03-12-2024, 05:08 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-19-2024, 12:19 PM by wetwilleh. Edited 2 times in total.)
Volume I | Volume II
°
.
.
PHASE II: ENTERING THE UMBRAL
The storm that engulfed the NSFL in the fall of 2017 is inseparably intertwined with the fates of the league's best team and the league's worst. The latter distinction belonged to the Legion.
After the success of a league recruitment drive, Head Office confirmed on June 27, 2017, that the NSFL would expand from six teams to eight. GM applications opened up immediately afterwards; by July 5, the pool had been narrowed to HO's chosen two. The NSFC slot went to @adam2552 and became the Philadelphia Liberty, while the ASFC slot went to Yellowknife co-GM @RavensFanFromOntario. Based on a suggestion by @DELIRIVM, logo artwork by @enigmatic, and a personal fondness for alliteration, RFFO branded his team the Las Vegas Legion.
With Anti-Hype picked in short succession as RFFO's co-GM, the Legion stared down the challenge of building a team from scratch over the offseason. They would be able to select twelve players from other teams in the S2 Expansion Draft and possessed one of the top two picks in each round of the S2 Draft. What they would not be able to do was compete for championships immediately. In a post-hire presser, RFFO asserted that they would take the best players available from the expansion pool and then fill in the gaps through the main draft and free agency to build up over the next few seasons.
Quote:The key to building a winning roster is definitely building a winning culture. This is the reason I'm not a fan of complete rebuilds. It almost always ends up poorly unless you get a generational talent and in football that just isn't enough.
If RFFO and Anti-Hype truly believed in the slow build-up, they had a funny way of expressing it. By the time the expansion draft kicked off, the Legion had made a staggering seven trades with other teams. They traded an S2 fifth to Baltimore for tight end Gabriel Tenzini (@princekyle) and a third in the same draft to the Hawks two days later for cornerback Matthew Peterson (@Peterson). A trio of trades with San Jose cost them a sixth, seventh, eighth, S3 seventh, and conditional sixth rounder for receiver RRFO Mademe (@Storm), offensive lineman Tim Tebow (@.wahala.), and the rights to sign running back Vick Bowers Jr. (@Bengals1Fan), although the sixth never traded hands once Bowers Jr. went to Orange County instead.
The real early shock came from a trade so massive that its ramifications would echo through the league for years. Las Vegas traded with Yellowknife to nab offensive lineman D'Brickashaw Ferguson (@mjdharder), linebacker Sinjin Flimjollywop (@Dinklburger01), receiver Alexandre LeClair (@Zoone16), and defensive tackle Mark Ramrio (Anti-Hype) – plus an S2 sixth round pick – for the cost of their first, second, and fourth rounders in the S2 Draft, an S3 second, and future considerations. Three days later, they bought wide receiver Stormblessed (@Stormblessed), linebacker Brady Stropko (@Bushito), and safety Isaiah Rashad (@Destroyer) from Arizona for the price of their firsts in the S3 and S4 Drafts and an S4 third.
Would the Legion even need to show up to the draft? The speed at which they were dealing away picks for established players astonished the community left and right. Maybe RFFO just didn't feel like scouting. They certainly far outstripped their expansion comrades in Philadelphia, who were making hardly any moves in comparison and viewed Las Vegas' fast pace as just a bit dirty.
Quote:Philly thinks expansion teams shouldn't have been able to trade before the expansion draft, as these deals have completely obliterated any chance of a single active player being exposed in the expansion draft....Just saying..
Teams posted their protection lists for said draft on July 13. It took place shortly thereafter, each team selecting eleven castoffs in a snake format before they ran out of players to choose from.
Pick 1 – Stanislaw Maddox, CB @Nick
Pick 4 – Arby Krimlaw, LB @WisconsinBadgers
Pick 5 – Romeo Devitt, DT @Evans
Pick 8 – Timote Shoate, CB @LT21
Pick 9 – Bisquiteen Crocker, DE @KalaVouna
Pick 12 – Jonathan Shaloiko, WR @J.shaloiko
Pick 13 – Greg Taylor, DE @ztevans
Pick 16 – Rolf Larsendorf, TE @HazardouSpork
Pick 17 – Josh Cameron, DT @CamBrady
Pick 20 – Michael Newman, RB @mnewman19
Pick 21 – Devin Speed, S @King
Taking this many players in a draft proved so repulsive that the Legion immediately sought to trade them away. They brokered a two-for-two deal with Philadelphia that sent away Krimlaw and Devitt for defensive tackle Vinny Cox (@Gooney) and running back Jack Stats (@Desu), then went back to the same well for offensive linemen Saggitariutt Jefferspin (@BasedGase) and Jordan Weal (@samee) by giving up an S3 third and fifth. Shaloiko departed for Yellowknife as payment for the future considerations. Then, realizing that they maybe needed draft picks, Legion spun Rashad back to Arizona for an S2 seventh and S3 third and traded up from the eighth round to the third in the S3 Draft by giving Cameron to San Jose.
The Vegas free agency market was mostly slim pickings. Inactive kicker Brandon Walsh (@Copenhagen) and quarterback Logan Ryder (@papap0st) received one-year, $500,000 contracts. But their power of the purse truly mattered for grabbing their main quarterback: the disgruntled and controversial Josh Bercovici (@Merica). Bercovici was the loser of Season 1's three-way Orange County quarterback battle between him, Ethan Hunt, and the legendary Mike Boss. Expansion was his golden ticket to a starting position. So despite Merica's... questionable standing – you would unsurprised to learn that a user whose player was endorsed by Donald Trump was a virulent bigot and anti-SJW personality – Las Vegas inked a massive three-year contract worth $21 million total, including a possible $2 million more in bonuses.
Pick 41 – Kyle Cobb, RB @Kcobb9
Pick 56 – Johnny Rocket, WR @:.Elite.:
Pick 66 – Thaddeus Bullard, DE @Bafetimbi Gomis
Pick 73 – Leon Morgan, CB @Esarhaddon
Pick 82 – Ryan Lecavalier, WR @Ephemeris
Pick 73 – Typical Newenglander, DT @Red_Staar
Quote:Vegas has clearly done everything it can to be competitive immediately. With only 2 S2 draft picks in the first 7 rounds, Vegas sold the future for what it can get now. Doing so got it a potentially league-winning set...
The weakness of this style was depth – Vegas can ill-afford anyone to go inactive, and its many current inactive players will only be effective for so long before being overtaken by active players on other teams.
