Why Your Team Sucks: Volume 1 – Myrtle Beach Buccaneers
Let me start by saying that this was originally intended to be a podcast series, but as the 26 year old boomer I am, figuring out how to create a podcast and use recording software took way too much time and effort, so I bailed and this will now be a media series. As it was originally intended to be a podcast, I’ve included an intro song for each team that was intended to play in the opening seconds of the podcast.
Intro Song: Drunken Sailor
The Myrtle Beach Buccaneers have taken the DSFL by storm over the past few years with their swashbuckling ways and generally impressive DSFL dominance. That being said, I’m not writing this article to tell you about their positives. I’m making this series to tell you why they indeed suck, and you shouldn’t like them.
Let’s start with a little history lesson on the Myrtle Beach Bucs. When they were founded all the way back in Season 3, the Myrtle Beach Bucs were still known as the Chicago Blues. The Blues unfortunately will not be featured in this article, rather they’ll appear in my next addition to the series that features the teams from Chicago. They really deserve to have their own mini-feature for their own mini-existence.
In Season 5, the Blues relocated to Palm Beach where they became the Solar Bears (a really good team name btw, I wonder where they thought of it). The new team that was established would become one of two bot teams, along with the Norfolk SeaWolves. In their first season as the new bot team in Palm Beach, the Solar Bears would leverage every sim exploit they were able to en route to hoisting the Season 5 Ultimini trophy. This would be their greatest achievement for many many seasons as new rules were introduced to ensure that bot teams would suck forever and that the sim couldn’t be exploited in the same way in the future. Between the 8-5-1 championship winning season of Season 5 and their reactivation into human team status in Season 14, the Solar Bears managed records of 5-9, 4-10, 3-11, 1-12-1, 3-11, 4-10, 4-10, and 4-10. This was a cumulative 28-83-1 stretch for the bot team, and HO rejoiced at the noob team they had created.
Season 14 brought new life to the Solar Bears. Both them and Norfolk would become human player teams again for the first time since Season 4. This was the first time that any human players ever represented the Solar Bears franchise. In Season 14, Palm Beach would draft several future NSFL superstars including Chase Jensen of the Austin Copperheads, Baltimore RB Ludicolo Bigby, San Jose QB Dan Wright, Philly WR Nacho Varga, Colorado Linebacker Toney Gabagool, legendary Baltimore safety Fatih Terim, and star Arizona safety Lamont McKinnie. With all of this incredible talent available to them, the Palm Beach leadership was able to lead them to a 3-11 record. Only a single game worse than the bot team did the year before! The Palm Beach Solar Bears were also embroiled in the biggest controversy of the DSFL’s Season 14. The Trey Willie incident. When playing the dominant San Antonio Marshals team who would finish the season 13-1, Palm Beach found themselves in the lead with only a few minutes left in the game. That’s when the Marshals sent out NSFL HoF wide receiver Trey Willie with several maxed-out attributes to catch the game winning TD from Cooter Bigsby as time expired. After that hard-fought game, to lose like that was tough. The ruling that came down from HO? Replay the game. In the replay they were crushed by the Marshals and the rest of the league carried on like it hadn’t happened. The legend of Willie-gate was born.
Season 15 would go a little better for the Solar Bears. Despite losing a few key players to the NSFL, Palm beach had reloaded again in the Season 15 DSFL draft. Adding future NSFL stars like Austin QB Easton Cole, Austin RB Mako Mendonca, and Arizona Outlaw receiver Saba Donut. With this team and a QB who actually invested in improving throughout the course of the season, Palm Beach was able to make the playoffs with a respectable 7-6-1 record. However, they were facing a stout Tijuana team on the road to start things off. Palm Beach pulled an upset that day and earned a trip to the Ultimini for the first time since Season 5. Once they’d reached the Ultimini the team had gelled and was beginning to look unstoppable. They were able to hoist the trophy that year, an achievement the team hasn’t been close to doing again since.
Season 16 it was back to bot teams for Palm Beach and Norfolk alike. In an uneventful season, the Palm Beach bots went 2-12. Season 17 had a big class again, thus the Solar Bears were back! However they drafted extremely poorly and ended up going 4-10 in their last season in Palm Beach.
