Well, the rules results are out and so here I am, your GM of the Year to give you my reactions to the rules that have been passed and the ones that failed as well. For those of you who may not know, I've been involved in making rules in one capacity or another for most of the league's history. I've made this a mostly seasonal tradition since S5 to give my thoughts on these. Now for those of you who are new, that GM of the Year thing is true. Despite having recently stepped down as Austin's GM, I am the current and reigning GM of the Year. I'm also..well...you'll see. Let's get to the rules, starting with DSFL.
Passed: 12/12
1) Any player who creates after the first pick of the DSFL offline draft is immediately sent to waivers and cannot be drafted to the DSFL.
I see the logic. The downside is that it could get sticky if someone actually created 5 minutes after the first pick, which happens behind the scenes many days before it's actually aired. But that's fairly minor. As long as there is a concerted effort to make sure the affected players know this information, it should be good.
Failed: 6/12
2) If a Team Wins The Ultimus/Ultimini The Teams GM/Co-GM Also get a Trophy on their Forum Profile for the Win.
Reason being that the GM/Co-GM do as much work to help the team win as the players and that should be shown.
Super reasonable. They're not always gonna have players on the team while their NSFL counterparts generally always will. This should basically be a slam dunk and the vote indicates that it was. Great way to start the summit results. A simple home run of a rule. Oh. It didn't pass? What? I got things mixed up at first and thought this passed. Why? This should've been easy gang. You got this wrong. Do it again.
Passed: 12/12
3) Players that are determined to be inactive (According to the NSFL Rulebook definition) by the end of the regular season cannot be nominated for awards, regardless of stats, unless there is not enough active players at a position to fill nominations.
No inactive award winners. it's a rule in NSFL more or less so it makes sense to be in DSFL as well. Though I do like the wording because it can be read as though the player in question is trying to be inactive. "That sonofabitch is just DETERMINED to be inactive". Like people are trying to catch them and make them do a PT and they climb out a window at the last minute.
Failed: 6/12
4) Limit strat changes to once a week (Sunday nights, for example). Depth chart changes will still be allowed an unlimited amount, and teams are allowed to change strats as much as they want for the playoffs.
........I'll go into this later when it comes up in the NSFL rules proposals. In the meantime, the DSFL had some thoughts on their own setup there and I can't say I dislike either rule that got passed. But rule #2 should've clearly passed.
Passed: 12/15
1) Admendment to Rule II.E.5. "If an upcoming free agent becomes inactive during the off-season free agency period, the player’s team has 24 hours to sign them to an inactive contract. If the team decides not to sign them, that player becomes an inactive free agent. " to include any IA players that a team uses TO. The team may resign the IA within 24 hours without using bidding process.
I would still prefer that team IAs are re-signed in the 2 days before the Ultimus. But this is a pretty decent rule and I can't hate it. It does also allow a team to sign a free agent quickly and move on from an IA if they so choose. I'd still prefer to flip that IA for value if possible but I guess you have the option of moving either way so that's cool. Not bad.
Passed: 15/15
2) Kickers who position switch can move 75% of their TPE like the OL rule that is already in place.
Yeah. This works. Kicker is a position that required a special person. When you find out that you're not that special person I don't mind giving you that extra boost. Or more succinctly, its more apt to make you try it out to start with. And that's a good thing.
Failed: 5/15
3) Create a Flex Back of the Year Award for players listed as an FB in the sim
I wouldn't call it flex back but a flex player would be fine. I'd want it to allow for TEs who also play WR or whatever. Voters didn't like it I guess but oh well. Its not a necessity so much as a nice thing you could have. So 'm pretty ambivalent here.
Failed: 6/15
4) Expand team cap space to the 90-100 million dollar range to deal with rising equipment prices and an influx of players joining the league.
This’ll help make worse teams invest in better players and higher OL bots, and it also encourages players to experience Free Agency.
Well, no. It doesn't really help them as most free agents aren't really gonna just chase the money unless they're already deep in regression and looking to the next recreate. Working on that one though, kids. There's probably a time for the increased salary cap but it ain't quite there yet. See me circa S26/27.
