11. I’m going to take a small liberty with this task and rather than just look at the biggest rivalry, look at all rivalries for my team and explain why the biggest is the biggest compared to the other two. You could ask just about anybody on the Tijuana Luchadores who our biggest rival is and I’m confident that you would get the same answer from everybody without even needing to give them time to think. That rival would be the Bondi Beach Buccaneers, or Myrtle Beach Buccaneers, or Palm Beach Solar Bears depending on when in the league’s history you’re from since this team seems to also have a rivalry with whichever city it happens to be in at the time and never stays in any one place for too long. Seriously though, I’m not going to name any names here because this rivalry can get seriously contentious, sometimes even transcending the game itself. As I understand it, the Buccaneers were a bot team for a long time that was revived shortly before I arrived in the league in season 22. Since then, it’s felt like the Tijuana Luchadores and Buccaneers have been battling for a playoff spot almost every season since. There have been some seriously close seasons where one of the teams make it over the others, but the most exciting is always when both teams make it in and we get that sweet playoff game against our biggest rivals. For me personally the playoff game that most comes to mind was when I was general manager of the Tijuana Luchadores in season 25. The Buccaneers (who were still in Myrtle Beach at the time) had managed to put together what, if I have to be honest, was a very impressive season looking dominant at 11-3, giving them the top seed in the whole league. Those 11 wins also included beating Tijuana both at home and away. Tijuana meanwhile, had barely limped into the playoffs at 6-8, and were very clear underdogs. Not only did they end up beating the Buccaneers in the playoffs, but they also went on to win the Ultimini by beating the London Royals who had also swept them during the regular season. When you look at Tijuana’s other division rivals, it becomes plain why the Buccaneers rivalry is the most contentious. Similar to them, Norfolk had been resurrected from being a bot team by a former Ultimini winning Tijuana GM, and even modeled the “new” team after his old one. Meanwhile Dallas was founded as an expansion team by two former Tijuana players, and at least to me it always felt like there was a tight bond there.
14. Live Laughlove’s rookie season in the DSFL was rocky, to say the least. Obviously any time you have an uncapped rookie quarterback in the DSFL you’ll likely lean a little heavier on the running game than you might prefer, but I have to say I had fun watching him perform over the course of the season. I came in knowing that with 2 send downs running backs on the roster we were almost certainly going to be a run-run-pass team, if not even a run-run-run team. As a result, I was not at all surprised or disappointed to see that Tijuana was at the bottom of the team stats in all of completions, attempts, and passing yards. Frankly it wasn’t even close, with a whopping 68 less attempts than the 7th rank Minnesota Grey Ducks. For some more context on how few attempts this is, there was only a 41 attempt difference between the previously mentioned 7th rank Minnesota Grey Ducks (473) and 1st ranked Kansas City Coyotes (514). All that said, none of this should be taken as a complaint. Going even back to my previous player, I’ve always been straightforward that personal stats and accolades are meaningless to me, and I’d rather we do whatever gives us the best chance to win even if it means I don’t throw at all (which was basically what happened this season). It’s hard for me to really come up with a highlight for this season, as we just barely missed out on a playoff spot due to the sim doing sim stuff, and due to the previously mentioned low attempts there weren’t really any super memorable games other than those where I didn’t completely botch the game with an interception. On the lowlight end though, there’s a very specific example that comes to mind. Week 5, where we traveled to face the defending champion Minnesota Grey Ducks. Live Laughlove put up an absolutely legendary statline of 24/39 for 244 yards (which sounds pretty good to this point) with no touchdowns and FIVE interceptions (there it is). To add insult to injury, the final play of the game was a 43 yard pass from Live Laughlove to wide receiver Troy Barnes that was stopped at the 1 yard line, preventing me from even coming away with a pity garbage time touchdown. Since joining the league back in S21, I don’t think I have ever seen such a legendarily poor performance for a quarterback. In spite of Live Laughlove’s best efforts to literally throw the game away, it still only ended as a two score loss, speaking to the strength of the Luchador running game and defense.
14. Live Laughlove’s rookie season in the DSFL was rocky, to say the least. Obviously any time you have an uncapped rookie quarterback in the DSFL you’ll likely lean a little heavier on the running game than you might prefer, but I have to say I had fun watching him perform over the course of the season. I came in knowing that with 2 send downs running backs on the roster we were almost certainly going to be a run-run-pass team, if not even a run-run-run team. As a result, I was not at all surprised or disappointed to see that Tijuana was at the bottom of the team stats in all of completions, attempts, and passing yards. Frankly it wasn’t even close, with a whopping 68 less attempts than the 7th rank Minnesota Grey Ducks. For some more context on how few attempts this is, there was only a 41 attempt difference between the previously mentioned 7th rank Minnesota Grey Ducks (473) and 1st ranked Kansas City Coyotes (514). All that said, none of this should be taken as a complaint. Going even back to my previous player, I’ve always been straightforward that personal stats and accolades are meaningless to me, and I’d rather we do whatever gives us the best chance to win even if it means I don’t throw at all (which was basically what happened this season). It’s hard for me to really come up with a highlight for this season, as we just barely missed out on a playoff spot due to the sim doing sim stuff, and due to the previously mentioned low attempts there weren’t really any super memorable games other than those where I didn’t completely botch the game with an interception. On the lowlight end though, there’s a very specific example that comes to mind. Week 5, where we traveled to face the defending champion Minnesota Grey Ducks. Live Laughlove put up an absolutely legendary statline of 24/39 for 244 yards (which sounds pretty good to this point) with no touchdowns and FIVE interceptions (there it is). To add insult to injury, the final play of the game was a 43 yard pass from Live Laughlove to wide receiver Troy Barnes that was stopped at the 1 yard line, preventing me from even coming away with a pity garbage time touchdown. Since joining the league back in S21, I don’t think I have ever seen such a legendarily poor performance for a quarterback. In spite of Live Laughlove’s best efforts to literally throw the game away, it still only ended as a two score loss, speaking to the strength of the Luchador running game and defense.