(S35) Offseason Task

[ComebackZak]

OT Pass

[3lewsers]

19. Graphic Option: Create the cover art for your player’s show





23. Create a billboard, magazine cover, unique trading card, or video game cover depicting a one of the league's stars.




26. Football is a game that has been going on for a while, loved by fans all over. But what if you were able to make some rule changes? Talk us through your new version of football, and what would be different and why?

I would make football like Australian Rules Football, or footy as it also called. In order to advance down the field, you must kick the ball to a teammate. There would still be tackling, but there would be no more passes or handoffs. In addition, there are no first downs. You only score by kicking the ball through the uprights. After you are tackled, you have 5 seconds to get up and kick the ball. After 5 seconds, it is considered a turnover and the opposing team takes over from the spot on the field. If the ball is kicked through the uprights, it is worth 5 points. There are no extra points, and there are no kickoffs. If a team scores, the other team starts the next possession at their 5 yard line. If the ball is kicked and caught by a player of the opposing team at time, that player may run until tackled. These changes would make for an exciting variation of the game.


29. Awards have been a subject of controversy for a while in the league. Tell us your ideas on how awards process can be fixed.

I would fix the awards system by simply using the awards that are chosen in the sim. They are never any worse than the human selections, and most of the time they are better. With the sim, there are no favorites chosen. The sim doesn't care if the voter likes you or doesn't like you as is the case with many of the votes by the current voters. The sim also does not care what team you are on. If you are worthy , you are selected. In the current system, many awards team members try to push their teammates for awards when they are not even close to being worthy. That is not the right way to choose an awards. The bias is all too clear one way or the other in the current system. If you don't spend every waking hour trying to be liked, you are too often pushed aside voting. The system needs to be sim driven so that people have another method to complain about.

[Ephenssta]

Coming into the playoffs at 12-3-1 and as the regular season champions, it seems fair to say that Chicago was the favorite to win the Ultimus. They lived up to expectations and their banner now sits atop the site, with some beautiful rotating action showing off all their players and renders. Honestly, I have to say it is one of the more tasteful rotating banners I have seen in my time in the league, and I can not help myself and giggle every time I see that sloth or whatever it is. Truly, it is beautiful. The Butchers' season really was driven by a TON of success in the first half of the season. They picked up a week one win against Baltimore, lost to New Orleans, and then went on to beat Berlin, Yellowknife, Philly, Colorado, Sarasota, and Orange County consecutively. Through 8 games, they were an amazing 7-1. They still had not lost a game in the division, the only concern really was that their week 9 loss had them 0-2 against the ASFC, which may have been a concern should they make the championship game. Bouncing back from the loss to the Copperheads, they won another three in a row against the Yeti, Sailfish, and Salamanders. Their only conference loss came on the road against Baltimore in week 13. They finished an incredible 11-1 in the regular season in the conference and never beat an ASFC team in the regular season. The closest they came was a tie on the road in Arizona. There were way too many ties this season, but that is a topic for another post. Despite failing to win back to back games for the first time in the season in weeks 13 and 14, they finished the regular season off in impressive fashion, beating Yellowknife and putting up 52 points against Philadelphia before getting the first week of the playoffs off to rest up and put a bit more time into postseason preparation.

The Butchers played their first game of the playoffs in the conference championships, squaring off with the Berlin Fire Salamanders, who had just stomped the Sailfish in the first round. The Fire Salamanders had been nipping at the heels of the Butchers all season, coming in only a game back of first place with an 11-4-1 record. Unfortunately, Berlin lost both regular season games against the Butchers by double digits. But, as I am sure we all know, it is hard to beat the same team three times in a single season. Berlin had a good start to the game, leading 10-6 at the half and extending the lead to 17-6 going into the fourth quarter. But Chicago apparently wanted it more, coming from behind to put up 17 points in the fourth quarter to pull off the win and advance to the Ultimus game to face off against the Hahalua, who eliminated the Outlaws in a blowout win in their semifinal matchup. The Butchers got off to a better start this time, going into the half with a 17-10 lead. The Hahalua had it all tied up going into the fourth quarter and then took the lead with a safety a few minutes into the final quarter of the game. Chicago responded with a 64 yard tuchdown pass and a field goal, but the Hahalua weren't going to go down without a fight. With 55 seconds left in the game, they put the ball int he endzone and secured the two point conversion to send the game to overtime. Ultimately, Chicago punched it into the endzone with a Madison Hayes 1 yard run to secure the championship victory, taking both the regular season crown and winning the last game of the season. When I first joined the league, Chicago was honestly a bit of a laughingstock. They were known for making bad trades and were a bit of a meme in my draft class with a handful of users making it public that they refused to play for the Butchers. Then the GM collapse happened and a new regime came into power. The team has completed an impressive turnaround and seeing them hoist the trophy is pretty neat. Congrats to the Butchers, please stop beating my Yeti.