Passed: 11/15
5) Teams are no longer allowed to "pass" on their picks. They must either be traded away, or a pick must be made.
There is no cost to a team signing someone to a DSFL contract. As a league that prides itself on the fact that everyone gets drafted, it looks bad when half the teams are passing on their picks before the draft is over.
Somebody was tempted to call this the AdamS Rule. I know they were. And that's fair. It's hilarious that it didn't come up til now though. I probably would've voted in favor. Well..okay..I would have complained that the writing leaves it open ended and sort of creates a paradox where the draft technically never ends. The stuff that led to this rule (again..mostly me) was described as "selfish behavior". Fair. I mostly just didn't like dealing with it. Then again I'm also not the originator of this, as that honor belongs to Bovo. I did however pioneer just trading the rest of my draft picks which is the solution they provide so you're welcome for that. That selfish behavior thing is gonna be important later though. It's called foreshadowing.
Failed: 2/15
6) Contracts can have a signing bonus structure that allows the team to pay out the entirety of the signing bonus in the season the contract is signed but tolls the cap hit prorated over the length of the contract.
For example: a 3 year contract signed for 15M with a 3M signing bonus would pay 7M in year 1, 4M in year 2, and 4M in year 3, but would cost 5M each year in cap space.
A signing bonus cannot make up more than 50% of the total contract value.
To be honest I kinda like this. We've had several potential ideas over the many season that were some version of allowing contracts or parts of contracts to be sort of mixed around in terms of when you pay people. But the ability to pay big chunks of expensive contracts during seasons when you have some free cap? that's pretty nice. It's a useful strategic tool for a wily GM who has financial skills. That person wasn't me but hey..I can see how this could potentially come in handy. It seems no one else really saw that. Or they saw it and decided that they personally weren't gonna be able to use it so they made so no one else could. Either way, I think this a good idea.
Passed: 14/15
7) Add Hall of Fame and MVP badges to player profiles (in the same way we have them for Ultimus and Ultimini champions already)
Who doesn't want to flex? This is a no brainer. A big part of what we do is about flexing. And I would know, as GM of the Year.
Passed: 12/15
8) Allow equipment TPE to be banked.
Now that equipment TPE is functionally the same as any other TPE, it should be treated as such. It doesn't make sense that 30 TPE of PTs can be banked, but 30 TPE of equipment can't. Additionally, it penalizes capped players (but only at some positions) by forcing them to pay the cost that was increased to cover redistribution, then making them pay to redistribute anyway. QB, CB, and WR will almost never have this issue since they have need many more TPE to cap, but S, TE, and DL cap ~300 TPE earlier.
Forgive me of my snarkiness. It took two seasons to pass the same rule. I wrote the original rule and it was LITERALLY written SPECIFICALLY to make sure that equipment TPE could be banked. After it was passed, a member of HO pushed the rest to change it and then when it was pointed out that I literally write the rule specifically to make sure of this exact thing, it was called a "minor tweak". It wasn't an honest assessment then and a rule summit rule had to be wasted now to get the rule back to how it was actually written and passed to start with. I'm hoping that the current HO takes things like this into consideration and learns from this. And I want to make sure people fully understand here. The rule was written specifically to allow banking TPE. Go read the wording. I literally brainstormed it with another member of HO for that reason and to include a higher pricing It was discussed that way. I know because I did that. It was passed that way. It was announced as specifically being more expensive to cover the fact that you wouldn't need to redistribute TPE anymore. This shouldn't have happened this way. But...we finally got it right.
Failed: 10/15
9) Players may extend their contracts after the trade deadline in the final year of their current contract. A player may NOT extend their contract at any other point.
Gets players paid more on extensions and gets rid of loopholes allowing teams to sign a one-year deal then an immediate 3 year extension at current TPE.
