04-23-2023, 01:39 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-27-2023, 05:33 AM by Aneeqs. Edited 4 times in total.)
(S41) A completely subjective grading of ISFL teams by OL bot names: Part 1, ASFC
In the past, user @slate and I have published a series of articles ranking ISFL teams by their OL bot names. This season, I am so league poor that I tried to brave this endeavor alone. Fortunately, some very kind users helped me out in explaining the origin of some of the bot names and I just want to say thank you to everyone who contributed behind the scenes to this article.
I started by pulling from the S41 index all of the players with Offensive Line stats and one of the three offensive line positions: Center ©, Guard (G), or Tackle (T). I then limited to those players with (BOT) indicated in their names and sorted by ISFL team. I then clicked through to each bot’s player page in the index to get the full names.
I will start by presenting the OL bot names for each team (in alphabetical order of team code in index) and providing my relatively unfiltered commentary and initial grade. I will then conclude with my rankings. About halfway through writing this article I realized I had a lot more to say on these bot names than I thought, so I’m going to be breaking this up into two parts. This first article will grade the teams in the ASFC and a second article will follow with grades for the teams in the NSFC. Let’s see which conference of the league has the better OL bot name GPA!
Before we proceed, an apology in advance if I miss the inevitable inside joke or obscure reference. Feel free to call me out on the oversight in the comments section so we can all learn more about the weird and creative histories behind the ISFL bot names that often go under-appreciated. Here we go!
Austin Copperheads
The Austin Copperheads have two OL bots named Coldstream Guard © and Beef Eater (G). Now the first thing wrong with these bot names is that Coldstream Guard is not being played/listed as a Guard! This is just a very frustrating start to this exercise so I’m not inclined to look at these names very favorably. (Note that Guard is indeed playing at Guard in the team’s submitted depth charts, but appears to be mislabeled on the index). And then there’s the other not-so-small issue that these bot names are both references to Britain rather than Austin, TX. I am baffled that the team representing one of the most patriotic states in the US, Texas, is in league with the tyrannous British crown. According to a very quick internet search, the Coldstream Guards is the oldest continuously serving regular regiment in the British Army (active since 1650) and Beef Eater (in addition to being a common brand of gin) is a term often used to refer to the Yeomen Warders of the Tower of London. Really the only redeeming quality of these OL names is the fact that they go together as a set.
Of course, when you undertake an article such as this, you are bound to overlook some context. In this case, the mistake came early as I failed to connect that these two OL bots protect Queen Elizabeth II of England who holds the quarterback position for Austin. This means that these bot names were too clever for me and are deserving of accolades.
So I originally gave the Austin Copperheads a C- for their OL bot names, but this is in clear need of correcting. So with further context I am revising the grade to a B!
Arizona Outlaws
Next up we have the Arizona Outlaws who also have two OL bots: Sixty Endurance (G) and Faith Train (G). Now both of these bot names have the aura of an inside joke, and I already knew a bit about the backstory of Sixty Endurance. So we will start there. This name satirizes an old debate on where the endurance breakpoint(s) are in the sim. While investigation of the old code had revealed that both 60 and 71 were important breakpoints for endurance in the sim engine, after the sim transfer some users testing out the newer versions claimed that only 60 endurance mattered. Despite these claims, I think SeventyOne Endurance is probably a safer bet for the Outlaws OL.
Now, we move to the second bot name: Faith Train. While I as a transportation engineer am, of course, inclined to love a bot with the last name Train, I had to reach out to the team for context on this name since a quick google search of the phrase brought up a few obscure songs and some christian youth organization accounts. Thanks to GMs @Kotasa and @.simo, I was able to get more details on the true origin of the name. Apparently user Kotasa, potentially inebriated, was listening to The Life of Pablo by Kanye West (before it was known he was an antisemite) and was trying to hype up the Outlaws locker room, saying they needed to keep the faith train going. I honestly can’t do justice to this amazing display with words, so I have permission to reproduce the exact text below. Faith train has now become a staple of the Outlaws locker room and even has its own emote to keep the chat positive even after a difficult loss.