With the exception of one final trade with Orange County that sent over Ferguson and an S3 fourth rounder for running back Ardie Savea (@Ben), Vegas was done assembling its roster for the season. Their gamble, however, did not pay off to plan. The Legion suffered a league-worst 3-11 record in Season 2, scoring fewer points than any other team and even being outclassed in most metrics by the Liberty. To the GMs' credit, it took them only five games to realize what Chicago stubbornly refused to for years and abandon the all-in strategy. They traded away Peterson for an S3 seventh and an S4 second to the Sabercats midway through the season.
The unsurprising culprit of their downfall proved to be inactivity. Many of the players they acquired from trading picks turned out not to be very committed earners; in fact, the Legion were vastly outpaced in TPE earning over the season by every other team and practically lapped by the Outlaws. Their only truly active rookie was Savea, but he, Bercovici, and Stormblessed struggled to get the offense into motion behind the league's worst offensive line. The absence of high picks in the near future meant that the team was likely looking at a multi-year investment just to get a rebuild started in Season 4 or 5. Las Vegas had made the mistake of underestimating the quality of the S2 Draft and would pay the price of their misjudgment.
When Anti-Hype was hired as one of the DSFL's starting GMs back in early August, it left RFFO as the sole GM of the team throughout most of the season. There was a scare around his inactivity in the final days of August that even prompted HO to temporarily appoint Bafetimbi Gomis and Ben as co-GMs, a hiring that was promptly overturned by RFFO once he emerged from what turned out to be hospitalization from a car accident. Still, he needed a co-GM going forward, and the obvious choice was made to actually bring in Ben, one of the team's only active users, to the leadership role.
The new pair did what they could to shore up the rebuild before the draft arrived. Maddox, Tebow, Weal, Walsh, and Ryder got handed inactive one-year extensions, while Ramrio was extended for one year and $3 million only to then be traded to the Liberty for an S3 third, S4 first, and S5 first. Bullard got a nice three-year deal worth $12 million, perhaps to thank him for his 24-hour stint as team co-GM. And in a three-for-three draft pick swap with Yellowknife, Vegas traded away two thirds in the S3 Draft for a sixth in exchange for grabbing a first in S4 and swapping S4 second rounders.
Quote:I like th trade for the Legion as long as next years draft isn't terrible.
Pick 18 – Wallace Stone, OL @Evok
Pick 41 – Connor Tanner, WR @Keyg_an
Pick 42 – Tyler Grant, CB @gth66897
Pick 49 – Crith Coalrange, OL @Howley
Pick 65 – Ash Saginaw, DT @Cocoa
The latter three selections were all irrelevant inactives, but Stone and Tanner were definitely seen as good steals by the Legion and much needed talent (although Tanner's usefulness as a WR, soon to be TE, seemed less obvious in a roster already so full of holes). RFFO and Ben made a few more moves before the season started, most crucially trading away a first and fourth in the S4 Draft, a fifth in S5, and Crockner to the now-rebuilding Yeti for defensive end Blaster Blade (@Blaster) and wide receiver Jon Ross (@JR95). They also signed defensive end Vinz Lockkeu (@BigE) on an inactive deal and extended RFFO's player, Tyler Varga, for $5.5 million.
All of this culminated in a 2-12 sophomore campaign. This was again the worst record in the league, giving up a staggering 444 points over the season – an average of 31.7 points per game. Once again, the GMs made the choice to spin away a roster star midseason. Stormblessed went to the Hawks, and in return Vegas pulled in a first and second round pick from the S4 Draft and receiver John Baker (@Bakepiece). Stormblessed's early departure was a blessing in disguise for LeClair, who matured into the WR1 spot, and for Tanner, who received a midseason call-up and eventually a Pro Bowl nod. LeClair, along with Cox, Shoate, and Weal, also received the gift of a contract extension through at least Season 5.
Unfortunately, the start of the offseason saw the retirement of RFFO from team GM and from his player Varga. His handpicked successor, naturally, was Ben. Ben's GM tenure began immediately with a mess, not only in terms of the imminent rebuild but also in the revelation through a media article by adam2552 that the Legion had spent the entire duration of Season 3 over the salary cap. While the exact mechanics of what pushed them over and by how much were debated, Head Office eventually determined that Vegas had been $2 million in excess of the limit and assigned a $3 million cap space penalty for the team in Season 4.
At the same time, a far funnier debacle had captured the minds of onlookers. Back before Season 3 began, kolbe made a bet with RFFO that if the Legion managed to win even two games in the next two sessons, his player Kevin Cushing would sign in Las Vegas in free agency. The Legion were bad, but they weren't 0-28 Yeti bad, and even bad teams steal a win or two. So when Las Vegas broke two wins in Season 3 alone, it appeared that kolbe would be finding a new home in the Nevada desert. His GM Bzerkap was disgruntled, as to be expected, but kolbe refused to disavow his side of the deal and wanted to encourage parity in the league (so long as RFFO, who he saw as a terrible GM, was no longer in charge).
But despite allowing the bet to stand for more than a month, Head Office now put their foot down and nullified the entire ordeal through the same punishment post as the cap hit announcement. They viewed the bet's nature as an unhealthy precedent-setter and asserted HO's unilateral power to deny invalid bets. People generally agreed that the bet was morally dubious; what some took issue with was only voiding it once the Legion had won and were celebrating their incoming acquisition. The appearance of anti-Legion framing also colored perception of the cap space punishment, since Er soon uncovered that two teams in Season 1 had received no penalties for committing the exact same crime. Even Kolbe, who now discounted the bet as being "won under suspicious circumstances", blamed said circumstances on the messy system of DSFL callups and not on the Legion themselves.
Quote:This ruling is pathetic. Cap violations should be punished, I completely agree... I do not believe the team that should be made an example out of is the worst team in the league, going into the largest free agency we'll ever have. This is not good for ANYBODY in this league.
I do not think the head office's responsiveness to issues should be based on how many media articles people right about it.
Kevin Cushing never went to Las Vegas. Thankfully, the team was eyeing other talent. With Keygan hired as Ben's new co-GM after the dust settled on the cap hit scandal, the Legion leadership pulled in the services of free agent cornerback Philippe Carter (enigmatic) on a two-year, $4 million deal and traded for linebacker Wyatt Fulton (DELIRIVM) from the Wraiths for the price of cap space. Their pre-draft dopamine rush inspired even more trades, like sending over Blade to Arizona for replacement defensive end Big Bot (loco) and their S4 first-rounder and exchanging their S5 first and some cap for two more first round picks in the S4 Draft. Bot got a fancy new extension, as did Savea and a host of inactives, and the Legion now had an absolute treasure haul of premium picks in the upcoming draft.