709 words.

[adison]

SHL PT

[KenitohMenara]

4) Sim gonna sim - Is there any phrase more despised in sim league history? It really is a massive dampener on everything, knowing that no matter how hard you work, how much you earn or whatever you try in strategy meetings, it all goes to pot. To put this in the nerdiest way possible, the sim is basically Chaotic Natural. It has no allegiances, it has no friends and usually results should pan out as expected. But then some days it's almost as if the sim comes alive, throws up its hands and just decides a winner arbitrarily. It’s like the gods of order and reason are around a table, looking over work they’ve done and they come to a logical conclusion of things and then Lady Chaos stumbles into the room drunk of her ass, pushes all the notes and planning off the table before collapsing on top of the table, takes another drink and then points at the first logo she sees and declares them the winner. Of all the examples I could find in league history, I decided to go with a very recent case. One where despite any analysis done by either team, the result was surprising and awe-inspiring and the most perfect representation of Lady Chaos’ will in “Sim gonna Sim”

Ultimini 27 - Minnesota Grey Ducks vs Tijuana Luchadores.

Let's get one thing perfectly clear before we continue. The Tijuana Luchadores were a good team. In fact, they were a VERY good team. You don’t go 9-5 and tie the class of south division in the Dallas Birddogs unless you are a talented side. The Luchadores were one of the finest defensive teams in the league, they allowed the third fewest points per game in the league (22.6pts per game), they allowed the third fewest yards per game in the league (348.2 yards per game) and they had the 2nd best rush defense in the lead which allowed only 90.8 yards per game. The front four of Sheriff Woody, Marcus Jones, In Active and Southof TheBorder were a shutdown unit that stop run plays in their tracks (in fact it was because of this play that Sheriff Woody is widely considered the presumptive first overall pick). The two cornerbacks of Jackson and Schwarzer combined for 40 pass deflections, which basically stopped 3 passes a game from 2 players. This was a good defensive unit that was complimented by an emerging offensive unit that felt like a return of Tijuana’s glory days of seasons past.

Leading the offensive core was Quarterback Ishe ReallyInvisible who showed up on the stat sheet in every possible metric. In the 14 game season, he threw for 3388 yards at 59.4 percent completion and 21 touchdowns to only 10 interceptions. He terrorized defences everywhere he went which made him the best QB of the south conference. It also helps that he was accompanied by an emerging all star running back in Miracle whip who bulldozed opponents on his way to collection 1275 yards and 6 touchdowns on the year. He would also flash his speed by getting 5 20+ yard runs on the year showing that he could absolutely take over games when needed to.

What complimented this core was an emerging wide receiver talent in Jason Waterfalls who would be one of only 7 wide receivers to eclipse 1000 yards and would become a key part of their offensive lineup as they would defeat the birddogs 26-13 in the Conference finals to punch their ticket to the ultimini title against the Minnesota Grey Ducks.

So now… if we take all of that to be true, how do you explain what happened in the Ultimini?

Now maybe the winner isn’t surprising as the Grey Ducks were also an excellent team. They were the outright first seeds. Kazimir Oles Jr would put up MVP level numbers for yards and put up 31 touchdowns to 12 interceptions. Sophomore Running Back John Huntsman would have a season for the ages with 1470 rushing yards and 13 touchdowns which put him as the leagues best running back and rookie sensation Mason Malone would put up 1498 receiving yards, putting him deep in the conversation for Wide Receiver of the year and offensive rookie of the year. They had the best pass defenceman and offense in the league and were rated in the top two in pts and yards for offense and defence.