By Season 18 nobody still remembered the Palm Beach championship team of 3 seasons earlier, and the team’s leadership ditched the “nice to visit, but wouldn’t want to live there” vibes of Palm Beach for the “wouldn’t want to visit either” vibes of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The Buccaneers as we know them today were born! Season 18 would not be as illustrious as the new team hoped however as they sputtered to a 2-12 record that goes down as one of the worst seasons I’ve ever seen from a human controlled DSFL team. At least this season they were able to acquire some talent and put in place the building blocks of the team you know today. Philly TE Avon Blocksdale Jr., SJS WR Deyondre Thomas-Fox, SJS RB Quindarius Tyerucker, OCO CB Kasey Dream, and the controversial lifetime ban receipient Sweet James Jones all joined the Myrtle Beach squad this season.
In Season 19, things really took off for Myrtle Beach. With new QB Brock Phoenix (now starting for Philly in the NSFL), the Bucs were able to go 10-4 and make the playoffs. Where they were promptly sent home by a strong Tijuana squad who went on to lose in the Ultimini. Truly a great accomplishment for Myrtle Beach! Their hype in Season 20 is no doubt justified!
Now onto the meat and potatoes of this journey. Why do the Myrtle Beach Buccaneers suck? I thought this would be a hard question to answer as I really didn’t know much about the team, but as I started digging I found plenty of examples.
Let’s start off with their branding. I really respect the bravery of whoever led the charge on this rebranding. You took the laziest branding in the NSFL/DSFL space that was swiped off of an existing minor league hockey team (but in a different city in Florida), and successfully stole an NFL team name and assigned it to a new city as well. Nice work! Must’ve been tough coming up with that idea. The logo however is where they chose to get truly creative. I can’t say for certain, but I’m 85% sure that the logo is stolen off one of the background cars from 2 Fast 2 Furious. I watched it several times to confirm but couldn’t get a clear enough screenshot, so you’ll just have to trust me on that. My general feeling is that the brand would be more appropriate for a pirate themed EDM festival (which would make more sense to be located in Myrtle Beach than a football team). At least then whoever created the logo would be able to fall back on the excuse that they were a quarter of shrooms deep when they designed it. I can actually see it feeling like a really good idea in that situation.
Now the second reason is that the city they chose couldn’t be any worse of a place. Warning: If there are any proud Myrtle Beach natives reading this I’d skip to the next paragraph. Settled in the beautiful New Jersey of the South, Dirty Myrtle, or simply the Dyrtle is a city primarily propped up by seasonal tourism, which everyone knows makes for great crowds at football games. Every summer, stupid people from all over the east coast and flyover states alike flock to the Redneck Riviera hoping to get some sun, or a sloppy one-hour stand in an alley behind the famous boardwalk. The Dumpster of the Cackalackeys is where America’s underage drinking culture, Duck Dynasty watchers, and old white men who just want to play golf and ogle teens on family vacation in their bikinis all join in perfect harmony to create a shithole of epic proportions. Then there’s the side that only locals really get to experience. “The Horror of Horry County” has tons of problems of its own. No real economy for half of the year, rising sea levels, one of the most polluted beaches you’ll ever see (unless you like the feeling of sand AND cigarette butts under your feet), and don’t forget the type of issues that lead to the nickname “Murder Beach”. So yeah, in summation, Myrtle Beach is a terrible place for a football team and a terrible place in general unless you’re looking for an unwanted pregnancy or a DUI on an off-brand Vespa.