There was just one issue, though: that S4 Draft was as small as sin. The chopping up of the draft class during the DSFL's creation left S4 as a rump class, comprised of waiver pickups who joined too late to be drafted directly into the NSFL in Season 3 and too early to be part of the full-size S5 cohort. So much of Vegas' wheeling and dealing for picks would be wasted in such a paltry class, where activity declined precipitously after the top two prospects. They had to try and make the best of it.
Pick 2 – Blackford Oakes, S @Beaver
Pick 4 – Steven O'Sullivan, TE @StevenOSullivan
Pick 6 – Trey Lonzac, CB @Nonsense
Pick 7 – Andreas Waiters, DE @Chukka
Pick 8 – Shawn Ariel, RB @Luminous
Pick 12 – Den Bavis, LB @BaveDenvis
Pick 18 – Brent Lane, K @Brent
Quote:The Las Vegas Legion are the seminal classic 2003 film The Room by Tommy Wiseau. The film opened and it suffered widespread critical panning. In time, the Room gained traction as a cult classic, much like the Legion have a groundswell of support of fans who simply want the worst team in the league to have that Cinderella story. The moral of this analogy is this; expect the Legion to make the playoffs around Season 8 or 9.
Some people were higher on the Legion's immediate future than others; one bold prediction even went as far as six or seven wins. One reason for this was the offensive line news. More than any other team, Vegas benefitted immensely from being able to pay robots for the job. Stone took the free position switch to become a pocket passer quarterback, a needed move given that Merica retired Bercovici right around the draft and left the league for good (riddance). It wasn't like Bercovici's production on the field had been anywhere close to irreplaceable.
The GMs felt it necessary to continue the wheeling and dealing post-draft, and so it was done. They dipped their toes into a three-team trade just to send away Lane for an S5 third and S6 fourth. O'Sullivan was out the door for Otters receiver William Sean (@EastBeast), then a second Orange County trade added on the rights to swap S5 firsts, an S5 fourth, and $1.5 million in cap space to acquire defensive end Jimmy Cox (Waters). Oakes, Lonzac, and Sean received hefty rookie contracts, while Ross inked for three years and $9 million and Ryder nabbed another inactive extension. The locker room was apparently buzzing with activity, especially since the additions of enig and incite (DELIRIVM), and Keygan was publicly optimistic about winning more games than Season 3.
He wasn't wrong. The Legion did improve their win total, and they were no longer the league's worst squad. But going 3-11 throughout Season 14, with only a single win to their name that wasn't against the 1-13 Yeti, didn't quite achieve the lofty improvement some imagined. It was an exciting season otherwise – Arizona lost their first playoff game in franchise history to the Otters, breaking their uncontested grip on the Ultimus. But it also bore witness to a serious erosion of stability, both in the league at large and in the Legion in particular.
On November 19, Head Office hired slm to join their ranks. Around a week later, still adjusting to his role, slm received messages from Evok warning him that every active member of the Legion was planning to mass retire and leave the league. Surely, she was joking around. The idea of a mass retirement was preposterous on its face, and although slm did bring the matter to the rest of HO, they were generally dismissive of its likelihood.
Ben had been on vacation since mid-November, a sabbatical that would last him until January of 2018, so Keygan was the sole GM of the team throughout Season 4. After Evok herself made constant jokes about retiring her player in the Legion discord, the idea of retiring and of specifically retiring together began to catch on. Many were at first trepidatious of letting down Ben while he was away, but with Keygan fully in their corner, what perhaps started as a joke became a deadly serious aspiration. Some saw the league as toxic, some were disillusioned by constant drama, and some were simply bored. Keygan himself was less and less invested in the league; after accepting the job of head simmer on November 21, he was unable to serve as GM and had to open applications for taking over the Legion, an opening no one seemed interested in filling. He went entirely MIA a week later and nearly caused a sim delay before @Roly stepped in to fill the job. HO even posted their own job opening for the Legion's acting GM and future co-GM given Keygan's forum inactivity and Ben's vacation on December 4.
Slm issued an open letter from Head Office on December 1, the first time HO had ever done an announcement specifically geared towards increasing transparency on recent events. One of the points in the letter addressed the league's rising parity, noting that the Yeti and Legion in particular had made good improvements and had bright futures ahead. Without mentioning the possibility of mass retirement by name, slm was clearly attempting to bring disillusioned Legion players back into the fold. The locker room was still humming – Keygan was fond of bringing up the number of online Legion in GM chat and on twitch streams – but they only had three players who could be considered fully active, less than half of the next lowest team. But his letter likely came too late to change the course.
Maybe the spark came on December 7, when adam2552 was hired to Head Office. As the founder of the Liberty, and someone viewed by many as a controversial conspiracy theorist, perhaps his ascension to HO was a straw too far for Legion players with a bone to pick. Or maybe the S4 Ultimus between Orange County and Yellowknife on December 8 was the motivator. Few other events in the league calendar could be as dramatic a time to announce something so controversial. Maybe it was both, or neither. Maybe it just simply the moment the Legion decided to make history.
Quote:We here in Las Vegas are happy to announce the retirement of many of our key players! Without further ado!
Wyatt Fulton - S5 Retirement - @`incitehysteria`
Philippe Carter - S5 Retirement - @enigmatic
Wallace Stone - S5 Retirement - @Evok
Connor Tanner - S5 Retirement - @Keyg_an
Jimmy Cox - S5 Retirement - @Waters
Vinny Cox - S5 Retirement - @Gooney
Jon Ross - S5 Retirement - @JR95
And many more that I can’t remember the tag of!
Please comment accept if you agree to these terms.
Incite was the first Legion player to accept; enig concurred and expressed frustration when commenters questioned whether people could legally mass retire at all. These two, next to Keygan, were probably the most gung-ho about retiring and planned to retire that same day with or without everyone else. In fact, after incite decided he planned to retire, Keygan asked the locker room who wanted out and put everyone who agreed into the mass retirement post, a final mockery of the league by mimicking a signings thead. Waters responded to the thread only with jokes but remained on board; Gooney and JR were quick to add their support, agreeing that the league had lost anything that made it fun to begin with.
Quote:I have been in many many sim leagues over the last several years and never have I seen a community as toxic as this one. The unique community that the NSFL has is comprised largely of whinny bigots and often resembles an unruly mob of children. I hope this dies quick so it stops spreading to other sim leagues.
I gladly retire.
But there was defection in the ranks. With a single word, Evok had broken the solidarity of the Legion and opened the floodgates to a wave of criticism from other users. Many jumped on Keygan in particular and accused him of being a shit-stirring ringleader, someone dragging down the whole team and disrespecting Ben with a stunt instead of just going inactive or trying to actively engage with and improve the league. Keygan and the other Legion pushed back hard against this narrative, especially Beaver. No one was forced into the scheme. Certain people, like @7hawk77 and @DeathOnReddit, made their vocal opposition quite clear anyways, some to the point of cartoonish lunacy.
