Quote:2. Tell us about your draft class. Is there anything that makes it special in comparison to other classes? Where did your fellow draftees land, how are they doing? Did anyone turn out to be an unexpected steal of that draft based on what you know today? Do you think anyone in your draft class will become a hall of famer? If you’re new to the league, how do you think your class will do? Where do you think people will get drafted to?
I am one of a handful of users who have only created in large Reddit classes (by which I mean, specifically classes that were advertised on the r/nfl subreddit) - first, the Season 25 class on my first player, Peter Patterson, followed by the Season 36 class with my current player, Leandre Diarra. These types of classes are relatively rare across the entire history of the International Simulation Football League, but I find them very interesting to discuss especially with the benefit of historical context. The Season 25 class is the 3rd largest in ISFL history, following only the incredibly huge Season 22 class (which, contrary to popular belief, was recruited largely before COVID lockdowns were put in place in the United States) as well as the original Season 1 class which was only a few creates larger. Season 36 was the 4th largest class in ISFL history, just after S25 (but a solid 20ish creates fewer), so just in terms of the raw quantity of people who joined, S25 is clearly superior.
Due to its size, S25 also directly led to the expansion of the league with the addition of the Berlin Fire Salamanders and the New York Silverbacks, the last two teams to be added to the league over 17 seasons ago. Season 36, on the other hand, was the largest class in the prior 11 seasons (almost 2 IRL years), meaning that its infusion of large numbers of new users was much more vital to the league's continued success but also had less of an ability to push an expansion of the league. In fact, even after being followed with the similarly large Season 41 class a few seasons later, the league is still not particularly close to seeing another expansion to 16 teams. So it can more easily be said that Season 36's success prevented the league from needing to consider contraction.
In terms of the class's impact on the league, I am somewhat surprised that we have not seen as many S36 users assume leadership positions or otherwise generate change around the league as we did in S25. S25 had an extremely prolific output of DSFL GM's in particular, as I can easily name off the top of my head: myself, Katarn, zEagle, Kotasa, Frazzle, Glims, WhatAmUs, Jimi, Rev, AskedMadden, tMosura, UberBJ, Crodyman, and I'm sure several others I'm forgetting. Many ISFL GM's have also traced back to that class, including several former GMs like zayn and Arkz, r0tzbua (see I knew I was forgetting some more DSFL GMs as he definitely did that too), and Kotasa and Frazzle again. Not to mention that the current commissioner of the league hails from S25! Meanwhile, S36 has had slower uptake with Repgnar, Chappy, and LordCoolcats basically representing the entire class at the ISFL level (although there have been many other DSFL GMs like Alikh, Chucky/Artix, soevil, and TwoSocks(?) that haven't (yet) had the chance to GM at the ISFL level). Surprisingly, no currnet members of either Head Office originally created as part of the S36 class. Even just a few seasons after their creation I feel like we've already seen more contributions coming in aggregate from the more recent S41 class.
This isn't to denigrate any individual users from any class, as there are tons of amazing users in every class. But looking at the whole picture of these classes a few seasons down the road, as the Season 36 creates enter their first round of regression, it seems like the overall impact may be a bit understated relative to the raw number of new users who joined the league at the time when compared to other historically large classes. It's interesting to reflect on why this might be the case, and if there is anything in the recruitment/onboarding process which might influence these outcomes that the league could change to create more engagement.
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