This one was so close. One vote separated this from becoming a rule. The main thrust of this is to force teams to re-sign players after the trade deadline when they have more TPE on the theory that sometimes the contract will have higher minimums. It's one of many attempts to make contracts bigger and thus force teams to make more decisions and push some bigger players out into the free agent market. The GMs who try to get people signed longterm as quickly as possible (aka: me) are the ones who would suffer here. I was mildly in favor of this rule (and actually wanted to add a dynamic where people could be legally tampered at that point). It's a decent rule. I would have voted in favor. I can see this rule coming back in the future if we don't improve how salaries work affecting the budget.
Failed: 7/15
10) Limit strat changes to once a week (Sunday nights, for example). Depth chart changes will still be allowed an unlimited amount, and teams are allowed to change strats as much as they want for the playoffs.
This is meant solely as a time/stress saver for GMs. Ask any GM that has tested for more than a couple seasons and most (if not all) will admit they hate it. It's time they would far rather spend doing something else, but most continue to do it because the know others are as well and don't want to feel like they're putting their team at a disadvantage. Furthermore, the benefits testing for each in-game week provides are usually minimal, as referenced by Austin this season who, despite only changing their strats twice over the entire season, still won the Ultimus.
Ok. This is where you take a quick break and come back. This one's gonna be a bit of a thing. A journey. But first let's talk about this suggestion. Then we'll get to the paragraph of reasoning, and then I'll talk about the history and what this means to me. Some of you may have seen me talk about this on discord but for everyone else, let's break this down.
The stated reasoning for this is that it will limit testing. The stated reasoning is that GMs hate testing and do it because they feel their team will be disadvantaged if they don't.
The difference between the stated reasoning and horseshit is that horseshit can be used productively as fertilizer and none of this is good for anything. The reasons for this are absolutely, utterly false. GMs who test will still test. It will not change a single iota of actual testing. The only thing it will change is which game they choose to use their strats to affect based on that testing. Because for the GMs how test extensively it doesn't change anything. These are people trying to find the absolute peak strategic plan. Limiting when they can use the results isn't an idea that will stop the testing from happening. Full stop. Meanwhile, quite a few GMs barely test or don't at all. The idea that there's this unbearable pressure to test sim is just not a thing. The last time Austin tested was to inform a free agent what their stats could look like for us. After I already spitballed the numbers for them (which we on the slight low-end of what testing said afterwards). I never felt pressured to test. I spoke to many GMs who weren't pressured to test. The idea that GMs are super pressured to test is a bygone relic of a forgotten age.
The rule would not actually accomplish what it claims it would. Full stop again. It would not. What it would do is screw over weaker teams. The strength of testing is for a weaker team to have the ability to throw a specific strategy at a team stronger than you and potentially steal a win. Limiting how often a team can put in their strats really only ever favors strong teams who don't need to change much. Because largely they're just putting in their best strat and keeping it that way because everyone is playing to them. They don't have to play to anyone else. This rule would basically mean nothing to the top 2-3 teams for the most part. It would however be devastating to teams who are building up and trying to grab wins. It would also (again) NOT STOP TESTING IN ANY FUCKING WAY WHATSOEVER. The only thing it accomplishes is forcing stronger strategists to pick a game to win. And allows weaker ones to avoid being outthought.
Finally (in terms of the actual rule parts) this proposal is an old broken relic. Ever since the fast click setups came on the scene, testing is exponentially easier and faster than it used to be. It's exponentially easier than it used to be. One person can currently take an hour and do what 4 or 5 people used to do in the same time. Its now easy enough that instead of one person (maybe) in a locker room being able to do it, several can with relative ease. The problem that this proposal was originally claimed that it was intended for almost doesn't even exist anymore.
No part of this proposal is necessary. No part of it solves the problem its for. The problem almost doesn't exist anymore. This proposal is useless. Now...that's the proposal itself. But this goes deeper than that. That requires a bit of history for those who may not know. First, this is not the first time this has been proposed. This is not even the second time. I've actually lost count. I can't recall if it's made it to this level, but its been pushed hard multiple times. And multiple times I've been the loudest voice in the room squashing it. Make no mistake..if you've never seen this on an actual summit, I'm the reason. I have argued vehemently against this fuckery more times than I can count. I am quite clearly THE voice against this rule.