But even taking all of that to be true, that doesn’t explain how the Luchadores not only failed to not only put up a good fight for the championship, but even put up points at all. Minnesota smothered them all game long to the point where they set the record for largest point margin for victory in a championship game and would record the first ever shutout in Ultimini history. It was an awe inspiring sight and for the Luchadores, with all of their talent, skill and tenacity… it remains the best example of Sim gonna Sim

[Alcott]

4:
Sim gonna sim for sure played hard against the Colorado Yeti this year. Granted the team wasn't all star caliber by any means, but to have only 2 wins on the year was a severe deviation from the projections and unofficial seasons simulated that projected 5-6 wins. In order to drop by multiple wins some epic play by the opposition or utterly incompetent play by the team in question must occur. Let's assume that the professional football players in the International Simulation Football League due, in fact, know how to play football competently, and check and see if there were an irregular number of above average performances by the opposing teams against Colorado this year. For this we can take a quick look at the super handy Top Performances tab for Season 34 and very easily see that there were in fact 9 top performances against the Yeti out of an available 60, an amazing 15 percent of all occurrences. This is over double the average that should statistically occur for a 14 team league (7.1 percent for those interested), and what's even more telling is that it was evenly split with 5 offensive players and 4 defensive players receiving the recognition, indicating that it wasn't even the result of an utterly useless phase of the team. Even more incredibly it wasn't as if there were multiple implosions of the team on a given week, with only one (week 9, Panda McKyle and Orpheus Czargyros, San Jose Sabercats) shared week for an offensive and defensive top performance awarded at the same game. The other weeks that the Yeti were utterly dominated were week 1 (John Huntsman, offense Sarasota Sailfish), 3 (Ryan Negs, offense Philadelphia Liberty), 4 (Guy Fields, defense Honolulu Hahalua), 10 (Videl Valor, defense New York Silverbacks), 13 (Dustin Parmlee, offense Yellowknife Wraiths), 15 (Goat Tank, offense Berlin Fire Salamanders), and 16 (Ernest Lover, defense Sarasota Sailfish). And even with all those performances deemed top of the week, only weeks 1 and 10 were really blowouts, all the other games were fairly close (all but one game were decided by one score, with the lone outlier being a 10 point difference), meaning if the near other worldly performances weren't displayed by the opposing teams there is a significant chance that the Yeti even tops its 5 win projections. We can also look at the records of the opposing teams to view if they were really just that superior to the Yeti throughout the year, and this was simply the eventuality of good teams beating up on the bottom of the barrel. Turns out, most of these teams that put up top performances were 500 or below on the year themselves, including the Wraiths, Sabercats, Liberty, and Silverbacks. Those games in particular are of interest to me in how the sim is gonna sim, so we can take a real quick recap and see where things kind of went awry for the Yeti. In week 3, the obvious statistical outlier is the Liberty passing attack, which averaged only 261 yards through the air on the year being able to walk up and down the field to the tune of 424 yards. Even though this was slightly under the average for a Yeti defense that really was a sieve all year that total seems excessive for even an outstanding performance. Additionally being able to run down the final 4 and a half minutes against a team that put up tons of sacks, tackles for loss, and turnovers seems relatively unlucky for the Yeti. There was also the week 13 game against the Wraiths, where in a 5 point game coming in to the final quarter, a Yeti team known for their explosive, if turnover prone, offense failed to gain even a single first down. That just doesn't seem to add up and is quite the "sim gonna sim" ending for a team that just couldn't catch a break.

[Tacoshoppe]

PBE Affilitate Task +2.5 TPE

[Gordon Bombay]

22.Oh boy, it’s never a good idea to put Louis Blondin in charge of anything. Ask the London Royals. If Louis was in charge of the halftime show he would prepare a three-act spectacle. The first act would be a full-length playoff hockey game. It would be the Atlanta infernos versus the Chicago Syndicates in the simulation hockey league.

The second act will be a 30 min guided meditation from the guys of headspace. Mental health is important and it would really help to destress the crowd. There would be an iPod touch plug on the stadium speaker and a voice would guide the crowd through their meditation.

The last act would be a musical performance of the Quebec band called ‘Quebec Redneck Bluegrass project” The band is known for their hype music and it would get the crowd going for the second half. It would be in french because Louis try hard to represent his nation.


157 words.

25.Louis Blondin is born to be a star. He wants to be the best and wants to dominate every statistic. He likes the offensive more than the defensive side of the game. But he would be willing to try being a cornerback or a linebacker.

Here are all the positions that Louis Blondin would be willing to play.

Quarterback: The star on the field. With his earnings, Louis would be certain to be one of the best that ever played. He would throw bombs and rush the ball. The position would suit Louis because he won’t be able to blame anybody for the defeat. Except for his receiver and his offensive line and the defense.