While I did get a lot of laughs from learning about the origin of Faith Train the bot name, I generally don’t look favorably on names that need so much explanation to appreciate. If I hadn’t written this article, the league would never have known! And the two names don’t really go together as a set other than the fact that they are both sim-related. So for those reasons, I will give the Arizona Outlaws a B- for their bot names.
Honolulu Hahalua
Next up we have the Honolulu Hahalua, who are the only team in the league with an all-bot offensive line! They have five bots with the following names: Corduroy Harrington ©, Rat Shadows (G), Erou Truck (G), Icebear Stinky (T), and Divper Gun (T). Now, I have to say that I was a bit mystified by this set of names at the outset and I had to reach out to the team to get a bit more information on the meaning behind the names. I learned that user @Raven has rights to the team’s OL bot names by player contractual agreement and I reached out to him to better understand the group. It’s still a bit of a hodgepodge, and while I appreciate the innovation of making this a part of a player’s contract, as you will see there were some issues with execution and a number of mistakes made when submitting the names that are rather disappointing. I would expect more from GMs in terms of attention to detail!
We start with the most obvious name of the bunch: Icebear Stinky. Raven shared that, while Honolulu’s GM @IceBear32 is great most of the time, he can also be very stinky and so it’s important to remind him. And I agreed that it is a player’s job to keep their GMs humble.
Next, Raven kindly explained Eruo Truck is supposed to be “Euro Truck Driver.” This is the first of the name mistakes that are apparent on the Hahalua offensive line. This one is a legacy name that the team requested that Raven keep. He thinks the origins lie within chats surrounding the hit video game 'Euro Truck Simulator 2', a simulation game in which you play as a truck driver that accepts cargo delivery jobs all throughout Europe.
The center, Corderoy Harrington, is named in reference to one of Raven’s previous players: Corvo Havran. Corvo Havran declared for the season 14 ISFL draft and rumors began to fly about which team would draft him. As mock drafts began in earnest, someone misspelled his name as Corvo Harvan and it began to get copied everywhere. All of a sudden, all the mock drafts had Raven’s player’s name misspelled. So Raven made a thunderdome post calling these people out and jokingly suggesting that everyone who had misspelled the name should be denied TPE for the pick. As the league does of course, it became a bit of a running gag to misspell Corvo's name, often replaceing his name with any set of words starting with C and H respectively. So, Corduroy Harrington is a fun nod to those days. I got a particularly good chuckle out of this one since it sounds eerily familiar to the “Alexander @Hordle“ mocks from my first player’s ISFL draft.
Rat Shadows is exclusively an inside joke for Raven and Icebear. It comes from this past offseason when Raven was a free agent. While a free agency agreement had been reached between Raven and the Hahalua, Raven felt it was important to again keep Icebear humble. So, he decided to troll a bit before the signing period officially opened. Raven told Icebear that if he didn’t sign his player quickly, he would sign somewhere else. But then 3 minutes before the signing period began, Raven sent Icebear a message telling him 'brb going to boot up Dishonored and not respond to DMs for the next 3 hours'. And when Icebear instantly posted a contract thread and DM’ed it to Raven when the signing period officially opened, Raven simply sent back a picture of the settings in Dishonored which had a specific sliders for 'Rat Shadows' and just replied ‘hey Ice the rats in this game have shadows’ and just kept on playing. Fortunately for Icebear, Raven didn’t let him sweat it too long and did sign the contract quickly thereafter.
Finally we have Divper Gun, or really Dviper Gun (another mistake in submitting the bot names!). Raven explained that this is a reference to one of the emotes of GTA V speedrunner and streamer DarkViperAU. The streamer has a channel mascot Woofle and there is an emote with Woofie holding a gun that Raven likes to use in chat when someone is being silly.
If the names weren’t rampant with typos/misspellings, I would have been inclined to give the group a B- in line with the grade given to the Outlaws above for a group of bots that each have an insider meaning without much cohesion. But the mistakes in inputting the bots really bump it down for me and I have to give the Honolulu Hahalua a C.