Quote:It's funny watching this reaction as a Legion player who did not retire as Keygan is cast as the villain, as a cunning manipulator who tricked innocent active players into a mass retirement. I understand their retirements now more than ever...
I suppose it might easier to convince yourself that Keygan is this evil guy dead set on the destruction of the league than to believe a half dozen or so people (many of whom weren't active) didn't enjoy the league and wanted to retire.
The question on everyone's mind in the hours and days following the mass retirement was how Las Vegas could ever possibly recover. Would HO give them any special recourse or compensation? Would they be contracted, their few remaining players folded onto other teams? One of those few, Zoone, felt no obligation to wait it out; if LeClair was not on another team by the start of Season 5, he would retire like his former teammates. With free agency now getting started and no Vegas management in sight, slm reached out to Ben on vacation to loop him in. He gave HO blanket permission to do whatever they needed to do – hire new GMs, rebrand the team, anything – to fix the situation.
By December 10 and after basically no interest from any candidates in tackling the mess, they found their guy: cosborn. Notably, his hiring post specified that he would be rebranding and relocating the Legion. The next day, he traded for himself with the Hawks, obtaining his own defensive tackle Ricardo Sandoval, receiver Brian Wheat (@Wheaties), and a second and fifth in the S5 Draft for the price of an S5 first and LeClair. This proved an elegant solution to two problems. Cosborn entered the Legion discord to a warm enough welcome from the remaining players there, a warmth which did not last terribly long.
His next trade was the culprit. Cosborn sent away Carter and an S6 second rounder to obtain an S6 fourth, tight end Joseph Askins (@jaskins811), and offensive lineman Francois LaMoreux (the corpse of Archon). But then, for whatever reason, cosborn decided to position switch Askins to quarterback – obviously screwing over Evok, one of the only actives left on the team and committed to helping the Legion out. She posted on the forums that she refused to play on the Legion anymore, and whether cosborn was coerced by pressure from below or simply saw the writing on the wall, he approached Head Office and asked to resign from his position.
So on December 13, cosborn was out and bovo was in. He acknowledged from the jump that the task of rebuilding would be laborious, but the culture was already there and the players that did remain (including Evok) were tightly knit. Las Vegas, in whatever form it would end up taking in the near future, would do its best to recover from its shattered state. Bovo hired @tbone415 as his co-GM, and the pair began to work on mending the team piece by piece. They could only hope that the issues that prompted mass retirement to begin with, the disillusionment with the league and its ever-present drama and toxicity, would not sink the entire NSFL when the ugliest scandal of all reared its head a mere two days after bovo's hire.
°
.
.
PHASE III: APPROACHING TOTALITY
The storm that engulfed the NSFL in the fall of 2017 is inseparably intertwined with the fates of the league's best team and the league's worst. The former distinction belonged to the Outlaws.
While the meltdown of the Legion was a largely systematic, team-wide crisis, the story of Arizona centers unmistakably on one user in particular: ErMurazor. Er created on May 25, 2017, as defensive end Jayce Tuck and established himself pretty quickly as an active and engaged user through writing a bevy of media posts and joining the PPT. In the inaugural league draft, Tuck was drafted at 18th overall to the Arizona Outlaws. It was Er who won the competition to name the league championship trophy and who gave it the title of the Ultimus, and by July 3 it was Er who became the league's new simmer. His Outlaws impressed on the field as well, finishing with a respectable 9-5 record and coming in first place in their division (and first place in the league) by tiebreaker over the Orange County Otters. They throttled their division opponents 36-13 in the championship and, in a similar 29-6 blowout, took home the league's first Ultimus over the Yeti.
As a user and player, Er had about as successful a career as anyone could ever dream of. Tuck was a monster at defensive end, winning Defensive Lineman of the Year and a Pro Bowl slot, but this success went even further in Seasons 2 and 3. Not only did he repeat both of the prior awards, Tuck took home both Defensive Player of the Year and Most Valuable Player for two seasons – still the only lineman to ever win the latter award. And as a user, Er performed an invaluable load of work for the league as simmer, as a PPT member and eventual Head, and as a recruiter, and he was awarded accordingly with three consecutive Most Dedicated Member awards.
Quote:@ErMurazor you are the savior of this league
Er's domination extended into the sim not just in terms of his player but in terms of his team. In a league with a long history of dynasties, the Arizona Outlaws were the first. That Season 1 campaign turned out in retrospect to be child's play. The following year, the team easily topped the standings with a 12-2 record and survived a close Otters game to then bury Baltimore in the title match, 33-6. Arizona came back in Season 3 looking for the threepeat and going a furious 13-1 in the regular season, then blowing out the Otters and Hawks in succession once more in the postseason. The first three rings in NSFL history all belonged to the team in red and black.
But were they perhaps a little too dominant? With the zeal that only springs forth from deep resentment, users began calling the Outlaws cheaters as early as Season 2. The actual infractions accused were far from damning, though. In a reply to a random linebacker ranking media post on August 5, kolbe casually dropped that Luke Luechly (YoloSwag420) would "regress a little now that his TPE is fixed." Pressed for clarification, kolbe asserted that YoloSwag had claimed 9 illegal TPE from overdue activity checks and weekly training and was being punished through the removal of 7 of that TPE – a claim which could not be verified in any league announcements. He had personally reported the infraction and labeled the entirety of the Outlaws as cheaters along the way.
YoloSwag, who lived in the American Samoa and who got confused by time zone differences, apparently found out about the loss of TPE from the comment and from personal messages by kolbe. So he went on the warpath. On August 10, he fired back in a rambling media tirade, calling kolbe an "unhappy", "jealous", "petty bitch person" who pestered him multiple times on streams and accused the Outlaws leadership of cheating. YoloSwag then combed through the whole Wraiths roster in retaliation, pointing out 23 TPE that the Yellowknife team had cheated to obtain. His article was sarcastic, but it was written to express frustration with his treatment and with kolbe's harassment.
Quote:...i will say bzerkap himself was very understanding and professional in our conversation it was just after the idiot on his team made a stink about me being a cheater. i still want to be given consistent treatment others got with tpe earning. people dont like being called cheaters, i know bzerkap and the vast majority of wraiths are not cheaters and made the same accident i did which was point i was making.
The next troll to step up to the plate was the ever-lovely Archon. On September 23, he made a Thunderdome post accusing the Outlaws of cheating by violating the maximum contract length of three seasons when they signed players to extensions through Season 6. This was even more of a nothingburger than the YoloSwag controversy. As numerous users pointed out, extending players in the final year of their contract was not only legal, it was incredibly common and numerous other teams could be accused of cheating by the same margin.
