very important in and of themselves, but kolbe posted a comment in one article from January 11 showing that he was very much still angry despite the reversal of Arizona's fortunes after the 1-3 start.
Quote:The fact that we had these all last year, had none while ARI was getting fucked, and now have them again when we are playing well does not help me suppress the reality creating itself in my mind.
A day later, kolbe posted a discussion post covering his frustrations with the experience issues. He showed the TANY/A splits of both Christ and Fitzpatrick before and after they had their experience fixed, the former rising from 2.59 to 3.8 and the latter rising from 4.95 to 5.82. Having been denied recompense through compensatory temporary experience, kolbe ended his post with this bleak statement, practically bleeding with bitterness and despair:
Quote:I don’t what else to say. If you read this, and you aren’t bothered at all, then I’ll never convince you.
Key Reading: Attempt at Closure
Kolbe's last gasp met a cold reception. There was no incoming punishment for Oles, no investigation or punishment concerning his missing experience, and no vindication among the community at large for what he saw as the widespread conspiracy of HO attacking him and his Outlaws. So on January 23 he cut the cord entirely. Kolbe was retiring and leaving the league.
Key Reading: It's Over
Part V: Crossing the Line
![[Image: ezgif-2-1e49b054a9.gif]](https://s8.gifyu.com/images/ezgif-2-1e49b054a9.gif)
Quote:And just today on the draft stream we talked about the lack of drama
*sip*
Quoted above in the kolbe punishment thread is none other than the infamous @
- Got busted in Season 2 for editing claim threads with his HO moderation powers and giving himself TPE that he didn't earn. He was banned from the site for two weeks, suspended one season, fined $10 million and 73 TPE, and banned from holding any league job until Season 8. Because of this punishment, all forum edits are now shown in the 'edited by' tagline.
- Writes an article in media upon returning. This isn't actually part of any scandal, but it is incredibly funny to read.
Further Reading: Noble Addresses Media
- Got busted in Season 4 for creating a multi under the username @'dustyatters'. With an independent investigation by @ItsJustBarry, slm, and kolbe forcing HO's hand, they presented a plethora of evidence indicating that the two users were almost certainly one and the same. For this punishment, Noble was banned from the league.
- Did not get busted in Season 6 for creating another multi under the username @Pens. While never confirmed as Noble, Pens had a matching IP address and was also from Noble's hometown of Saskatoon. Pens got embroiled in a moderation scandal where he edited 24 player page titles for minor formatting issues, after which he left the site and any Noble suspicions remained untouched.
Further Listening: NSFL 20 for 20: A Noble Pursuit
Flash forward to August 7, 2018. A new user named @
But the real story began a month later, on the 10th of September. In the league discord, Jiggly joked that he watched a Game Grumps episode that mentioned Saskatoon and immediately thought of Carson Shmyr, the user behind Noble. As he then launched into discussing a song he wrote about Noble, mckee broke the collective minds of the league with these comments:
![[Image: IpH0OxB.png]](https://i.imgur.com/IpH0OxB.png)
The story was that mckee (Nick) and Tinkler (Tristan, who joined on August 21) played SWAT with Noble, and that mckee played volleyball against Noble and dustyatters (Kyle, at least allegedly) but was on the same lacrosse team as them. When asked later how he found the league, mckee said that he was recruited from either r/NFLOffTopic or r/Madden and then Tinkler joined with him later.
But the Saskatchefun was only getting started. By September 26, mckee asked HO if it was alright to bring a number of his friends along to the league. He put the link to the league in their fantasy football group chat, posted a comment in the Same IP Thread, and eventually four of them in total joined mckee and Tinkler: @
That's actually only partially true. They also went by the name Cross C**ts.
Who were these lovely individuals?
Cross Boy #1: RB Antonio Summer, aka mckee, aka Nick.
Mckee was the first Cross Boy to join the league and by far the most active and involved. Summer hailed from Melfort & Unit Comprehensive Collegiate, a high school in Melfort, Saskatchewan, and went ninth overall in the S10 DSFL Draft to the Portland Pythons. A season later, he went fourth overall to the Yellowknife Wraiths and earned S11 Offensive Rookie of the Year before being traded to the Hawks. Mckee wrote many media pieces to earn money before last posting on December 23.
Cross Boy #2: S Ryan Cobalt, aka Tinkler, aka Tristan.