New Orleans Second Line
Well, there have been a lot of recent changes to the New Orleans Second Line roster, but fortunately for my article this hasn’t changed the number of OL bots purchased at the start of the season. The New Orleans Second Line have only two OL bots: Jelly Roll at Center and Louis Armstrong at Guard.
Now, I was immediately drawn to the OL bot named Jelly Roll as my own player, Lionel Scrimmage, is based off of the NFL player Lional “Jellyroll” Dalton. In the case of the New Orleans bot, the name is assumed to be an homage to “Jelly Roll” Morton, a famous jazz pianist, arranger, and songwriter from the city. Named Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe, Jelly Roll Morton was born into the Creole community of New Orleans in 1885. At a young age, Morton began as a piano player in a brothel and often sang smutty lyrics and used the nickname "Jelly Roll", which was African-American slang for female genitalia. While his own claim of being the inventor/father of jazz is debatable, there is no doubt that he had a big hand in the early development and eventual popularization of jazz while it was still in its infancy.
The Second Line’s second bot name, Louis Armstrong, likely needs very little introduction. The amazing trumpeter and vocalist was an integral part of the jazz music scene from 1919 (at the age of 18) through his death in 1971. Nicknamed “Satchmo”, “Satch” or just “Pops,” he won numerous awards throughout his five decade-long career and you can’t think of New Orleans jazz without thinking of him. A fitting icon to be immortalized by an OL bot.
I have dubbed these two bots the Second Line’s Second (Offensive) Line and I award New Orleans a resounding A for their bot names!
New York Silverbacks
The New York Silverbacks have three bot monkeys holding down the line of scrimmage for their offense: Ko Ko ©, Bo Bo (G), and Chim Chim (T). The names hand together quite nicely as cute double/repeat names and are relatively on-brand for the team mascot as they are all on monkeys. However, as you inspect closer, a few holes appear in the theming, including mixing in different kinds of monkeys with apes and real vs. fictitious characters. This makes it feel like a less cohesive set to me…
Ko Ko was one of the most famous gorillas in the world. A female western lowland gorilla born in 1971 at the San Francisco Zoo, Koko had an active vocabulary of more than 1000 signs in Gorilla Sign Language and reportedly understood more than 2000 words of spoken English. In addition to her role in great-ape language experiments, Koko gained fame when she adopted a kitten as a pet and named him “All Ball.” The pair was featured on the cover of National Geographic magazine in 1985 and Koko went on to meet many famous celebrities. Koko is almost the perfect choice for the center of the team’s OL with the only minor negative point being that she is a female gorilla and hence not a “silverback” (an adult male gorilla) in its truest sense.
Next we move to Bo Bo. I ended up asking the New York Silverbacks war room about the origins of this name because an internet search brought up two different options. I was informed that Bo Bo the bot was named after Professor Bobo, a fictional character who appeared in the final three seasons of Mystery Science Theater 3000, the comedy television series that mocks B-list movies. Professor Bobo is a sapient, speaking gorilla from the year 2525, an homage to the film Planet of the Apes. In researching this article, we also learned about the sad life of Bobo the western lowland gorilla. Bobo was born in French Equatorial Africa in 1951 but lost his mother to poachers/sport shooters at only a few weeks old. He was brought to the United States where he was sold to a family ill-equipped to care for a growing gorilla. Bobo was then sold to the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. Even after death, controversy and woe followed Bobo’s remains, but this is a story for another day.
The final bot for New York is Chim Chim, who is named after the fictional companion of Spritle Racer in the Speed Racer series. Chim Chim is not a gorilla, but instead a pet (maybe robot) chimpanzee who does his best to help get the Speed team out of trouble.
So, all-in-all, I love the cute repeat names, but mixing types of monkeys and real and fictional characters knocks it down a smidge. So I give the New York Silverbacks a B+ for their OL bot names.
