(S32) Ultimus Week

[sarah]

task 16



What I do bring in to a locker room is prior sim league experience and some locker room activity. I can be a presence and I expect to be one of the more stable earners that you can find within a locker room, especially as someone who is just a kicker. Now, I do not expect to go at the front of the draft, and quite frankly I think it would be pretty dumb to pick me in the upper rounds let alone the first round, but for someone to just more or less have someone you can kind of depend on, why not double doink? you could do far worse than to pick up the perma kicker sometimes. especially considering many other positions require actual pressure and i am just gonna be there, chilling, being on the sidelines being the cheerleader. hell, with the new ass sim i cant even see myself kick, all i will know is if yall did well and celebrate that with the team.





task 30



PBE affiliate (claiming 3 tasks)

[teddyoojo]

32. What is your team doing this holiday season to help out the community?

So as we maybe probably all know, Yellowknife is a rather small community of less than 20 thousand people, therefore we have something big planned for the entire yellowknife community.
Its gonna be a huge 3 day christmas party throughout the entire town of yellowknife, with daily presents for every. single. citizen. of yellowknife. Since yellowknife is quite a mining hub in the northwest of canada (thanks wikipedia) one of the gifts will be a brand new copy of Minecraft for every citizen. The yellowknife wraiths will also host their own minecraft server with space for every citizen of yellowknife to play simultaniously. However, one odd thing that will happen is future star wr bernd d brot will already be celebrating christmas on the 24th, as that is the actual correct date to celebrate christmas, therefore the party will start a day early before all those americans and canadians celebrate their incorrect christmas day.

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20. Make a scouting report for any of the ISFL or DSFL draftees. Show their stats, abilities, TPE, or highlights. Written or graphic option available.

So the prospect i have spent many an hour on scouting for this upcoming ISFL draft is the legendary "lane frost". Honestly, i dont really have much information about his stats, abilities, TPE or highlights, because lets be real, these ISFL gms dont really care about that stuff one way or the other.
But what really is important with this 5 star recruit coming out of the DSFL is his helmet kicking ability. This boi has kicked more helmets than the entirety of this draft class combined and that to me shows an incredible work ethic. He has hurt himself plenty of times kicking a helmet, yet he remains stubborn in his pursuit of the total domination and destruction of his head protection equipment. And that stuff deserves praise. If lane frost doesnt go 1oa im going to kick 100 helmets live on stream, and thats a promise. Watch out ISFL, and hide yo wife and helmets.

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9. Through a random lottery drawing, you have been named the league's new commisioner for a day. Congrats! What improvements would you make to the league if you had the power to do whatever you wanted?

Its not really a surprise i have won the drawing, since luck is in my nature. And boy am I going to be the greatest 1 day commissioner this league has ever seen. I hope yall are ready for this.
My first action as the commissioner would be to outlaw all UberBJ's from not earning alot of TPE. I think this league has gone on way too long with him just cruising by and not putting in the work smh my head.
Action number two would be very simple, just remove OL from the game. Make it BOT only, cmon all u O- line fanatics, its not a cool position in a fantasy sim, be real for a second here.
Action number three would be somewhat a bit more controversial than the obvious removal of Oline. And maybe its also the only real suggestion. Try and make a proper salary cap working. I Honestly dont like the fact, that Free Agency is so heavily leaning towards certain teams, we have seen offseasons where all the good free agents just went to the exact same team, basically scooping up all them high TPE dudes and leaving quite an unbalance in talent distribution among the league.
Action number four would be to introduce compensatory picks to the league. Your teams first 3 picks have suddenly went inactive after drafting them and never got called up to the league? You get one or two nice 2-4th round compensatory picks in the next ISFL draft. In an online simulation football league its really not easy to predict what people will do, suddenly people go inactive for one reason or the other, some system to create parity between teams would greatly help make competition fairer.