Tinkler joined the site August 21 by mckee's invitation. Ryan Cobalt, like all the remaining Cross Boy players, listed his alma mater as Holy Cross High School. He went at pick 25 to the San Antonio Marshals in S10 and pick 9 to the Liberty in S11. Tinkler also wrote media pieces, in which a common theme was a heated rivalry between himself and Summer. He last posted December 14.
Cross Boy #3: QB Luke Boechler, aka YoungGreekBoy, aka Bronson.
When mckee invited his friends in the group chat to join the league, YGB was the first to do so on September 26. Selected 29th and 21st overall by the Coyotes and Yeti, Boechler is less interesting for his player than for his media, which can be best be described as inspired in their vulgarity. In one of his articles, he describes himself and the rest of his posse as such:
Quote:My name's Bronson Boechler and I'm sixteen, I'm friends with a couple of other guys on here and I'm apart of the widely reknowned Cross Cunts groupchat that has been going strong on snapchat for about a month since I transferd to Holy Cross to be alongside my partners in crime. I'm the whitest white trash you've ever seen and I spend most of my time playing football.
Further Reading: Luke Boechler: DSFL Draft Rankings
YGB's last post was on January 4.
Cross Boy #4: K Eric LegStrong/DE Eric McStrong, aka Ricecake, aka Eric.
Ricecake also joined from the Cross Boys' fantasy football chat. LegStrong was taken 31st in the S11 DSFL Draft but retired before making it pro. His last post on the forum, the creation thread for Eric McStrong, was on November 3.
Cross Boy #5: DT Sam Garrad, aka SammyG, aka Sam.
SammyG joined pretty much simultaneously with Ricecake. He went at pick 16 to the Luchadores and pick 29 to the Yeti, and last posted on December 17.
Cross Boy #6: WR Krispy Kreme, aka Hoeforest, aka Ethan.
Hoeforest vacillated on joining the league for a few weeks but dove in on October 14, choosing as his player the mascot of Krispy Kreme. He landed at the 33rd and 44th overall selections in his respective drafts before leaving by December 17.
There were a number of things in common between the Cross Boys. Most of them incorporated their real names and backgrounds into their players. All of their players hailed from Saskatchewan, and all but one hailed from their real high school. None of them, save mckee somewhat, were particularly active or involved with the league. And almost all of them lost interest in the NSFL around late December or early January.
It was around this time that Noble once again appealed his ban. Ever since being found guilty of running the dustyatters multi, Noble had appealed to HO three times and was unsuccessful each attempt. This time around, he successfully got his suspension lifted under a number of conditions for his return and under the understanding that he would not repeat his previous mistakes. On November 12, Noble officially returned, creating a receiver in the S13 draft class named Lucius Kaine and writing a long letter to the community explaining his history and mistakes.
Key Reading: What's Changed?
Noble apologized for the harm he caused to the league and the community. He delved into how his youth and lack of maturity impacted his experiences in sim leagues and how his life spiraled downwards into struggles with drug abuse and mental health. Noble detailed how his life had completely shifted over the past year, battling his substance abuse and anxiety with a number of physical and creative outlets like lacrosse, volleyball, and music. Now, he just wanted to return as a quiet presence in the league and give back to the NSFL. He said:
Quote:I don't blame any of the above for why I did what I did, considering the events happened completely out of time chronologically with my ban, and likewise I don't blame my ban for any of the stuff that happened to me. Rather I found it befitting to say that in many ways this league helped me, and I can recognize it for what it is and appreciate the idea of a community now that I'm older, more mature, and moved out of the envelope that I had placed myself in.
Noble's comeback was greeted pretty warmly by the community. He got right to work writing a few new articles, including a player bio and a league newsletter, while Lucius Kaine got drafted fourth overall in both the S12 DSFL and S13 NSFL Drafts to the Pythons and Outlaws, respectively. In the league discord, Noble and mckee shared one interaction which appeared to corroborate mckee's claim that they know each other:
![[Image: BmyS3Qr.png]](https://i.imgur.com/BmyS3Qr.png)
But not everything was as wonderful as it seemed. Members of HO had been suspicious of the veracity of the Cross Boys ever since they joined the league en masse. And starting in January 2019, HO – in a joint effort with the head offices of NSHL and SHL – slowly began accumulating evidence that the multi jokes around the folks from Saskatoon might actually be true.