So...the fact that it was suddenly proposed again the minute I was out of the room? Yeah. That doesn't feel like a coincidence. Not sure? Well...read that explanation. notice how it specifically mentions me? For the new folks..let me help you here. I have been Austin's strat person for the entire history. It's extremely well known. Joe talks about it frequently. I've talked about ti frequently. It's been on podcasts. It's been in convos. It's been joked about in GM chat and public chat alike. It is a fact so well known that if you had a drinking game for how often it was brought up you'd die of alcohol poisoning. This next week will be the first time that the strat is touched by someone that isn't me, and that will be people taught by and influenced by me. So when the example specifically mentions Austin? That's me. And whoever wrote it knew that. This was a specific shot. Still not sure? Well, then lets wrap this up. The claim that Austin only changed strats twice? It's utter dishonesty. It's simply not true. I changed our playcall at least that many times and changed our depth chart easily more than that. Also I had a good enough team that I faked our playcalls for part of the season to throw off testing by other potential playoff teams. The basis of my strats as an example is simply bullshit. It's not a fact. Also its obvious that by "change their strats" they meant playcalls and percentages. The depth chart changes weren't even looked at. So even if you give this rule and person the benefit of the doubt somehow that they weren't taking a shot at me, they still didn't know what the fuck they were talking about.
I don't want to know who wrote it this time. Or who was duped into writing it. Or if they through some miracle didn't know what they were doing. I'd simply rather not know the excuses. The rule is bad. The rule doesn't accomplish what it claims it does. The rule should be buried beneath the pile of Noble multis and never see the light of day ever again. And let me go a step further here. Agsain..as an Ultmus winning expansion GM who is now GM of the Year. I'm throwing my credentials behind this one. When my contract ends, if I decide to become a free agent I'm going to ask every GM who contacts me about this rule. If a GM supports this I will never play for them because that's a quick way to being on a team that will never achieve its best. Any GM who supports this is going to waste their talent. And I won't play for them. So take that for whatever its worth.
On that note, I'm out form this season's summit. The rules that got passed were solid to great. Some that were proposed were not that. There you go.
Passed: 12/12
1) Any player who creates after the first pick of the DSFL offline draft is immediately sent to waivers and cannot be drafted to the DSFL.
I see the logic. The downside is that it could get sticky if someone actually created 5 minutes after the first pick, which happens behind the scenes many days before it's actually aired. But that's fairly minor. As long as there is a concerted effort to make sure the affected players know this information, it should be good.
Failed: 6/12
2) If a Team Wins The Ultimus/Ultimini The Teams GM/Co-GM Also get a Trophy on their Forum Profile for the Win.
Reason being that the GM/Co-GM do as much work to help the team win as the players and that should be shown.
Super reasonable. They're not always gonna have players on the team while their NSFL counterparts generally always will. This should basically be a slam dunk and the vote indicates that it was. Great way to start the summit results. A simple home run of a rule. Oh. It didn't pass? What? I got things mixed up at first and thought this passed. Why? This should've been easy gang. You got this wrong. Do it again.
Passed: 12/12
3) Players that are determined to be inactive (According to the NSFL Rulebook definition) by the end of the regular season cannot be nominated for awards, regardless of stats, unless there is not enough active players at a position to fill nominations.
No inactive award winners. it's a rule in NSFL more or less so it makes sense to be in DSFL as well. Though I do like the wording because it can be read as though the player in question is trying to be inactive. "That sonofabitch is just DETERMINED to be inactive". Like people are trying to catch them and make them do a PT and they climb out a window at the last minute.
Failed: 6/12
4) Limit strat changes to once a week (Sunday nights, for example). Depth chart changes will still be allowed an unlimited amount, and teams are allowed to change strats as much as they want for the playoffs.