However, the most common claim of all, and the accusation that stuck around the most, was that Er was rigging the sims in favor of Arizona. It wasn't like he had any lack of potential temptation to do so. While he was never a GM for the Outlaws (that honor went to Dwyer, his first co-GM @Bushito, Season 1 co-GM adam2552, and his Season 2 and beyond co-GM @4D Chess), Er did the team's sim tests and from Season 2 onwards conducted scouting as well. And although every GM could access the sim file, once Er actually ran it there was no supervision or witness like there exists today. The only concrete proof that nothing untoward was going on was Er's own word.
Sometimes, claims that Er was rigging the sim were made in obvious jest. Er was an incredibly trusted user, and joking that he was tipping the scales in Arizona's favor was just a way to cope with that team's incredible dominance, a real and present advantage that anyone could see for themselves by running some sims. Other times, it wasn't quite as jokingly exclaimed. Especially as the Outlaw dynasty ran on and one title turned into two and then three, certain members of the league became more convinced that Er actually was doing something behind the scenes. Comments to that effect even showed up on sim team hiring posts.
Quote:8AM - Wake up
9AM - Breakfast
10AM - Stare at other teams depth charts
NOON - Realize that it doesn't matter
1PM - Touch framed print out of S1 Championship sig
2PM - Begin rigging sims
3PM - Focus on DiMirio's stats, because that makes sense
5PM - Choose correct sim
9PM - Finish streaming, begin receiving hatemail
10PM - Figure out new ways to rig sim
11PM - Consult with lizard people on correct ways to rig sim, and in profits from the Outlaws dynasty
Seriously, you guys are like obsessed with Er rigging the sim.
If any team embodied this crusade more than most, it was the Philadelphia Liberty. By the middle of Season 3, Liberty players began swarming the Twitch streams of games to flood the chat with complaints, alleging that the sim was rigged, the league was biased against Philadelphia, and Arizona was actively cheating to do it. Some accounts allege that this stemmed from management invoking the specter of cheating to explain why Philadelphia was not yet winning – to be clear, the Liberty finished 8-5-1 in Season 3 and made the playoffs – but whatever the case, Liberty GM adam2552 was undoubtedly one of the conspiracy's ringleaders. It got to the point where Liberty players who showed up to Twitch streams were often told to leave because of their tiring and incessant whining. Their cries were generally met with something between incredulity and annoyance.
Then came November 15, 2017. It was Week 6 of Season 4, and although Er had begun talking a lot with Dwyer beginning in the prior offseason about potentially rebuilding and trading away pieces, they remained for now their usual dominant selves. Late in the evening, after the stream, a guest account named Sherlock posted media with the most serious Outlaws cheating allegation to date: that TimPest, YoloSwag, and Sanctus were all multis of each other. Sherlock included six exhibits that compared the PTs and graphics of the users, noting when two or three of them used similar templates, similar fonts, and similar spelling and grammatical patterns. They alluded to there being more similarities between all three beyond what was showed.
First reactions, from both Outlaws and non-Outlaws, memed the thread, and Sweetwater implored the anonymous user to turn over all evidence they possessed to Head Office. Early commenters also pointed out that they could've just discussed graphics together; a leap straight to multis seemed premature. Then adam2552 posted a list of member IP addresses that showed YoloSwag and Sanctus registered from a similar VPN – TimPest was not included, but a host of other users were – and Oles compiled a list of twelve users whose IP came from two different VPN companies, siliconvalleywifi and northamericancoax (which adam2552 then claimed were the same company with the same VPN and different subnets).
The Accused: Sanctus, TimPest, and YoloSwag420
Sanctus registered on the forums on June 24, 2017, and created as S2 kicker Christiano Ronaldo. Ronaldo was picked up on waivers by the Otters and played six games as their punter. When Dwyer scouted him for the draft, Sanctus expressed his desire to return to Orange County and wanted big money if another team drafted him. The Outlaws needed an active kicker, though, and they ended up taking him with their sixth round pick as the first kicker/punter off the board. His rookie contract paid $5.5 million in total value, of which $4.5 million was frontloaded into Season 2.
Sanctus was an active earner and a star on the field to boot. Ronaldo won Pro Bowl slots in both Season 2 and 3, plus Punter of the Year for the latter, and proved one of the most consistent scorers in the league. When it came for his extension, Sanctus had a sudden change of heart and asked for the minimum of three years, $2 million annually, instead of a more lucrative contract. He last replied to an AC on November 15.
TimPest registered on the forums sometime between June 12 and June 13, 2017, and created as S2 offensive lineman Tim Pest. Pest played almost the entirety of Season 1 on the Otters after they used a waiver selection on him and was an active earner who snagged a job as updater. Over the season, TimPest became a beloved presence in the Arizona locker room. He was a student from Southeast Asia studying in America whose third language was English – one of his other known languages, apparently, had no words.
Before the S2 Draft, a prospective offensive lineman named Greg Clegane (@automatic) made a media article pulling "the Elway Card" where he refused to play for any team that drafted him in the first round besides the Otters. This was a controversial move, and user after user lambasted automatic and promised that his strategy would never work because other teams would call his bluff (oh, these sweet summer children). TimPest, apparently with a "point to make", made media in direct response that issued the exact same demands as Clegane but swapping out Orange County for Arizona. Pest went third overall in the draft to the Outlaws. For the record, Clegane got his wish and fell to the Otters at pick six.
Pest put in good work for Arizona, remaining a solid earner and snagging Pro Bowl nods in each of his first two seasons to go with two consecutive Offensive Lineman of the Year awards. He signed team-friendly minimum contracts both on his rookie deal and on his extension through Season 7, and last replied to an AC on November 15.
YoloSwag420 registered on the forums on July 9, 2017, and created as S2 linebacker Luke Luechly. In his scouting conversation with Er, YoloSwag claimed to be from another league that used Draft Day Sports and knew the sim well. And since he had a lot of TPE ready to claim that had not yet been put into an update thread, Er and Dwyer looked at him as a potential draft steal. They picked him in the draft with the last pick of the fifth round.
YoloSwag claimed to reside in the American Samoa and wrote in a semi-immature English, both of which came to the fore when the drama with kolbe occurred. After that subsided, he remained an active to semi-active earner for Arizona and attended the Pro Bowl his rookie and sophomore years. He last replied to an AC on December 14.
Quote:Quote:- And now...this bullshit. We have 9 members who are potentially the same person on a VPN. Wouldn't that be crazy? No, RD, it wouldn't. It would just be another day at the fucking office.