Now you’ve already seen the illustrious record of the Palm Beach Polar Bears presented on here, but I want to take the accusation a bit deeper and point to the culture of losing in Myrtle Beach. In total since Season 5, this team has mustered just 70 wins in 218 games played for a winning percentage of 32.1%. Now you might think it’s unfair to call it a culture of losing, after all it was a bot team for so many years. However, in years that PB/MB weren’t bot teams their total record is 32-45-1 which results in a slightly higher win percentage of 40.5%. Sounds like they haven’t fared much better under human leadership after all. Think about the fact that all of the team’s hype this season is centered around the fact that they made the playoffs as one of two user teams in their division last season and were promptly sent back to Myrtle with their tails between their legs by a team that wasn’t even crowned champs themselves. That being said, I’ll admit the current crop of players is pretty good, it even got me wondering about what practices the GMs were using to get so much talent on one team. That’s actually where I discovered their open locker room that they invite all rookies into and engage in a process I like to call “soft-tampering” aka tampering without a paper trail. By having other team’s players in their locker room, the players can make friends in their draft class and all the other nice things that rookie chat already does, but they can also subtly pressure players to request trades or even holdout. Now let’s be honest, team locker rooms shouldn’t be open in the first place. You should be able to allow prospects in on a temporary basis, or allow former players in on a permanent basis. Otherwise it should be the players from your team in there. There are enough general social chats in the league (monitored by HO members), that there’s literally zero need for one more. Also through my digging for dirt, I discovered the practice of encouraging players to push to get sent down by their NSFL team. Now this isn’t illegal, or close to it, it’s just selfish. Young players, I know the DSFL is fun, and all you know right now, but you don’t make your legacy there. You do it in the big leagues. Nobody gives a shit if you put up big stats in the DSFL or have the best record. Winning awards might get you recognition within your draft class, and championships are a nice flex, but in all likelihood, you’ll never win one of those in Myrtle Beach (see above). Also nobody likes senddowns or senddown teams, and Myrtle Beach would be nothing without the senddowns.
Now we get to the weird stuff about the Bucs. Why does the entire team have porn names? To list a few:
[div align=\\\"center\\\"]“Crack” Torres
Dillon Cheer
“Tripod” Smirh
Larry Longshot
Alyx Sabor
Vince Hammerson
Big Jim Slade
Chas Thadsson
JimJam FlimFlam
Dingus Hunk
Groovy Johnson
Kacey Dream[/div]
Is the entire team made up of teenage boys? I haven’t been in the famous open locker room, but it must resemble a high school locker room before gym class with the kind of names in here. The MB roster on the forums looks like the cast list to a movie where Dillon Cheer, Alyx Sabor, and Kacey Dream are about to suffer serious psychological trauma. I know, I know, Kacey Dream is in the NSFL now, but as he’s still a GM he’s fair game. Is he serious with that name? That name could be slapped on to any porn girl and not a single person would bat an eye. Makes me think this whole team was about to rub one out when they stumbled upon the NSFL forums and decided to create a player.
Now I know I may have toed the boundaries for what is allowed in media with some of those criticisms, but I’d like to generate some goodwill with whoever might have a problem with the things I said in this next section. Qualifications.
Now while this team has a history of being losers, I’m a Norfolk alum, so always remember there’s still one team with a culture of losing worse than yours MB. As for my criticisms of the GMs, I hope that it’s just me being suspicious and paranoid following the recent events and shady discord happenings. I’m just being as transparent and honest as possible about my feelings toward the team in question. Shout out to @Frostbite, he seems like a good guy and I embrace the rivalry between our current and former DSFL teams in the future.
Now shout outs to all of the PB/MB alums I’ve enjoyed being a member of this league with over the past 11 months:
Lamont McKinnie, @SouljaBoy2007, S15 guy and all-around great teammate in Arizona. Nothing but love for you man.
Nacho Varga, @Fordhammer, another S15 guy, positive and respectful competitor at all times. Mad respect for this man.
Fatih Terim, Eco has done so much for this league and has always been truly transparent and open with me as a friend as well as a HO member. He will be missed.
Avon Barksdale Jr., @iamslm22,Slm is the league owner and the man who drafted me in the 15th round of the DSFL draft. I’ve learned a lot from him over my sim league career and have the highest level of respect for him.
Smaller shoutout to these guys I don’t know as well but have only had good interactions with so far:
Chase Jensen, @dizzyDC
Ludicolo Bigby, @TheWoZy
Dan Wright, @nickyvmlp
Easton Cole, @JKortesi81
Saba Donut, @SabaDonutMan
Deyondre Thomas-Fox, @`AndrewWarren13`
I wish the Bucs nothing but the best in the future, I’d be happy to see them finish comfortably in second place right below Norfolk and above Tijuana for years to come.