First was mckee's origin story. He claimed to have been recruited off of either r/NFLOffTopic or r/Madden. The latest r/Madden recruiting post at that point in time was from May 16, a whole three months before he joined; the only ever recruitment post on r/NFLOffTopic was from February 10. Despite these gaps in time, mckee registered his league account on August 7, only a few days after the Season 9 trade deadline and the perfect time to create a new player.
Second were the plethora of IP address matches between different members of the Cross Boys. Almost every post by one of the six users shared an IP with one or more of the others, and almost all of these were VPN addresses. Additionally, mckee once used IP addresses linked with Noble's home and the Saskatoon Board of Education. Remember that Noble did not go to the same high school as the rest of the Cross Boys, and that Holy Cross High is under the jurisdiction of Greater Saskatoon Catholic Schools, not Saskatoon Public Schools. Noble also shared a VPN IP address with SammyG and two VPN IPs with YGB, neither of whom he claimed to know like he did mckee and Tinkler.
Having uncovered the IP evidence, HO was convinced that the six Cross Boys were multis but were unconvinced that Noble was conclusively linked to mckee. On February 11, members of HO invited slm in their chat to assist with the investigation. Slm, taking inspiration from how Er's multis were busted by scouting messages, used his admin powers to look through the personal messages of the Cross Boy accounts. He found that all six users, plus Noble, all attached their username to the end of their trivia message headings, a format which no other user regularly used besides those seven.
For slm, this was the smoking gun. The joint investigation approached Noble with the evidence and asked for a possible explanation. His response was to call the potential impending punishment an attempt "to persecute me without sufficient unexplainable proof” and that this “feels more like a power trip… than an actual investigation.” Eggy216, the owner of the SHL, wanted to pursue one further matter, but the NSFL and NSHL went ahead and posted their punishments on February 14.
Key Reading: Noble Punishment
Key Reading: Noble Multi Punishment
Both posts detailed the litany of evidence surrounding the relevant multi users in each league. In the NSHL, Noble was banned from the forums for a month and suspended for a season of games. In the NSFL, where his history of wrongdoing was much longer, he was banned for life from the league.
But did they jump the gun? As the NSFL thread predictably filled up with users clowning on Noble and the ridiculousness of the entire situation, the joint investigation received social media evidence late in the night of February 14/15 that Noble and mckee were two separate people controlling two separate accounts. The SHL announced early the next morning that they would be taking no disciplinary action; the NSHL announced on the 16th that there was enough reasonable doubt to remove Noble's punishment.
Key Reading: SHL Statement on Supposed Multi Situation
Key Reading: Noble Appeal
A triumphant Noble crowed in the SHL thread that the NSFL and NSHL had rushed their decisions out and were now being shown as foolish since the proof was presented. Slm and the rest of the NSFL crew working on the case were not as convinced as their counterparts. In his appeal, Noble had vehemently denied knowing a few of the Cross Boys, including SammyG – one of the users with whom Noble had had a matching IP address. The IP addresses, the fact that these users all created when Noble was still banned and then all fizzled out when he returned, mckee's murky backstory, and most especially the Trivia message headers all pointed to links between Noble and the multis.
So on February 20, the appeals team posted a short announcement stating that Noble's ban would be unanimously upheld. Slm acknowledged that it was "possible" Noble and mckee were operated separately but that there was too much evidence to ignore. In his view, the other two leagues had made a mistake by reversing Noble's punishment.
Key Reading: Result of Noble Appeal
There was one major personality pushing back against the appeals team's decision: Jiggly. Jiggly had a history of defending Noble, even taking his side in the dustyatters multi case, and believed that since other leagues had acquitted Noble and found no evidence of wrongdoing then the NSFL's upholding was motivated by personal biases. He said:
Quote:Yes, I've gone to bat for him in the past and that time you also basically railroaded your way through to find what you believe is justice. Putting in mind your own personal search for Noble in everyone, you would have a predisposition to believe that all these people were multis. But in other leagues where they looked at the situation on its own merits, they found him not guilty. The fact that everyone has the same final decision except this league means there has to be some sort of disconnect and I believe that it's based in bias.