The last and maybe most important action of my limited rule would be to ban the kicking of helmets. Helmets are equipment too, and while they may not have feeling the brutal kicking of helmets has gone unpunished for way too long and I will not stand for it as commish.

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[Frostbite]

Long Form Tasks 
2)

I believe that the S31 draft class is one of if not the best draft class in terms of positional talent spread throughout, and potential HoF players. The best and most obvious part of this draft class is the trio of elite QBs. Wendell Sailor, Malcolm Savage, and Carter Knight are all some of the best DSFL QBs already, and their transition to the ISFL should go smoothly. All 3 of these QBs will be in the ISFL in this upcoming season, and they will all be taking over a S32 playoff team. These are teams that have been elite, and really never had a “bad QB,’ outside of perhaps their first few seasons of existence. The fact that there is a draft class that has this talent at the QB spot is insane, and this class will have several MVPs by the time their careers finish. While one may look at the S31 class’s RB core and think it is poor, they would be correct. The RB group as a whole is lacking quite a bit for S31, however they have the former first round pick Ken Oath at RB, and with his last player being an elite TE, I don’t see why Ken Oath can’t be an elite RB down the line. The backups all appear to have gone IA, but Lot Smith was a longtime DSFL monster and proved his worth there before he eventually would go to the ISFL and go IA. Unfortunate to see, as his career potential was limitless. The WR core of this S31 class is really what seals the deal on this class being the best of all the pre-regression classes. There are 7 WRs currently on an ISFL roster already, and 6 of them are still active and over 450 TPE. There is HO, there are former GMs, there are current GMs, there are ordinary players, this WR class has it all. Stags obviously leads the class, and her future connections to fellow S31 player Wendell Sailor will most definitely be exciting to watch in the future. And then there is the ROTY (pending) Jaycee Higgins, who has shown already that he can be an elite receiver at the ISFL level, and that he is physically gifted. This WR class will easily own the pro bowl in only 2-3 seasons.While the TE class does lack in quality and quantity, it does have a DSFL GM in its midst, and he is realistically the only good TE from S31. Mark Goodhead is a future ISFL star, and I expect his name to be on the ROTY ballot in this upcoming season when he gets called up. The other TEs are lackluster, with none even surpassing the DSFL cap. However now we get to my favorite part about this elite S31 draft class… The offensive line. The S31 draft class has an entire human OL, and realistically it is a very good OL, that can argue being better than some ISFL teams OL already. Beniri and Manta Ray lead the way, as they pave the way for Cobra Kai in HON, however Carimi, Zoltan, and Acho Jr all are still active and are a great asset to their ISFL team. The defensive side of this draft class is also superb, with an active at every single position, with places like the LB spot having arguably the best young core in the entire league. While I am running out of a time/words for this article, I rest my case that the S31 draft class will go down in history as the best draft class of our generation, and potentially be the most efficient (HoF/total players) in history. Go S31!

[DrChops]

13. Expansion Expansion Expansion! Tell us why you think the league should expand / not expand or include any ideas (in words) for team branding ideas you have or team locations. (300 words)

Last Ultimus, I believe this exact prompt was given for Ultimus Week and I choose to do a write up for it. In that write up, I explained why the leagued should expand and how that would improve the league experience on a variety of different levels. One of the arguments I made suggested that more teams mean people can create players that play more in demand roles like QB and LB. A larger league would also allow for a larger playoff field, giving more players the ability to experience post season games. Further, open roster spots can be filled with bots with lower stats than active players, which accomplishes two roles: fills spots in positions that no one wants to play while also giving the players the feeling that they are more impactful of any given game, since their stats are higher than the bots. However, my opinion has changed on this topic for a variety of different reasons, which I will discuss below.