Next up… the Chicago Butchers…
Let me start by saying that this was originally intended to be a podcast series, but as the 26 year old boomer I am, figuring out how to create a podcast and use recording software took way too much time and effort, so I bailed and this will now be a media series. As it was originally intended to be a podcast, I’ve included an intro song for each team that was intended to play in the opening seconds of the podcast.
Intro Song: Drunken Sailor
The Myrtle Beach Buccaneers have taken the DSFL by storm over the past few years with their swashbuckling ways and generally impressive DSFL dominance. That being said, I’m not writing this article to tell you about their positives. I’m making this series to tell you why they indeed suck, and you shouldn’t like them.
Let’s start with a little history lesson on the Myrtle Beach Bucs. When they were founded all the way back in Season 3, the Myrtle Beach Bucs were still known as the Chicago Blues. The Blues unfortunately will not be featured in this article, rather they’ll appear in my next addition to the series that features the teams from Chicago. They really deserve to have their own mini-feature for their own mini-existence.
In Season 5, the Blues relocated to Palm Beach where they became the Solar Bears (a really good team name btw, I wonder where they thought of it). The new team that was established would become one of two bot teams, along with the Norfolk SeaWolves. In their first season as the new bot team in Palm Beach, the Solar Bears would leverage every sim exploit they were able to en route to hoisting the Season 5 Ultimini trophy. This would be their greatest achievement for many many seasons as new rules were introduced to ensure that bot teams would suck forever and that the sim couldn’t be exploited in the same way in the future. Between the 8-5-1 championship winning season of Season 5 and their reactivation into human team status in Season 14, the Solar Bears managed records of 5-9, 4-10, 3-11, 1-12-1, 3-11, 4-10, 4-10, and 4-10. This was a cumulative 28-83-1 stretch for the bot team, and HO rejoiced at the noob team they had created.
Season 14 brought new life to the Solar Bears. Both them and Norfolk would become human player teams again for the first time since Season 4. This was the first time that any human players ever represented the Solar Bears franchise. In Season 14, Palm Beach would draft several future NSFL superstars including Chase Jensen of the Austin Copperheads, Baltimore RB Ludicolo Bigby, San Jose QB Dan Wright, Philly WR Nacho Varga, Colorado Linebacker Toney Gabagool, legendary Baltimore safety Fatih Terim, and star Arizona safety Lamont McKinnie. With all of this incredible talent available to them, the Palm Beach leadership was able to lead them to a 3-11 record. Only a single game worse than the bot team did the year before! The Palm Beach Solar Bears were also embroiled in the biggest controversy of the DSFL’s Season 14. The Trey Willie incident. When playing the dominant San Antonio Marshals team who would finish the season 13-1, Palm Beach found themselves in the lead with only a few minutes left in the game. That’s when the Marshals sent out NSFL HoF wide receiver Trey Willie with several maxed-out attributes to catch the game winning TD from Cooter Bigsby as time expired. After that hard-fought game, to lose like that was tough. The ruling that came down from HO? Replay the game. In the replay they were crushed by the Marshals and the rest of the league carried on like it hadn’t happened. The legend of Willie-gate was born.
Season 15 would go a little better for the Solar Bears. Despite losing a few key players to the NSFL, Palm beach had reloaded again in the Season 15 DSFL draft. Adding future NSFL stars like Austin QB Easton Cole, Austin RB Mako Mendonca, and Arizona Outlaw receiver Saba Donut. With this team and a QB who actually invested in improving throughout the course of the season, Palm Beach was able to make the playoffs with a respectable 7-6-1 record. However, they were facing a stout Tijuana team on the road to start things off. Palm Beach pulled an upset that day and earned a trip to the Ultimini for the first time since Season 5. Once they’d reached the Ultimini the team had gelled and was beginning to look unstoppable. They were able to hoist the trophy that year, an achievement the team hasn’t been close to doing again since.
Season 16 it was back to bot teams for Palm Beach and Norfolk alike. In an uneventful season, the Palm Beach bots went 2-12. Season 17 had a big class again, thus the Solar Bears were back! However they drafted extremely poorly and ended up going 4-10 in their last season in Palm Beach.