........I'll go into this later when it comes up in the NSFL rules proposals. In the meantime, the DSFL had some thoughts on their own setup there and I can't say I dislike either rule that got passed. But rule #2 should've clearly passed.
Passed: 12/15
1) Admendment to Rule II.E.5. "If an upcoming free agent becomes inactive during the off-season free agency period, the player’s team has 24 hours to sign them to an inactive contract. If the team decides not to sign them, that player becomes an inactive free agent. " to include any IA players that a team uses TO. The team may resign the IA within 24 hours without using bidding process.
I would still prefer that team IAs are re-signed in the 2 days before the Ultimus. But this is a pretty decent rule and I can't hate it. It does also allow a team to sign a free agent quickly and move on from an IA if they so choose. I'd still prefer to flip that IA for value if possible but I guess you have the option of moving either way so that's cool. Not bad.
Passed: 15/15
2) Kickers who position switch can move 75% of their TPE like the OL rule that is already in place.
Yeah. This works. Kicker is a position that required a special person. When you find out that you're not that special person I don't mind giving you that extra boost. Or more succinctly, its more apt to make you try it out to start with. And that's a good thing.
Failed: 5/15
3) Create a Flex Back of the Year Award for players listed as an FB in the sim
I wouldn't call it flex back but a flex player would be fine. I'd want it to allow for TEs who also play WR or whatever. Voters didn't like it I guess but oh well. Its not a necessity so much as a nice thing you could have. So 'm pretty ambivalent here.
Failed: 6/15
4) Expand team cap space to the 90-100 million dollar range to deal with rising equipment prices and an influx of players joining the league.
This’ll help make worse teams invest in better players and higher OL bots, and it also encourages players to experience Free Agency.
Well, no. It doesn't really help them as most free agents aren't really gonna just chase the money unless they're already deep in regression and looking to the next recreate. Working on that one though, kids. There's probably a time for the increased salary cap but it ain't quite there yet. See me circa S26/27.
Passed: 11/15
5) Teams are no longer allowed to "pass" on their picks. They must either be traded away, or a pick must be made.
There is no cost to a team signing someone to a DSFL contract. As a league that prides itself on the fact that everyone gets drafted, it looks bad when half the teams are passing on their picks before the draft is over.
Somebody was tempted to call this the AdamS Rule. I know they were. And that's fair. It's hilarious that it didn't come up til now though. I probably would've voted in favor. Well..okay..I would have complained that the writing leaves it open ended and sort of creates a paradox where the draft technically never ends. The stuff that led to this rule (again..mostly me) was described as "selfish behavior". Fair. I mostly just didn't like dealing with it. Then again I'm also not the originator of this, as that honor belongs to Bovo. I did however pioneer just trading the rest of my draft picks which is the solution they provide so you're welcome for that. That selfish behavior thing is gonna be important later though. It's called foreshadowing.
Failed: 2/15
6) Contracts can have a signing bonus structure that allows the team to pay out the entirety of the signing bonus in the season the contract is signed but tolls the cap hit prorated over the length of the contract.
For example: a 3 year contract signed for 15M with a 3M signing bonus would pay 7M in year 1, 4M in year 2, and 4M in year 3, but would cost 5M each year in cap space.
A signing bonus cannot make up more than 50% of the total contract value.
To be honest I kinda like this. We've had several potential ideas over the many season that were some version of allowing contracts or parts of contracts to be sort of mixed around in terms of when you pay people. But the ability to pay big chunks of expensive contracts during seasons when you have some free cap? that's pretty nice. It's a useful strategic tool for a wily GM who has financial skills. That person wasn't me but hey..I can see how this could potentially come in handy. It seems no one else really saw that. Or they saw it and decided that they personally weren't gonna be able to use it so they made so no one else could. Either way, I think this a good idea.
Passed: 14/15
7) Add Hall of Fame and MVP badges to player profiles (in the same way we have them for Ultimus and Ultimini champions already)
Who doesn't want to flex? This is a no brainer. A big part of what we do is about flexing. And I would know, as GM of the Year.
Passed: 12/15
8) Allow equipment TPE to be banked.