Increasing the number of teams would be great, there is no question. That would be nice, but more teams also requires more active players, which can be very difficult to maintain in an online environment were people will commonly 'ghost' the league one day. The most vital question that needs to be addressed before the league can be expanded is if the number of active players is enough to sustain the size of the league. I do not have the numbers in front of me, but it does seem that recent draft classes have been fairly small, not quite enough to plan on creating new teams. In addition, the DSFL feels very thin on human players, there are many bots that play key positions on DSFL rosters. This is probably the most existential issue an online game like this one can face, as part of the fun of the league is having your player square off against other human players. If it starts appearing that player counts are dropping since more roster spots are filled by bots, than people may lose interest and also drop out.

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? (150 words)

There are many different rule changes you hear about frequently in the media that could be enacted to help improve the game of football, like replacing kickoffs with punts, making changes to roughing the passer calls or OT rules,. However, my biggest grip with the game has to be how penalties are handled and how anti-climatic it can be to see an awesome play called back by a penalty. The worst penalty at killing excitement is holding, specifically on offensive linemen. These calls are awful and are not enforced fairly, as blatant holds go uncalled while borderline holds are. They need to give OL players gloves that make it impossible to hold and stop wasting our time with these calls. This would be very controversial, and many OL players would likely complain. However, it needs to be done to improve the viewing experience for everyone and get rid of the 'is there a flag?!' thought after every single play. I am also a fan of no gloves, just remove holding from being a penalty.

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. (150 words)

Awards should be given out based, at least partly, on polls conducted on this forum. No 'back room' or other forces manipulating the outcome. I suggest this idea with full knowledge that it is a bad idea and could easily be abused, but I think it would be fun as different players have to campaign to get awards. All votes cast for the awards should be public, so someone can easily go back to see if the election was fixed. One of the facts of life is that bias exists and we can never remove it from any system that humans are a part of. People will always favor players from their team or their friends even if they are not aware of it. One way to at least expose bias is to have everything be public so you know exactly who is voting for who. This might be difficult if a single team decides to vote as a block for their players. This could easily be counteracted by other teams seeing this, and responding in kind. While this would dilute the legitimacy of the various 'Best ___ of the season' awards, it could generate comradery among teams and generate more rivalries, which is only good for the league.

[KaleSalad]

Prompt 4: Sim going to Sim.

So this is something I grew accustomed to in the SHL seemed like despite hours of testing you always ended up getting that low role and what you thought was impossible would happen. It appears it is just a simulation thing all together though. ISFL appears to be suffering from the same fate in my honest opinion. Don’t get me wrong I think it is great to be able to have upsets happen and help keep the games interesting and attention to the league in general but sometimes when you are on the losing end of things its pretty tough pill to swallow. Take this season for example, This being my first full season in the league I found things don’t always go according to plan especially when the “sim is going to sim” watching the games live and on rematches it makes little to no sense to me why sometimes the plays that are chosen when are called. You are on your own one-yard line lets drop back for a deep pass? Why not? Oh look a safety I am shocked by this outcome. Why not run the ball and get out of the shadow of your own goal posts? Why on 4th and 4 do you decide to run the ball in a close game instead of punt? Who knows? These are just a couple examples of the weird things I have seen that the sim has decided to do. As someone that doesn’t know the sim engine or anything I assume there is some sort of slider that would let you determine how much you want to gamble in these situations? I mean sometimes they do pay off in the end and really catch a team by surprise but for the most part from what I have witnesses this is not the case. I sometimes wish you were able to change up the game plan or something depending on your lead or the first part of the game much like some halftime adjustments. Though having stuff like this happens does make things more interesting in the bigger scheme of things I think. The other major thing I have found that made no sense to me was in the Conference championship game of the DSFL Tijuana vs Norfolk. I was blow away by the officiating that happened. Don’t take this as a sore loser type whine or anything as it was a good battle back and forth regardless and the two best teams going at it mean one of them did have to lose. But how on earth did Tijuana get 90 yards in penalties that game? Going back during the entire season I don’t believe we ever had a single game that we had more then 50 yards in penalties. What changed in this playoff game? Again I ask what the hell was the sim doing!? Being there are more rookies on the Tijuana is there some underlying idea that they had more pressure and therefore would commit more infractions? It felt to me that these penalties happened at the most inopportune times and really made the difference in the game.  It was a sad way to end the season but again you look at it and all you can say is sim going to sim. Overall I have loved the sim for the most part, despite yelling at the stream during that last game, it is a lot of fun and makes it a lot more entertaining to watch. In the end of it all its always great when the Sim ends up going in your favor and you get the good end of the “Sim Gods” as I call it, but really sucks when you are the bad end of it all. As someone that has been on both sides of it this far I can honestly say if nothing else it makes for a more interesting league experience.