For most others in the thread, Jiggly's argument was unsound. His assertion that the NSHL and SHL had found no evidence was patently untrue; those leagues decided that there was enough reasonable doubt to overturn, a position the NSFL disagreed with. Slm disputed that the decision to uphold the punishment was biased. Considering Noble's history, particularly with creating multis, and considering the delicate conditions by which he had even been allowed to return to the NSFL in the first place, their decision was the best option for the health of the league. Slm also invited Jiggly to message him on discord and talk it over, which they did by the next day.
Perhaps the most succinct rationale of all came from @White Cornerback, who summed it up rather eloquently here:
Quote:play stupid games win stupid prizes
We've got a good 'ol case of crying wolf here
fuck em, noble's not worth the trouble he causes HO or the league. We got more pressing issues than some fucking idiot in the arsehole of Canada
Two lightning rods of controversy had now left the league in the past month, either departing of their own volition or being banned permanently. But even though HO had acted in unison during the Noble investigation, and even though kolbe was no longer around to instigate drama, the simmering divides between our remaining cast still remained. HO chat ruptured into fights on the daily.
At one point, after again being accused of wielding HO like a cudgel for his personal interests, Muford professed in HO chat that he was ready to quit. Dwyer reached out to him through DMs and begged Muford to stay, while in other private chats he trash-talked him and said that he was only pleading with Muford to save face. In his own conversations with Oles and Sweetwater, Muford confessed that he hated both Dwyer and HO and was on the verge of quitting.
He wasn't the first to pull the trigger. On March 9, bovo quit his position in Head Office. His announcement was sparse; he invited anyone interested in knowing his reasoning to send him a message and stated that he would stay on in the head updater role until he could find a replacement.
Key Reading: Bovo stepping down
In short, bovo was tired of Muford and Oles. After months and months of endless disagreements and personal issues, bovo could not put up with the situation any longer and quit HO before his lack of enjoyment encompassed the entire NSFL. Eventually, word of bovo's motivations spread through the grapevine back to Muford.
An infuriated Muford then confronted slm and bovo. Having always said that he wanted to be told when others took issue with his actions, Muford angrily asked why the pair had never confronted him directly about their problems with him. Then, without publicly posting a word on the forums, Muford left HO chat and his position despite a token attempt from Dwyer to convince him to stay. Just like that, one of the largest dramas in league history ended with a whimper. Most users never even knew it happened.
Conclusion: The Closing of the Frontier
With the league in tatters, a number of users in upper management – among them slm, manic, bovo, Bzerkap, and others – discussed possible actions to revitalize the league and see whether the NSFL was worth saving. Each of them agreed to tackle different areas of the league; for slm, he had the unenviable task of breathing new life into recruiting. Sometime after the S14 recruiting push had come and went, slm took over the mantle of recruitment head and fired all of the existing staff. Instead of putting out applications, he directly hired people who he thought would be good for the job: @NamelessNate, Trautner, manic, and @PDXBaller.
Then, a few days after the Noble appeal concluded, the recruitment team received word that they finally had permission to recruit on r/nfl. The league had tried and failed a number of times beforehand to gain access to the lucrative subreddit. Slm and the mods of r/nfl agreed after a long conversation that the NSFL could create recruitment posts no more frequently than two times a year. On March 4, posts in r/nfl, r/Texans, r/steelers, r/oaklandraiders, and r/bengals went online and everything changed.
Is there any greater meaning to this narrative? The stories of the Chicago Blues and Butchers are stories of failure, compounding and building on itself to the breaking point, and eventually of resilience and triumph. The Blues faded away; the Butchers held firm, weathered the storm of their origins, and even finally won an Ultimus. But this saga of personal bitterness and broken relationships has no easy beginning and no conclusive end. It was less a cause of the fragile, bleak NSFL of the time than it was a symptom. The league was experiencing a terrible winter of discontent. It is symbolically fitting that the reddit class of S15 came with spring on the horizon, new life for the league sprouting from the thawing of contentions. The ISFL is better off never turning back.
– – – – –
Thank you for reading. Special thanks for everyone who answered my questions over the past month and provided invaluable insights and details into the events of the article, with particular gratitude towards @iamslm22, @Muford, @Revolution5, and @speculadora.
– – – – –
Afterword: These Articles Better Get Double Pay, or Why I Love the ISFL
It is somewhat ironic that I must conclude this article about drama, turmoil, and emotional distress with 500 words on why I love this league. After all, I have put forth thousands upon thousands of words and untold hours of work detailing terrible and controversial periods of league history over three of my last four articles. At this point I'm practically a walking encyclopedia of buried scandals.