Now that equipment TPE is functionally the same as any other TPE, it should be treated as such. It doesn't make sense that 30 TPE of PTs can be banked, but 30 TPE of equipment can't. Additionally, it penalizes capped players (but only at some positions) by forcing them to pay the cost that was increased to cover redistribution, then making them pay to redistribute anyway. QB, CB, and WR will almost never have this issue since they have need many more TPE to cap, but S, TE, and DL cap ~300 TPE earlier.
Forgive me of my snarkiness. It took two seasons to pass the same rule. I wrote the original rule and it was LITERALLY written SPECIFICALLY to make sure that equipment TPE could be banked. After it was passed, a member of HO pushed the rest to change it and then when it was pointed out that I literally write the rule specifically to make sure of this exact thing, it was called a "minor tweak". It wasn't an honest assessment then and a rule summit rule had to be wasted now to get the rule back to how it was actually written and passed to start with. I'm hoping that the current HO takes things like this into consideration and learns from this. And I want to make sure people fully understand here. The rule was written specifically to allow banking TPE. Go read the wording. I literally brainstormed it with another member of HO for that reason and to include a higher pricing It was discussed that way. I know because I did that. It was passed that way. It was announced as specifically being more expensive to cover the fact that you wouldn't need to redistribute TPE anymore. This shouldn't have happened this way. But...we finally got it right.
Failed: 10/15
9) Players may extend their contracts after the trade deadline in the final year of their current contract. A player may NOT extend their contract at any other point.
Gets players paid more on extensions and gets rid of loopholes allowing teams to sign a one-year deal then an immediate 3 year extension at current TPE.
This one was so close. One vote separated this from becoming a rule. The main thrust of this is to force teams to re-sign players after the trade deadline when they have more TPE on the theory that sometimes the contract will have higher minimums. It's one of many attempts to make contracts bigger and thus force teams to make more decisions and push some bigger players out into the free agent market. The GMs who try to get people signed longterm as quickly as possible (aka: me) are the ones who would suffer here. I was mildly in favor of this rule (and actually wanted to add a dynamic where people could be legally tampered at that point). It's a decent rule. I would have voted in favor. I can see this rule coming back in the future if we don't improve how salaries work affecting the budget.
Failed: 7/15
10) Limit strat changes to once a week (Sunday nights, for example). Depth chart changes will still be allowed an unlimited amount, and teams are allowed to change strats as much as they want for the playoffs.
This is meant solely as a time/stress saver for GMs. Ask any GM that has tested for more than a couple seasons and most (if not all) will admit they hate it. It's time they would far rather spend doing something else, but most continue to do it because the know others are as well and don't want to feel like they're putting their team at a disadvantage. Furthermore, the benefits testing for each in-game week provides are usually minimal, as referenced by Austin this season who, despite only changing their strats twice over the entire season, still won the Ultimus.
Ok. This is where you take a quick break and come back. This one's gonna be a bit of a thing. A journey. But first let's talk about this suggestion. Then we'll get to the paragraph of reasoning, and then I'll talk about the history and what this means to me. Some of you may have seen me talk about this on discord but for everyone else, let's break this down.
The stated reasoning for this is that it will limit testing. The stated reasoning is that GMs hate testing and do it because they feel their team will be disadvantaged if they don't.
The difference between the stated reasoning and horseshit is that horseshit can be used productively as fertilizer and none of this is good for anything. The reasons for this are absolutely, utterly false. GMs who test will still test. It will not change a single iota of actual testing. The only thing it will change is which game they choose to use their strats to affect based on that testing. Because for the GMs how test extensively it doesn't change anything. These are people trying to find the absolute peak strategic plan. Limiting when they can use the results isn't an idea that will stop the testing from happening. Full stop. Meanwhile, quite a few GMs barely test or don't at all. The idea that there's this unbearable pressure to test sim is just not a thing. The last time Austin tested was to inform a free agent what their stats could look like for us. After I already spitballed the numbers for them (which we on the slight low-end of what testing said afterwards). I never felt pressured to test. I spoke to many GMs who weren't pressured to test. The idea that GMs are super pressured to test is a bygone relic of a forgotten age.
