10. Since we had a conversation about it on the ISFL discord, I think if I were the league’s commissioner for a day I would tackle the issue of Free Agency. It’s not a particularly easy problem to solve but one that certainly needs addressing. For those that are new to the league, there’s one team in particular, although I’m sure there are others who try, that seems to be able to draft former players’ new recreates and/or attract them in Free Agency at a much higher rate than other teams do. This team has seen considerable success in the league as of late, making multiple Ultimus appearances and winning several. Now, whatever they are doing is not cheating and is technically allowed. However, in order to promote parity in the league, there should be some tweaks made to the Free Agent system. While I do not have the perfect solution, I think among the GMs and several other forward thinkers in the league, we could come up with a system that both allows the movement of players who truly do get better offers from other teams and also allows a team to make the best contract offers on the market to players they draft. Something akin to Bird Rights in the NBA could be a possible solution, where teams can offer players they draft more than any other team. Due to the hard salary cap of the ISFL, I think we’d need to do something where players you draft’s next contract only counts so much against the cap, with the rest of the contract being waived against the cap. For a hypothetical example, the highest contract in the ISFL currently sits at $8mil per season. Let’s make an arbitrary number like 25% of the cap spent on drafted players isn’t counted against your team’s cap. That would allow a team to offer their own player $10mil/year instead of $8mil. This would incentivize players to stay with their current teams while also making them sacrifice a little something if they did want to leave to play for another team for reasons outside of contract. This is just one of several possible solutions but one the ISFL should be looking to address sooner rather than later.
12. Since Rico Savage has joined the ISFL, there has been one team that has seen more success than the Chicago Butchers yet can’t seem to sweep them during their two regular season matchups every year and that team is the Cape Town Crash. In S41, Rico’s first as a Butcher, Cape Town ended up being the number one overall seed after a 13 and 3 regular season record and went on to win the S41 Ultimus. If you look closer at their record that season you’ll see that two thirds of their losses came at the hands of the Butchers, a team that ultimately missed playoffs. In the first meeting, Cape Town led by 6 with 1:28 to play in the 4th when Rookie RB Nakiri Ayame fumbled and Rico Savage recovered. A few plays later, Painted Penguin found Austin Morley in the endzone on 4th down for the go ahead score. A missed 50 yard field goal sealed the victory for Chicago. In the second meeting of the season, Chicago scored 23 unanswered points in the 4th quarter, stifling CTC’s offense with 3 turnovers including an INT by Rico Savage. In S42, the Crash were able to secure the victory in the first meeting between the teams but in week 13 of the season, with Cape Town needing every victory they could get in order to make the playoffs, they fell to the home team 48 to 42 in overtime. Rico Savage had another INT in that game which led to a short field go ahead touchdown for the Butchers. So even in the midst of a lost season due to tanking, Chicago was able to split the series versus Cape Town and stay a thorn in their side. The two games against CTC are always circled on the calendar in the Chicago locker room and I don’t see why that would change any time soon.
12. Since Rico Savage has joined the ISFL, there has been one team that has seen more success than the Chicago Butchers yet can’t seem to sweep them during their two regular season matchups every year and that team is the Cape Town Crash. In S41, Rico’s first as a Butcher, Cape Town ended up being the number one overall seed after a 13 and 3 regular season record and went on to win the S41 Ultimus. If you look closer at their record that season you’ll see that two thirds of their losses came at the hands of the Butchers, a team that ultimately missed playoffs. In the first meeting, Cape Town led by 6 with 1:28 to play in the 4th when Rookie RB Nakiri Ayame fumbled and Rico Savage recovered. A few plays later, Painted Penguin found Austin Morley in the endzone on 4th down for the go ahead score. A missed 50 yard field goal sealed the victory for Chicago. In the second meeting of the season, Chicago scored 23 unanswered points in the 4th quarter, stifling CTC’s offense with 3 turnovers including an INT by Rico Savage. In S42, the Crash were able to secure the victory in the first meeting between the teams but in week 13 of the season, with Cape Town needing every victory they could get in order to make the playoffs, they fell to the home team 48 to 42 in overtime. Rico Savage had another INT in that game which led to a short field go ahead touchdown for the Butchers. So even in the midst of a lost season due to tanking, Chicago was able to split the series versus Cape Town and stay a thorn in their side. The two games against CTC are always circled on the calendar in the Chicago locker room and I don’t see why that would change any time soon.
"...TheRake may be the most controversial new player of the S41 class. Notorious not only for shamelessly tampering but also for confidently arguing his broadly incorrect NFL opinions, TheRake has managed to navigate the dangerous waters of controversy fairly well—which is no small feat!" - aeonsjenni