WC: 654

[slothfacekilla]

Four PBE Champions Week Tasks

[LB3737]

WSBL CW

[xtitanxmvpx]

WSBL Affiliate CW

You guys fucking rock!

[PugWalrus]

Prompt 1:

The playoff race ended up with a few surprises this season. Both of the two conference champions from last season missed the playoffs badly. The DSFL changes wildly fast, but no one expected a team like Kansas City to fall off so heavily. For my Pythons, we sorta came out of nowhere...

We ended last season 6-7-1, missing the playoffs by one game. In addition to this, we lost some HEAVY contributors on both sides of the ball to ISFL callups. On the offense, we lost one of our only active offensive contributors in WR Tay Swizzle. Leaving TE Mark Goodhead as our only active receiving threat to start the season. We also lost All-Pro offensive lineman Michael Carimi, as well as having our only RB options go inactive halfway through the season. On the defensive side of the ball, we lost SS Jay Spears, and DRotY candidate LB Pasta The Turtle, cutting Portland's blossoming Spicy Pasta LB duo short. 

With these challenges, we set out to patch a LOT of holes in the draft. Our primary focus was revitalizing our offense. In the first round (3rd overall), we took RB The Stig. Stig has been an absolute game-changer for us. Not only is he a fantastic RB, and one of the strongest candidates for Offensive Rookie of the Year, he is constantly working on our offensive play-calling and making key adjustments week in and week out to optimize our season. In the 2nd round, we also took GM pick WR DeAndre King. Who has fit in perfectly as our team's leading receiver alongside TE Mark Goodhead. 

In addition to the draft, our waiver wire pickups have been absolute KEY contributors to both sides of the ball. WR "Captain" Billy Stinkwater has been a clutch WR2, starting off his career in very promising fashion. Rookie CB Simon The Frog has been a key addition to the secondary, getting us some key turnovers to close out games. LB Spot Robodog also has been a great fill-in at the empty LB slot early in his career, already scoring a touchdown on a pick six as well. Though they're just starting their careers, these rookie waiver contributions have been invaluable to us and give us the depth we needed to get to the Ultimini. 

Behind these contributions, alongside the veteran presence of our returning players, we've managed to pull out an 11-3 record, a whopping 4.5 game improvement over last season for us. 

Our playoff game against Minnesota was an absolute barn burner. Minnesota always plays us insanely hard no matter how big the disparities may be in our records. Minnesota came our swinging, scoring a field goal early on in their first drive. Portland immediately responded with a touchdown, and it looked like we may have been able to run away with this one early. But Minnesota scored their own touchdown shortly after. After a quick three and out from Portland, Minnesota marched right down the field and scored ANOTHER touchdown. Putting them up 2 scores at 17-3 in the second quarter. This is where I really started to sweat. I was thinking we were going to get upset on our home field in the first round. 

Portland hunkered down and brought the score back to 17 before the half ended, and kept us at a level playing field going into the 2nd half. The 2nd half was another absolute slugfest, with both teams scoring back and forth, taking the lead and falling behind over and over again. With just over 11 minutes left in the 4th quarter up 26-24, Minnesota had a chance to go up 2 scores in the 4th, and have a massive upset on their way to an Ultimini appearence. 