But in some ways, this was always a natural way to end it. I finished writing the bulk of this article weeks ago and sat on it waiting for double media to come around. The last section I wrote was the brief conclusion above, which wraps up months of drama with a ray of hope. Despite all of these controversies, the league did not die. It found new life and flourished. The ISFL presently is nearly unrecognizable from the NSFL of March 2019.
It's been over three years for me on this site – one of which was inactive, but that's beside the point – since I joined that March. I have met and interacted with so many incredible people. I have been in a lot of locker rooms, played a lot of Werewolf games, and watched a lot of games where my dot runs around on a field with other dots. I would not still be here if this community was not so pleasant to be in.
Sure, I like writing about the uglier parts of it. That's just what I find most interesting to write about. I love history, always have, and love researching and putting together essays. No place is perfect, including the ISFL, but the drama here has (mostly) never seriously affected my desire to stay. This is partly because I have (mostly) been privileged enough to avoid being embroiled in any serious drama. But it's also because the league as a whole has so much to offer.
The list of users who I'd like to thank is too encompassing to spell out in its entirety. But for an abridged version:
@timeconsumer, one of the most pleasant and wonderful people I've ever been in a locker room with. I will always regret that the S14 DSFL Draft has been lost to time, because I will never forget the effusive praise that TC spoke when he drafted me at fourth overall to the San Antonio Marshals.
@Duilio05, @terriblehippo, @Frick_Nasty, and @shadyshoelace, my friends from the Fabulous Five and, in shady's case, my teammate in Yellowknife as well. The Marshals locker room was fantastic.
@Bigred1580 and @Daybe, for GMing my first professional stint with the Yellowknife Wraiths and creating a great environment. I'm sorry I retired early.
@Hallmonitor_20, @TubbyTim69, @ADwyer87, @Raven, @TheRocheLimit, and @zaynzk, for being my GMs across three teams and two players. I might be forgetting someone in there, but my memory only goes back so far.
@iamslm22, @Dangles13, and countless others from the Werewolf servers. It is hard to believe that I first played in Game 10 of the original server and will soon play in Game 100 of the second.
All my teammates from San Antonio, Yellowknife, Portland, Philadelphia, Honolulu, Dallas, and New York, who are too numerous to acknowledge individually. I would shout out Norfolk too but I was there all of two-ish weeks and I don't remember a thing.
All my colleagues from the jobs I have worked, particularly the Player Progression Team. I think I did a reasonably good job as head for a few seasons and I loved the crew I had with me.
My final and most important dedication goes to @jimmyGOAT10. Through him, all things are possible.
It should be noted for the media grader who does this article that both sections count as one article and deserve the 2x bonus. Were it not for the forum character limit, they would not have been released separately.
RE: A Winter of Discontent II - JuOSu - 08-06-2022
Give this man x3 bonus and not just x2. Incredible article!
RE: A Winter of Discontent II - zaynzk - 08-07-2022
x8 bonus tbh
RE: A Winter of Discontent II - 124715 - 08-07-2022
incredible article! your ability to make old drama from years ago so compelling is special and it's remarkable that you weren't even in the league when this went down yet you still made the story so detailed. x100 bonus imo
RE: A Winter of Discontent II - Raven - 08-07-2022
Amazingly well written article, absolutely capturing these events.
Wish I could have helped you out when you reached out, but I really could not have recalled any of this. Even reading the parts that have me included feels like reading a new story lol.
Stay amazing and keep writting amazing stuff.
x200 bonus honestly
RE: A Winter of Discontent II - Air Crou - 08-07-2022
Pretty sure I will never remember your players and where you played, but I will always remember these articles. Good thing my name will never pop up in any of these kek.
RE: A Winter of Discontent II - Swanty - 08-07-2022
What an awesome read. If you're not a professional writer, you definitely could be. 500x bonus I reckon
RE: *A Winter of Discontent II - WildfireMicro - 08-07-2022
1000× bonus Holy shit this was a fantastic read
RE: *A Winter of Discontent II - Opera_Phantom - 08-07-2022
Incredible article once more
RE: *A Winter of Discontent II - manicmav36 - 08-07-2022
As current league owner, I officially declare this the best article in the history of the league.