Orange County Otters
Next up is another animal-lover’s team: the Orange County Otters! They have a whole family of Otter bots on their offensive line: P. Otter (G), B. Otter (T), J. Otter (T), and C. Otter ©. These bots have only initials as their first names and the first three are a clear homage to the animated musical television series PB&J Otter that aired 65 episodes in three seasons from 1998-2000. The show centers around siblings Peanut, Baby Butter, and Jelly Otter named after the children’s lunchbox staple the PB&J sandwich. So these three bot names are a clear set, but what about the mysterious C. Otter?
Well, here’s where it gets interesting. GM @slate is adamant that C. Otter is a play on “sea otter” and that there is no other meaning behind it. But, as anyone who listened to the episode of the ISFL podcast “Pat and Cody Won’t Shut Up” featuring Slate as a guest will know, he also has a not-so-pleasant experience with a PBJ&C sandwich. On the podcast, he was asked to share one of the strangest food combinations he had ever tried. And he told a story about when he decided to try a peanut butter, jelly, and cucumber sandwich: eww! And, as you may be able to guess, he does not recommend it to others.
Now, as his wife, I do need to take this opportunity to point out that Slate not only passes up every opportunity to draft my players but also missed a golden opportunity to give a slight nod to my first player in the league, Ernest Lover, when naming these bots. In the show PB&J Otter, the sibling’s dad is named “Ernest Otter” so he could have kept it in the family and scored some husband points by going with E. Otter instead.
I will end by giving kudos to Orange County for making C. Otter the Center since it’s just right that C. plays at C.
Fortunately for the Otters, with a cute family of animated creatures and C playing at C, their OL bots warrant a higher grade than C. I give them an A-
San Jose Sabercats
And last and very much least we have the San Jose Sabercats. Folks, we did not save the best for last. The San Jose Sabercats have four OL bots on the roster: Grubbs Peterson (G), Snappy Gilmore (G), Beep Bot (T), and General Disarray (T). Now, I really don’t understand these bot names and I can only assume that these are just individual names that the GMs or war room thought were funny. But as a group, there doesn’t appear to be any coherence. I will also register a complaint that Snappy Gilmore is rostered at Guard rather than Center – his name is Snappy so let him snap the ball! The best name of the bunch goes to General Disarray, which I think pretty much sums up the theme of these bot names.
Overall, I give the San Jose Sabercats a F for their bot names.
Grade Summary for the ASFC
A
A-
B+
B (revised from previous grade of C-)
B-
C
F
In the past, user @slate and I have published a series of articles ranking ISFL teams by their OL bot names. This season, I am so league poor that I tried to brave this endeavor alone. Fortunately, some very kind users helped me out in explaining the origin of some of the bot names and I just want to say thank you to everyone who contributed behind the scenes to this article.
I started by pulling from the S41 index all of the players with Offensive Line stats and one of the three offensive line positions: Center ©, Guard (G), or Tackle (T). I then limited to those players with (BOT) indicated in their names and sorted by ISFL team. I then clicked through to each bot’s player page in the index to get the full names.
I will start by presenting the OL bot names for each team (in alphabetical order of team code in index) and providing my relatively unfiltered commentary and initial grade. I will then conclude with my rankings. About halfway through writing this article I realized I had a lot more to say on these bot names than I thought, so I’m going to be breaking this up into two parts. This first article will grade the teams in the ASFC and a second article will follow with grades for the teams in the NSFC. Let’s see which conference of the league has the better OL bot name GPA!
Before we proceed, an apology in advance if I miss the inevitable inside joke or obscure reference. Feel free to call me out on the oversight in the comments section so we can all learn more about the weird and creative histories behind the ISFL bot names that often go under-appreciated. Here we go!