But on that drive, the Portland defense came up with a MASSIVE interception, with a 43 yard interception return from one of our GM bots to put us right in the redzone and take the lead. Portland scored right away.

From there, Portland got 2 more turnovers, and ran away with the game from there. Ending the game 38-26. Despite this, I have to give Minnesota credit, they played us insanely hard and the score does not entirely reflect that.

But for now, Spicy Ron is Ultimini bound, and tomorrow he and the Portland Pythons will try to take on the heavily-favorited Norfolk Seawolves.

[StadiumGambler]

Code:

6. Write 600 words or more on something about anything in the league that interests you. It could be related to statistics, a league issue that you take seriously, or a niche part of history that doesn’t fit neatly into either of the above categories. This must be directly related to the league, so don’t wax 600 words about your team’s participation on a Werewolf server or something.

Well it'll be a few somethings about the league that interest me, hopefully.....

-Wow, the Defensive Player of the Year race is going to be very very close this year. On the legalized assault side of things, you've got BamBam McMullet, the Berlin Linebacker who lead the league with 20 sacks. He also forced 2 fumbles, deflected 12 passes, and picked off 2 passes. A guy with Mullet in his last name has to be dusted in grit, and he's certainly a worthy candidate. You could also argue for Philly Linebacker Gary Goodman, who had 18 sacks and 4 interceptions, returning one for a touchdown, as well as Chicago Linebacker Juan Domine, who racked up 16 sacks, 2 interceptions, and forced 4 fumbles, recovering 3. Juan also scored a defensive touchdown, forced a safety, and blocked a field goal.

-Then on the ballhawking side of things, Arizona Cornerback Rich Triplet had enemy receivers seeing triple in Season 32, racking up 91 tackles, intercepting 6 passes, forcing and recovering 2 fumbles. Rich also deflected 35 passes, and was a key cog in the Outlaws 12-4 season (as well as their #1 pass defense that only yielded 248.7 passing yards per game). Overall, quite a few candidates for a prestigious award.

-Can we please start expanding the playoffs to 4 teams per conference? Its ridiculous that we do this 3 teams stuff, when most of the 4 seeds have been pretty competent teams. Only 2 or 3 in the past few seasons have been below .500. The 6-10 Silverbacks at one point, sure that one is pretty egregious, but the 7-9 Colorado Yeti this year wouldn't have been terrible as a playoff team. They were 7-4 at one point but just disintegrated down the stretch, but there are 9-7 teams who feel like they're faking it til they make it. Plus, the game forces 8 teams in the playoffs instead of 6 anyways. Might as well expand it to make it possible for some of us to gain actual TPE from playoff predictions?

-Speaking of playoff predictions: Geez Louise mine were terrible. Everyone was tipping New York as a first round exit and now they're in the Ultimus. Furthermore, a good Philly team fell by the wayside in the finals, with their offense getting starved of big plays in an ugly 16-12 loss to Berlin. So the ISFL gets the expansion final they wanted to promote the game in Europe and in America's biggest market. Of course the Ultimus is taking place in Australia because reasons, but if this league were real they'd still be making bank.

-My condolences to my kouhai in Portland for losing yet another great chance at an Ultimini. Personally I think we got hosed by some uncalled pass interferences in that desperation drive to win late in the 4th quarter, as well as that ghastly missed extra point that kept it 26-22 rather than 26-23.

-Finally, there is a part of me that worries immensely about the future of ISFL and sim sports in general. It seems like the COVID spike leading to more activity is now levelling off as society tries to resume, and I'm wondering if people are going to bail from sim sports because of no longer having time / burnout. Then we add in the stupidity of Reddit refusing to allow small groups like us to advertise properly unless they're corporations jacking themselves off, and its making me worried. Sim sports should be a lot more popular than they are, the concept is great (even if a few sports are held back by terrible sim logic, particularly the game running this league), but we're not allowed to grow beyond this niche. Its stupid.