Running back: Louis Blondin is a strong boy and running back would allow him to smash through the defensive line and score touchdowns. He would do it with his massive frame and his lighting speed. He would be the best.


155 words.

27.In the non-bias opinion of Louis Blondin, the best branding award in the whole league belong to two teams. First the London Royals. The fact that it’s a European team is pretty fun. It’s important to grow the game and make the British understand that football is something that is in full contact. The logo is simple and beautiful. It’s noble and brings the class. The color scheme is rare and makes the thing even more prestigious.  I like all the puns we can make with london/medieval names. Another huge point in favor of London is the fact that the logo is a big cat.

The second team with the best branding is San Jose. Surprise another cat and another team where Louis Blondin plays.  Another team use gold in their color scheme. Louis particularly likes the green in the uniform. He feels he can hide on the field and avoid the tackles.


154 words.

30. Shl affiliate

[katarn22]

2.

I did not realize it as a rookie when I joined the league, but the S25 class was definitely a special one for several reasons. To start off, it was simply very large. Second only in size to the S22 class I believe. At the time, though, I sort of figured every class was roughly this size. I quickly learned, though, this was not the case. The large class size was great as it allowed me to interact with so many different members of the league, veterans and rookies alike. This class produced some absolutely awesome members, a few busts, and lots of memories.

As I said before, it was a very large class and that led to me meeting a lot of awesome people. Starting with just my fellow Royals, guys like Swanty, Crunk, and Platanocat were awesome to get to know and learn about the league with. I have very fond memories of learning to sim test with them and trying to figure out who would be going where in the first round of the ISFL draft. Outside of the Royals, I got to know guys like Jimi and Kingsleigher (who unfortunately now is IA, miss you dude) who both are super awesome, down to earth dudes. Also, the tons and tons of fellow S25'ers who I have interacted with from time to time. I really have no bad things to say about any of you.

The S25 class produced a large amount of job-holding league members. For example, Kotasa is the wiki head as well as GM of the Tijuana Luchadores. Pat served as GM for the liberty with his good friend Cody for several seasons as well as helping largely with the sim transition. Swanty, perhaps the greatest of all, is serving as current commissioner of the league! I could go on and I am sure I would forget people, but clearly S25 has some dedicated dudes.

As some of us have already retired and the rest of us are winding down our careers, consideration for the league's hall of fame comes into play. Off the top of my head, I can think of two potential candidates for the hall of fame. One, who I have already mentioned several times, is Rich Triplett, Kotasa's player. He currently leads in career pass deflections, has a Cornerback of the Year award (I think), numerous Pro Bowls and nominations, and career longevity as well. He is very deserving in my eyes. The other player is actually a teammate of Kotasa on the Outlaws and that is Chuck Roth, defensive tackle and player from user zeagle. When you say the phrase "best defensive tackle in recent memory", most league members will probably go to Big Edd. However, Chuck Roth has a similar, if not better, hall of fame resume. I would not be surprised to see at least one of them make it, if not both.

Perhaps most important, though, is retention. While, with any class, there were a good chunk of users whose players did not make it past 57 TPE, I would argue that at least 40% of the class, if not more, are still active and have or plan on recreating. This obviously is crucial for the league as without active users, it will die. I speak only for myself when I say this, but I am sure others feel this sentiment, there was something so engaging for me as a new user about my rookie seasons in both the DSFL and ISFL. I was simply hooked. If it had not been for the S25 class and the wonderful experience they and others in the league afforded me with, I probably would not be here writing this. This current class of rookies is encouraging and reminds me of S25 in ways. I hope that they find the same addiction and enjoyment that I did from the league as a new user.

[Aleris]

22. You’re in charge of entertainment for the Ultimus or Ultimini half-time show. What would you do?

For the Ultimus half-time show I would have an old school gladiator fight just like in the days of the Roman Empire. Yes, the game would have to basically be played in two halves, about a week apart. But that’s not important. What’s important is the fans get their money's worth. First we will have Man vs Nature. Where combatants will fight against all manners of beasts. Tigers, Lions, Dinosaurs. Then we would have the Man vs Man section. Whole armies fighting til the death. We will of course have a small intermission for those who want a little bit less blood. Where we will have a mass dance off and concert. And then we will flood the arena and have them fight a Kraken! Using boats and harpoons. It’ll be a week long event with dancing and free food and all sorts of entertainment! Sure the teams might not like it. But this isn’t about them! It’s about entertaining the people and selling products!!