Quote:7. 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.
I think it goes without saying that the sim that we use is jank. Utterly, borderline unusably, stinky-ass jank. I think the only reason we continue to use Draft Day is inertia at this point, because I can't find anyone who actually likes the game. I think the only real reason we haven't ditched it for another game is simply because there's no other suitable replacement for it. American football just doesn't attract the same kind of attention for Football Manager-esque games as say, soccer, due to Electronic Arts' suffocating monopoly on the NFL license.
But what if there was a suitable replacement?
Some people on discord might remember my mostly sarcastic jokes about replacing the simulation with the 1991 Nintendo Entertainment System megahit Tecmo Super Bowl. The key operative word here is mostly sarcastic. There's a kernel of truth, buried in my frustrations over the sim, that I think at the very least that Tecmo Super Bowl could work as an engine for a sim league, and I think it'd even lead to, maybe if not better, at least more fun, product. The Tecmo Bowl duology are honestly some of the best sports games ever made, and I think a large part of it is that it focuses more on the verisimilitude of professional football moreso than trying to be a quote unquote simulation. When the entire game has to fit on a 200 kilobyte cartridge, concessions have to be made to strict realism. But you'd be surprised by what they were able to cram into such a small file size, and how much of it holds up to this day as a game.
So, one of the big things that defines TSB over its contemporaries, which would make it perfect for the league, was its licensing deals with the NFLPA. The original Tecmo Bowl was one of the first games released to actually use the names of then-contemporary players. You weren't just playing as a nameless blob, you were actually playing as Lawrence Taylor, and he had different stats compared to Carl Banks. That is to say, yes, there are meaningful stat differences between players on the same team, and we could easily transfer a lot of the TPE system into the league. We'd have to completely redo archetypes, due to the different stats that exist, and the lack of traits, but there is a start where we could actually do transfers. For reference, here is a website that shows off the stats for every player featured in Tecmo Super Bowl. You might notice the site cautions that some stats are broken or otherwise not used. There are mods that fix that, but I'll get to that later. The point I want to focus is, again, that making players that feel different would totally be possible. Take QBs for example: QB Eagles (aka Randall Cunningham) is broken as fuck due to his high movement speed, but he was intended to be only competent in passing (pass accuracy not working definitely made him overpeform in practice though). Meanwhile, Dan Marino is a statue on the field, but his balls practically teleport to the receiver. Elway was intended to be the super accurate passer if you look at his stats, but since every QB's accuracy was accidentally set to be the same, he's not actually that much better in that role without modding the game. But boom, three QB archtypes right there, roughly analogues with our current scrambler, pocket passer/gunslinger, and field general, respectively.
Another innovation TSB had, which we take for granted now, but would be amazing for sim play is that, yes, you can just run an entire season with every team controlled by the CPU. And you can watch every single game played, to its completion. Perfect for streaming. Not only that, but playbooks for every team is customizable, on offense, and you can pick between four passing and four running plays that the AI will cycle through. I think the customizable playbooks would be very interesting for GMs: on one hand, there are elements of control that we'd simply have to give up due to it just not being customizable in TSB, such as run/pass ratios. At least, there's no way to set them in-game; there could be ways to edit that logic in the code of the AI itself-- this game is a lot more moddable than draft day is, so I wouldn't rule that out-- but there's no easy in-game section to say "run in this situation". However, on the other hand, ditching pre-made playbooks and letting GMs make their own, even if its limited to just eight plays, would be amazing to unleash the creativity of teams. Do you want a feature back that gets most of your carries? Or do you want to split running duties between two backs? You can even have a designed QB run, but that takes one of your four running slots, which can be a trade off (in the base game, only the Eagles had a designed QB run, it was one of their main gimmicks). And for passes, you can specialize in more short passes, long balls, and everything in between. Unfortunately, there's no real equilavent for defense here though: the game instead runs on a prediction system where the defense just tries to predict what play the offense is calling before the snap, and if they guess correctly, they get a huge statistical bonus which practically guarantees a sack, tackle for loss, or interception. Otherwise, calling a run play vs a pass play will change some ai logic, and either put defenders in the box or in coverage. The prediction mechanic is one of the things that makes T(S)B have kino multiplayer, but for sims... it doesn't really work. The AI will just randomly cycle through plays; you're not going to see the actual mind games happen in practice.
And yes, I alluded to it multiple times, but to reiterate, Tecmo Super Bowl has a thriving modding scene. People have been pushing this 200 kb game to its absolute limits, fixing all the bugs, adding additional teams into the game, changing season length and teams found in the playoffs, and even adding quality of life features that would be too numerous to mention. I'm more of a mod consumer than a mod maker, so I wouldn't really be the greatest source in talking about the technical side of things, but I know this game is far far easier to edit than draft day is. If modders managed to put 32 teams and four division conferences in a game that came out when there was only 28 teams and three division conferences, then I think they can handle removing content too.
Finally, I'd be remiss to add that I know there is at least one sim league that uses TSB, The Tecmo Fantasy Owners. It's not quite like the ISFL: the only position available to play is the GM/Owner, and all the players on the teams are made in a point buy system. But it goes to show, more than anything else, it is technically feasible. Custom teams, with custom logos and graphics, every game streamed and watchable, etc, etc. The ISFL could definitely follow in similar footsteps, if it wanted to.
![[Image: yw2OodS.png]](https://imgur.com/yw2OodS.png)