By Season 18 nobody still remembered the Palm Beach championship team of 3 seasons earlier, and the team’s leadership ditched the “nice to visit, but wouldn’t want to live there” vibes of Palm Beach for the “wouldn’t want to visit either” vibes of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The Buccaneers as we know them today were born! Season 18 would not be as illustrious as the new team hoped however as they sputtered to a 2-12 record that goes down as one of the worst seasons I’ve ever seen from a human controlled DSFL team. At least this season they were able to acquire some talent and put in place the building blocks of the team you know today. Philly TE Avon Blocksdale Jr., SJS WR Deyondre Thomas-Fox, SJS RB Quindarius Tyerucker, OCO CB Kasey Dream, and the controversial lifetime ban receipient Sweet James Jones all joined the Myrtle Beach squad this season.
In Season 19, things really took off for Myrtle Beach. With new QB Brock Phoenix (now starting for Philly in the NSFL), the Bucs were able to go 10-4 and make the playoffs. Where they were promptly sent home by a strong Tijuana squad who went on to lose in the Ultimini. Truly a great accomplishment for Myrtle Beach! Their hype in Season 20 is no doubt justified!
Now onto the meat and potatoes of this journey. Why do the Myrtle Beach Buccaneers suck? I thought this would be a hard question to answer as I really didn’t know much about the team, but as I started digging I found plenty of examples.
Let’s start off with their branding. I really respect the bravery of whoever led the charge on this rebranding. You took the laziest branding in the NSFL/DSFL space that was swiped off of an existing minor league hockey team (but in a different city in Florida), and successfully stole an NFL team name and assigned it to a new city as well. Nice work! Must’ve been tough coming up with that idea. The logo however is where they chose to get truly creative. I can’t say for certain, but I’m 85% sure that the logo is stolen off one of the background cars from 2 Fast 2 Furious. I watched it several times to confirm but couldn’t get a clear enough screenshot, so you’ll just have to trust me on that. My general feeling is that the brand would be more appropriate for a pirate themed EDM festival (which would make more sense to be located in Myrtle Beach than a football team). At least then whoever created the logo would be able to fall back on the excuse that they were a quarter of shrooms deep when they designed it. I can actually see it feeling like a really good idea in that situation.
Now the second reason is that the city they chose couldn’t be any worse of a place. Warning: If there are any proud Myrtle Beach natives reading this I’d skip to the next paragraph. Settled in the beautiful New Jersey of the South, Dirty Myrtle, or simply the Dyrtle is a city primarily propped up by seasonal tourism, which everyone knows makes for great crowds at football games. Every summer, stupid people from all over the east coast and flyover states alike flock to the Redneck Riviera hoping to get some sun, or a sloppy one-hour stand in an alley behind the famous boardwalk. The Dumpster of the Cackalackeys is where America’s underage drinking culture, Duck Dynasty watchers, and old white men who just want to play golf and ogle teens on family vacation in their bikinis all join in perfect harmony to create a shithole of epic proportions. Then there’s the side that only locals really get to experience. “The Horror of Horry County” has tons of problems of its own. No real economy for half of the year, rising sea levels, one of the most polluted beaches you’ll ever see (unless you like the feeling of sand AND cigarette butts under your feet), and don’t forget the type of issues that lead to the nickname “Murder Beach”. So yeah, in summation, Myrtle Beach is a terrible place for a football team and a terrible place in general unless you’re looking for an unwanted pregnancy or a DUI on an off-brand Vespa.