We are looking in to this. Really though it would be great if people could start PMing HO information like this so we can do a full and proper investigation before the town witch hunt begins.
This was quickly becoming a wild goose chase, and a frustrated Sweetwater closed the thread before threatening to delete posts when Oles, Dwyer, and adam2552 all used their GM moderation powers to continue talking anyways. Some users like Jiggly thought the accusations had merit only as a graphics sharing problem; most didn't think the entirely circumstantial evidence proved much of anything. In the meantime, a big leadership change commenced when Ballerstorm announced that he was stepping down from his role as league owner, HO member, and de facto commissioner. The opening in Head Office went up for applications, but the owner role already had a replacement picked out: Er.
But Sherlock wasn't ready to give up the case, and to the surprise of almost nobody, adam2552 was the one behind the mask. This time, he didn't hide behind an anonymous persona. On November 17, he created a discussion post combing through every IP that Sanctus posted from, with thirteen matches to Stormblessed, four matches to YoloSwag, three to TimPest, two to @BrokkLee (one of them a minute apart), one to @TyronSmith, and one to BrotherP. The one IP he posted from that wasn't a VPN matched a California cell tower that matched posts from three users: Sanctus, @MattJames, and Er. And although YoloSwag attested that he used VPNs in the Same IP Thread, a post he made five minutes after creating a player, said post was deleted and the moderation log of the deletion was also deleted.
This was the first serious, thorough accusation of wrongdoing levied directly against Er. Adam alleged that Er had both the means and the motive to create multiple players to help his team, all of whom were either active Outlaws, active while they were on the Outlaws, or offensive line prospects from the S2 Draft whose services teams like Arizona desperately needed. Indeed, after the protections put in place by Noble's TPE scandal, no moderation logs should have been able to be deleted without a trace... unless one just happened to be recently appointed as league owner. Adam2552 sent all of this evidence to HO privately but decided regardless to post it publicly. Whether he feared inaction on HO's part without public pressure, he thought they lacked transparency, or he was just following a long line of users from Numbers to Barry before that broke big stories without waiting for management to act, no one can really say – but it is clear that adam2552 desperately wanted to stop the ownership transfer.
The Accused: BrokkLee, BrotherP, MattJames, and TyronSmith
BrokkLee registered on the forums on June 28, 2017, and created as S2 offensive lineman Brokk Lee. He was active early as a graphics creator and claimed on waivers by the Yeti, although he didn't see any playing time in Season 1, and his promise became evident by being selected tenth overall in the S2 Draft by the Baltimore Hawks. Brokk was perhaps the oldest member in the league at nearly 60 years old.
Unfortunately, towards the end of Season 2, Brokk went inactive. Some speculated the reason to partially stem from changes in the graphics pay system in late July, which he said would make it impossible for him to be on the level of other users and earn well, but he had actually messaged Hendrix to let him know he was going inactive due to personal health problems and stopped posting consistently in late August. He returned to the site briefly on October 18 only to update and to tell his GMs that his situation had not improved.
BrotherP registered on the forums sometime between August 2 and August 4, 2017, and created as S3 running back Jaxon Tuck. If it wasn't obvious from both the username and player name, BrotherP was Er's brother, and Er posted in the Same IP Thread that they would sometimes share the same IP. As a waiver create, Tuck spent ten games alongside his more famous brother on the Outlaws. And despite being an active earner, he fell all the way to pick 40 in the S3 Draft where Arizona officially snatched him up over Er's protestations.
BrotherP remained a pretty consistent, if not exemplary, earner while on the Outlaws, and took a basic three-year, $2 million per season rookie contract. On the field, he played a clearly secondary role to the team's star rusher Reg Mackworthy (@Esa77). He last replied to an AC on October 31.
MattJames registered on the forums on July 9, 2017, and created as S2 offensive lineman Matt James. James was drafted 42nd overall in the S2 Draft by the Liberty and immediately gained league-wide notoriety by entering into a contract dispute with adam2552 and holding out. He claimed to have been mocked during negotiations and to not have been offered a worthwhile contract by Philly, who he expressed disdain for during the scouting process. MattJames penned multiple media article during the saga, all of which were purportedly written by Roc Nation Sports, Jay Z's sports management agency, and went so far as to make his forum avatar wear a "Failadelphia" shirt.
According to him, adam2552 openly trash-talked about him to other players in the Liberty discord and planned to slander him prior to negotiating a trade. Said trade was completed on July 22 between the Wraiths and the Liberty after discussions with a few other suitors, including Arizona, and Yellowknife paid offensive lineman Jazzy J (@JasieJ) and an S3 fourth for James' rights. Hilariously, James signed a three-year rookie contract worth only $1.5 million total and then "leaked" Discord discussions of the Liberty in another Roc Nation media post.
Yep, totally 100% real Discord screenshots.
As the final cherry on top, MattJames went inactive almost immediately after the entire ordeal. He came back to the forums after two months of radio silence to retire on November 1.
TyronSmith registered on the forums on July 9, 2017, and created as S2 offensive lineman Tyron Smith. Smith was drafted in the middle of the fourth round of the S2 Draft by the Wraiths. Despite showing good activity before the draft, working on graphics and applying for jobs in the league, he went inactive only hours after accepting his rookie contract with the Wraiths. He last posted on July 22 and last visited the forums on October 10.
But despite adam2552's efforts, his article was still treated skeptically by a large portion of the community. He was viewed as a "conspiracy theorist hick" while people joked on the league discord about Er controlling 50 multis, and that was kind compared to the response of someone like DeathOnReddit.
Quote:Fuck off. Their gfx barely looked the same, their typing is completely different, and we already proves the ip theory wrong. Now youre accusing the hardest working member of the league of anothet bullshit theory? Youre an ass adam, an ass who is wrong.
HO closed the topic quickly and stated that they had already dealt with the matter, explicitly calling out efforts to incite a witch hunt and threatening punishments for future infractions. Hours later, HO member 7hawk77 issued an official ruling. The evidence in both articles was not nearly enough to confirm such severe accusations, especially since being assigned IP addresses from the same tower is meaningless as proof due to the wide area and the heavily populated Los Angeles/San Jose region it was located in. Head Office doubled down on their disdain for adam2552's circumvention of proper protocol and implored the community not to detract from active investigations and hurt the league by going rogue.
Commenters applauded this announcement. They were, by and large, tired of the rampant toxicity that had pervaded the league through the accusations. Some even called for a punishment of adam2552 for his constant labelling of Er as a cheater, especially during Twitch streams. Nosuch punishment materialized. The league was trying to move on, and so was Er, who professed in a hiring post shortly thereafter that the league had become less fun for him thanks to recent events and he was searching for a replacement at simmer. He found his replacement four days later in Keygan. Head Office, too, finally filled its vacancy, bringing in slm on November 19 to fill Baller's old spot.