The rule would not actually accomplish what it claims it would. Full stop again. It would not. What it would do is screw over weaker teams. The strength of testing is for a weaker team to have the ability to throw a specific strategy at a team stronger than you and potentially steal a win. Limiting how often a team can put in their strats really only ever favors strong teams who don't need to change much. Because largely they're just putting in their best strat and keeping it that way because everyone is playing to them. They don't have to play to anyone else. This rule would basically mean nothing to the top 2-3 teams for the most part. It would however be devastating to teams who are building up and trying to grab wins. It would also (again) NOT STOP TESTING IN ANY FUCKING WAY WHATSOEVER. The only thing it accomplishes is forcing stronger strategists to pick a game to win. And allows weaker ones to avoid being outthought.
Finally (in terms of the actual rule parts) this proposal is an old broken relic. Ever since the fast click setups came on the scene, testing is exponentially easier and faster than it used to be. It's exponentially easier than it used to be. One person can currently take an hour and do what 4 or 5 people used to do in the same time. Its now easy enough that instead of one person (maybe) in a locker room being able to do it, several can with relative ease. The problem that this proposal was originally claimed that it was intended for almost doesn't even exist anymore.
No part of this proposal is necessary. No part of it solves the problem its for. The problem almost doesn't exist anymore. This proposal is useless. Now...that's the proposal itself. But this goes deeper than that. That requires a bit of history for those who may not know. First, this is not the first time this has been proposed. This is not even the second time. I've actually lost count. I can't recall if it's made it to this level, but its been pushed hard multiple times. And multiple times I've been the loudest voice in the room squashing it. Make no mistake..if you've never seen this on an actual summit, I'm the reason. I have argued vehemently against this fuckery more times than I can count. I am quite clearly THE voice against this rule.
So...the fact that it was suddenly proposed again the minute I was out of the room? Yeah. That doesn't feel like a coincidence. Not sure? Well...read that explanation. notice how it specifically mentions me? For the new folks..let me help you here. I have been Austin's strat person for the entire history. It's extremely well known. Joe talks about it frequently. I've talked about ti frequently. It's been on podcasts. It's been in convos. It's been joked about in GM chat and public chat alike. It is a fact so well known that if you had a drinking game for how often it was brought up you'd die of alcohol poisoning. This next week will be the first time that the strat is touched by someone that isn't me, and that will be people taught by and influenced by me. So when the example specifically mentions Austin? That's me. And whoever wrote it knew that. This was a specific shot. Still not sure? Well, then lets wrap this up. The claim that Austin only changed strats twice? It's utter dishonesty. It's simply not true. I changed our playcall at least that many times and changed our depth chart easily more than that. Also I had a good enough team that I faked our playcalls for part of the season to throw off testing by other potential playoff teams. The basis of my strats as an example is simply bullshit. It's not a fact. Also its obvious that by "change their strats" they meant playcalls and percentages. The depth chart changes weren't even looked at. So even if you give this rule and person the benefit of the doubt somehow that they weren't taking a shot at me, they still didn't know what the fuck they were talking about.
I don't want to know who wrote it this time. Or who was duped into writing it. Or if they through some miracle didn't know what they were doing. I'd simply rather not know the excuses. The rule is bad. The rule doesn't accomplish what it claims it does. The rule should be buried beneath the pile of Noble multis and never see the light of day ever again. And let me go a step further here. Agsain..as an Ultmus winning expansion GM who is now GM of the Year. I'm throwing my credentials behind this one. When my contract ends, if I decide to become a free agent I'm going to ask every GM who contacts me about this rule. If a GM supports this I will never play for them because that's a quick way to being on a team that will never achieve its best. Any GM who supports this is going to waste their talent. And I won't play for them. So take that for whatever its worth.
On that note, I'm out form this season's summit. The rules that got passed were solid to great. Some that were proposed were not that. There you go.