Now you’ve already seen the illustrious record of the Palm Beach Polar Bears presented on here, but I want to take the accusation a bit deeper and point to the culture of losing in Myrtle Beach. In total since Season 5, this team has mustered just 70 wins in 218 games played for a winning percentage of 32.1%. Now you might think it’s unfair to call it a culture of losing, after all it was a bot team for so many years. However, in years that PB/MB weren’t bot teams their total record is 32-45-1 which results in a slightly higher win percentage of 40.5%. Sounds like they haven’t fared much better under human leadership after all. Think about the fact that all of the team’s hype this season is centered around the fact that they made the playoffs as one of two user teams in their division last season and were promptly sent back to Myrtle with their tails between their legs by a team that wasn’t even crowned champs themselves. That being said, I’ll admit the current crop of players is pretty good, it even got me wondering about what practices the GMs were using to get so much talent on one team. That’s actually where I discovered their open locker room that they invite all rookies into and engage in a process I like to call “soft-tampering” aka tampering without a paper trail. By having other team’s players in their locker room, the players can make friends in their draft class and all the other nice things that rookie chat already does, but they can also subtly pressure players to request trades or even holdout. Now let’s be honest, team locker rooms shouldn’t be open in the first place. You should be able to allow prospects in on a temporary basis, or allow former players in on a permanent basis. Otherwise it should be the players from your team in there. There are enough general social chats in the league (monitored by HO members), that there’s literally zero need for one more. Also through my digging for dirt, I discovered the practice of encouraging players to push to get sent down by their NSFL team. Now this isn’t illegal, or close to it, it’s just selfish. Young players, I know the DSFL is fun, and all you know right now, but you don’t make your legacy there. You do it in the big leagues. Nobody gives a shit if you put up big stats in the DSFL or have the best record. Winning awards might get you recognition within your draft class, and championships are a nice flex, but in all likelihood, you’ll never win one of those in Myrtle Beach (see above). Also nobody likes senddowns or senddown teams, and Myrtle Beach would be nothing without the senddowns.
Now we get to the weird stuff about the Bucs. Why does the entire team have porn names? To list a few:
[div align=\\\"center\\\"]“Crack” Torres
Dillon Cheer
“Tripod” Smirh
Larry Longshot
Alyx Sabor
Vince Hammerson
Big Jim Slade
Chas Thadsson
JimJam FlimFlam
Dingus Hunk
Groovy Johnson
Kacey Dream[/div]
Is the entire team made up of teenage boys? I haven’t been in the famous open locker room, but it must resemble a high school locker room before gym class with the kind of names in here. The MB roster on the forums looks like the cast list to a movie where Dillon Cheer, Alyx Sabor, and Kacey Dream are about to suffer serious psychological trauma. I know, I know, Kacey Dream is in the NSFL now, but as he’s still a GM he’s fair game. Is he serious with that name? That name could be slapped on to any porn girl and not a single person would bat an eye. Makes me think this whole team was about to rub one out when they stumbled upon the NSFL forums and decided to create a player.
Now I know I may have toed the boundaries for what is allowed in media with some of those criticisms, but I’d like to generate some goodwill with whoever might have a problem with the things I said in this next section. Qualifications.
Now while this team has a history of being losers, I’m a Norfolk alum, so always remember there’s still one team with a culture of losing worse than yours MB. As for my criticisms of the GMs, I hope that it’s just me being suspicious and paranoid following the recent events and shady discord happenings. I’m just being as transparent and honest as possible about my feelings toward the team in question. Shout out to @Frostbite, he seems like a good guy and I embrace the rivalry between our current and former DSFL teams in the future.
Now shout outs to all of the PB/MB alums I’ve enjoyed being a member of this league with over the past 11 months:
Lamont McKinnie, @SouljaBoy2007, S15 guy and all-around great teammate in Arizona. Nothing but love for you man.
Nacho Varga, @Fordhammer, another S15 guy, positive and respectful competitor at all times. Mad respect for this man.
Fatih Terim, Eco has done so much for this league and has always been truly transparent and open with me as a friend as well as a HO member. He will be missed.
Avon Barksdale Jr., @iamslm22,Slm is the league owner and the man who drafted me in the 15th round of the DSFL draft. I’ve learned a lot from him over my sim league career and have the highest level of respect for him.
Smaller shoutout to these guys I don’t know as well but have only had good interactions with so far:
Chase Jensen, @dizzyDC
Ludicolo Bigby, @TheWoZy
Dan Wright, @nickyvmlp
Easton Cole, @JKortesi81
Saba Donut, @SabaDonutMan
Deyondre Thomas-Fox, @`AndrewWarren13`
I wish the Bucs nothing but the best in the future, I’d be happy to see them finish comfortably in second place right below Norfolk and above Tijuana for years to come.
Next up… the Chicago Butchers…
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