But there was one loose thread from adam2552's investigations, one which slm was determined to solve. HO had been able to explain away the IP evidence as loose at best, but the deletion of YoloSwag's VPN post and the deletion of the logs documenting it remained to be explained. They found through investigating the admin logs that Er had indeed deleted moderation logs four times on November 16. Whether these were his logs, and whether he deleted YoloSwag's post, were unprovable. But emptying logs related to YoloSwag while he was under active investigation was still a punishable offense, and though HO could not find any motive on why Er did this, they chose on November 21 to restrict Er from assuming site ownership for the next season while he went on probation and while @White Cornerback assumed responsibility in the interim. By a 3-2 margin, with slm and Dermot in the minority, HO also voted among themselves not to fine Er.
With the authority of HO behind the ruling, public opinion began slowly to lose the automatic trust Er had enjoyed from the non-Liberty a week prior. @evryday questioned why Er was getting off lighter than the established moderation abuse guidelines. When HO responded that Er was both too rich for fines to have any impact and was owed leniency for his past service, kolbe and many, many others came in to advocate for a harsher sentence. In his view, Er should not have been shown such wide leniency for a series of abused powers; in a moment of character growth, kolbe even compared the punishment unfavorably to Hendrix's, since he received a worse sentence for an arguably lighter and one-time crime.
Quote:I completely get the "drop in the bucket" mentality regarding a fine, but I do have to challenge the other logic employed, namely, service to the league. Er has done a TON for this league. I am not disputing that in any way. However, Noble did a ton for the league as well, but he got a one year suspension when he was caught breaking the rules.
Kolbe was contacted shortly thereafter by AsylumParty to expand on his concerns, and in their discussion kolbe maintained that not fining Er at all set a precedent that wealthy users were above the law. Most people agreed with him here, even Er himself. And so kolbe decided to make a stunt protest by deleting the punishment announcement. The moderation abuse rules clearly dictated that he be suspended from moderation for two seasons and charged $2 million, but given kolbe's immense wealth and contributions to the league, precedent demanded that HO grant the same leniency as Er received.
This stunt certainly captured HO's eye, but they already had their hands full. Someone brought it to their attention that TimPest was missing any mod logs, something he definitely should have had after editing a topic title back in October. And after going through the admin logs of HO, Baller, and Er, Head Office concluded that Er was the only possible culprit and attempted to confront him to no avail. Given that TimPest, like YoloSwag, was under active investigation for the graphics scandal, Er was once again essentially erasing evidence. But this time, slm and Dermot were able to convince AsylumParty to change his mind and pursue financial penalties.
So a dual punishment went out on November 24. Er was fined 25% of his bank account balance and smacked with a five-season moderation suspension, along with a complete withdrawal of his chances to become site owner. Kolbe found himself thrown the textbook $2 million and two-season mod suspension, a punishment he did not appeal. And though they would not say it publicly, slm, Dermot, and Asylum were at this point convinced that Er was guilty – not just of deleting moderation logs, but of doing so to cover up the evidence of controlling a plethora of different multis. They felt that they just needed to dig deeper and find more proof of their suspicions.
Unfortunately, scant help was forthcoming from the other two members of Head Office, who acted reticent and dispassionate in their earlier investigations into Er. 7hawk77 did not do much, but that was still more than Sweetwater, who ghosted HO entirely and ignored any attempts at communication. Sweetwater was fired on December 4, although the announcement refrained from calling it as such, and remained almost completely inactive for the better part of a year. Three days later, 7hawk77 was essentially transferred, shifting from a position in Head Office to one in a sim balance capacity where his interests were better suited.
HO announced in tandem with 7hawk77's moving on December 7 that they had hired the two users meant to fill his and Sweetwater's spots. The first new member was @Bayley, who apparently turned in an open and shut application for the spot. The second choice was both more controversial and entirely emblematic of Head Office's new orientation: adam2552. Even with the two recent Er punishments, the legacy of adam2552's endless speculation and accusations still lent him the reputation of an out-of-control conspiracy nut. But all three of the established members voted in the affirmative to bring him on board.
From this point onwards, the investigation went full steam ahead, consuming the efforts of HO whenever they weren't dealing with the mass retirement that rocked the league on December 8. With access to the full admin logs and other resources available only to HO, including the trash can, adam2552 discovered an incident from July 25 in which YoloSwag posted a fantasy football selection in the wrong group, a post which was deleted and where the mod logs of said deletion were also deleted. Six minutes later, TimPest posted in that same group, picking the same player and tagging the same next user. This exact same scenario happened on September 10, this time with Pat17 posting in the wrong group, deleting the post, and then BrotherP making his selection in that group 22 minutes later. Again, the mod logs showing the deletion of the post were deleted.
Then slm reached out to Dwyer and asked about the Outlaws scouting in the S2 Draft. Dwyer confirmed that Er did the bulk of the team's scouting, so because Discord was much less prevalent back then and scouting was conducted via the forums, HO asked for and received permission from Ballerstorm to use his account to access the PM logs. As it turned out, while Er messaged nearly every prospect in the draft, he never sent messages to TimPest, BrokkLee, Sanctus, YoloSwag, Pat17, TyronSmith, JasonMars, or MattJames. The latter six users all also registered for the forums under common burner email addresses; TyronSmith and MattJames even signed up from the same burner address site, from the same IP, on the same day.
The Accused: JasonMars and Pat17
JasonMars registered on the forums on July 9, 2017, and created as S2 offensive lineman Brett Dodggy. JasonMars completed a few point tasks and submitted some graphics for pay before being drafted 44th overall to the Liberty. His comment to accept his rookie contract on July 21 was the last time he ever posted on or visited the forum.
Pat17 registered on the forums on July 9, 2017, and created as S2 offensive lineman Pat Pancake. Drafted to the Hawks in the middle of the ninth round of the S2 Draft, Pat17 was initially relatively inactive and received a shorter-than-usual deal worth only $1 million in Season 2. Towards the end of the season, though, he returned to activity and posted a number of graphics that very much reflected the spirit of the Hawks locker room at the time.
Guess which one was slm's favorite?
That did not stop Pancake from seeking new shores. In the following free agency period, Pat17 departed Baltimore and secured a lucrative $6.5 million one-year deal with the Outlaws. After offensive linemen were terminated during the next offseason, he insisted on remaining at offensive line despite offers from Baltimore to give him a starting role elsewhere and chose to sign through Season 6 with the Outlaws again for an additional total of $10 million, since they of all teams could afford the luxury of a human lineman. He last replied to an AC on November 15.
This was far from the end of it. From adam2552's investigation back on November 17, they knew that Sanctus and BrokkLee had used the exact same IP address as each other on July 2 one minute apart. They knew that on the morning of September 9, Er posted a fantasy pick and then Pat17 made his own fantasy pick five minutes later. After an hour and a half, Er performed an Admin CP action from Pat17's IP address – an address used uniquely by Pat17 – before doing another Admin CP action six minutes later from his own IP address. By any reasonable standard, it seemed like Er tried to edit forum access permissions while still using the VPN for Pat17, realized his mistake, and then continued after turning it off.
With everything assembled, the entire web fell into view. Er was controlling Pat17 because of the September 9 IP incident. The fantasy group mixups linked Pat17 and BrotherP, as it did YoloSwag and TimPest. IP addresses linked Sanctus and BrokkLee. The lack of scouting messages, the burner emails, the moderation log deletions, and even the original investigations into shared graphics between Sanctus, TimPest, and YoloSwag all demonstrated a clear web of connection, one with Er at its head. All of this evidence was technically circumstantial, but circumstantial does not mean coincidental, and the scale of it pushed most of HO into firm conviction. Bayley did not believe enough conclusive proof existed to punish Er, but the other four members outvoted him.
While they hashed out the terms, slm attempted to reach out to Er, who was recently traded to the Wraiths, and delayed the punishment for two days trying to obtain a confession. Er denied guilt repeatedly despite promises of leniency, only much later telling slm that he had wanted HO to come down with a big punishment and to ban him permanently from the league. How far Head Office would go, even when it became clear Er would not cooperate, was up in the air. Adam2552 of all people wanted to hit Er with only a half-season suspension. But it was eventually clear to them all that anything less than a full-season punishment would be received incredibly poorly by the league community, and at such a delicate time in the NSFL's health, such an erosion of trust in HO would potentially be catastrophic.
It came down on December 15. HO identified Er as controlling multiple accounts and directly confirmed that Pat17, YoloSwag420, TimPest, Sanctus, BrotherP, and BrokkLee were all multis. All six of these players were immediately retired, the users were issued lifetime bans, and, with the exception of BrokkLee, all of their accounts were deleted from the site. TyronSmith, JasonMars, and MattJames were listed as suspected multis but could not be proven as such and were therefore left alone. As for Er, he received a forum ban and player suspension through the end of Season 5 and a lifetime moderation ban, with the possibility of parole for the latter charge after two seasons if he admitted wrongdoing to Head Office.
Quote:I am very disappointed that all of this happened. It is an insanely sad situation. I feel like this is the biggest scandal yet, in a league that has already had a lot of scandals.
I feel bad for the remaining Arizona players who will have to deal with the results of this.
I feel bad for Yellowknife after their trade.
I feel bad for those that were close to Er, like I was myself too, and who feel sadness today.
----------------
Beyond that, I want to speak out as a member of this league, that I think the sad trend of scandals has continued. This punishment is an absolute disaster of a joke. Like with other punishments in the past, this is too little and it is not even close. Someone who went to these lengths to do this should be banned from the league entirely, not just for ONE season. I am not sure what kind of bizarre punishment that is or is supposed to be. I am appalled honestly.
A great many users agreed with what @JuOSu wrote here. Er may have been a first time offender, but the offense in question was so significant and so incredibly destructive to the entire league's sense of trust and community that suspending him only a single season felt like a slap on the wrist. Others saw the punishment as harsh but fair. No matter what, Er's crimes felt like a violation of the league's principles and history, staining Arizona's championships and the relationships he had held with everyone around him. It would take a lot of time for this sense of loss to heal.
°
.
.
CONCLUSION: TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE
But time heals all wounds, eventually. The league's first months had left it in a precarious state by the time 2017 came to a close. Users were driven out of the community forever; interactions became ritually laced with hostility and toxicity; an entire team felt so dispirited by the state of affairs that they retired en masse, even before the biggest crime of all came to light. Arizona and Las Vegas faced treacherous rebuilds ahead, needing not only to retool their rosters but to create a new culture that could endure the traumas of their past. For Las Vegas, this went as far as needing to completely erase their identity altogether.
It would be foolish to say that the problems of summer and fall 2017 were cleansed in the fires of December and that the NSFL emerged from the ordeal stronger than ever. Yes, the rate of drama died down to a far more tolerable level. New Orleans even won the Ultimus. But the underlying cultural issues, the tendency towards toxic grievances and frat-bro mentalities that caused problems as far back as the Carmel Gibson scandal, had not been exorcised. The NSFL was not healthy just because it no longer required life support. If another dark winter came to pass, the league was far from guaranteed to survive it.
It is the privilege of the stability the ISFL has enjoyed for years now that the events accounted above can be viewed with distance and critical examination. In one way or another, for better and for worse, the way things transpired has led the league down the road it traveled and has indirectly birthed the modern era of the ISFL. But just as we can take comfort in seeing how light emerged from the darkness, we must also be ever vigilant to prevent ourselves from falling back into these patterns. We must be mindful, and caring, and tolerant, and active in the preservation of the league we inhabit whether through the establishment or through the community – trusting in our institutions while ever-critical of where they might err.
All this to say, while I respect the work that Woelkers has done as DSFL commissioner, I believe that it may be time for a change in leadership.
Thank you for reading. One of these days, I'll be able to write an article that fits under the character limit for a post.
Many thanks, as always, to the kind souls who contributed their time, effort, and memory towards helping this project. Without your help, my work really would not be possible.
@37thchamber
@Ben
@bex
@caleb.grim
@iamslm22
@Keyg_an
@Muford
@Raven
Sources and Reading
Transgender lesbian, S15 veteran, media extraordinaire, and the sim's punching bag. Fascists and bigots are welcome to fuck off.
— — —
— — —
For Your Reading Consideration:
Before the Butchers | The Jungle
The Giving Tree | Volume II | Volume III
A Winter of Discontent | Volume II
The Rockiest Road | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | Finale
Two Essays on Unfree Agency: On Agents | On Contracts
Eclipse of the Honey Moon | Volume II
Gemini Media Awards:
S39 | S40 | S41 | S42 | S43 | S44 | S45 | S46 | S47
All Winners
— — —
— — —
— — —
For Your Reading Consideration:
Before the Butchers | The Jungle
The Giving Tree | Volume II | Volume III
A Winter of Discontent | Volume II
The Rockiest Road | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | Finale
Two Essays on Unfree Agency: On Agents | On Contracts
Eclipse of the Honey Moon | Volume II
Gemini Media Awards:
S39 | S40 | S41 | S42 | S43 | S44 | S45 | S46 | S47
All Winners
— — —