Austin Copperheads
The Austin Copperheads have two OL bots named Coldstream Guard © and Beef Eater (G). Now the first thing wrong with these bot names is that Coldstream Guard is not being played/listed as a Guard! This is just a very frustrating start to this exercise so I’m not inclined to look at these names very favorably. (Note that Guard is indeed playing at Guard in the team’s submitted depth charts, but appears to be mislabeled on the index). And then there’s the other not-so-small issue that these bot names are both references to Britain rather than Austin, TX. I am baffled that the team representing one of the most patriotic states in the US, Texas, is in league with the tyrannous British crown. According to a very quick internet search, the Coldstream Guards is the oldest continuously serving regular regiment in the British Army (active since 1650) and Beef Eater (in addition to being a common brand of gin) is a term often used to refer to the Yeomen Warders of the Tower of London. Really the only redeeming quality of these OL names is the fact that they go together as a set.
Of course, when you undertake an article such as this, you are bound to overlook some context. In this case, the mistake came early as I failed to connect that these two OL bots protect Queen Elizabeth II of England who holds the quarterback position for Austin. This means that these bot names were too clever for me and are deserving of accolades.
So I originally gave the Austin Copperheads a C- for their OL bot names, but this is in clear need of correcting. So with further context I am revising the grade to a B!
Arizona Outlaws
Next up we have the Arizona Outlaws who also have two OL bots: Sixty Endurance (G) and Faith Train (G). Now both of these bot names have the aura of an inside joke, and I already knew a bit about the backstory of Sixty Endurance. So we will start there. This name satirizes an old debate on where the endurance breakpoint(s) are in the sim. While investigation of the old code had revealed that both 60 and 71 were important breakpoints for endurance in the sim engine, after the sim transfer some users testing out the newer versions claimed that only 60 endurance mattered. Despite these claims, I think SeventyOne Endurance is probably a safer bet for the Outlaws OL.
Now, we move to the second bot name: Faith Train. While I as a transportation engineer am, of course, inclined to love a bot with the last name Train, I had to reach out to the team for context on this name since a quick google search of the phrase brought up a few obscure songs and some christian youth organization accounts. Thanks to GMs @Kotasa and @.simo, I was able to get more details on the true origin of the name. Apparently user Kotasa, potentially inebriated, was listening to The Life of Pablo by Kanye West (before it was known he was an antisemite) and was trying to hype up the Outlaws locker room, saying they needed to keep the faith train going. I honestly can’t do justice to this amazing display with words, so I have permission to reproduce the exact text below. Faith train has now become a staple of the Outlaws locker room and even has its own emote to keep the chat positive even after a difficult loss.
While I did get a lot of laughs from learning about the origin of Faith Train the bot name, I generally don’t look favorably on names that need so much explanation to appreciate. If I hadn’t written this article, the league would never have known! And the two names don’t really go together as a set other than the fact that they are both sim-related. So for those reasons, I will give the Arizona Outlaws a B- for their bot names.
Honolulu Hahalua
Next up we have the Honolulu Hahalua, who are the only team in the league with an all-bot offensive line! They have five bots with the following names: Corduroy Harrington ©, Rat Shadows (G), Erou Truck (G), Icebear Stinky (T), and Divper Gun (T). Now, I have to say that I was a bit mystified by this set of names at the outset and I had to reach out to the team to get a bit more information on the meaning behind the names. I learned that user @Raven has rights to the team’s OL bot names by player contractual agreement and I reached out to him to better understand the group. It’s still a bit of a hodgepodge, and while I appreciate the innovation of making this a part of a player’s contract, as you will see there were some issues with execution and a number of mistakes made when submitting the names that are rather disappointing. I would expect more from GMs in terms of attention to detail!
We start with the most obvious name of the bunch: Icebear Stinky. Raven shared that, while Honolulu’s GM @IceBear32 is great most of the time, he can also be very stinky and so it’s important to remind him. And I agreed that it is a player’s job to keep their GMs humble.
Next, Raven kindly explained Eruo Truck is supposed to be “Euro Truck Driver.” This is the first of the name mistakes that are apparent on the Hahalua offensive line. This one is a legacy name that the team requested that Raven keep. He thinks the origins lie within chats surrounding the hit video game 'Euro Truck Simulator 2', a simulation game in which you play as a truck driver that accepts cargo delivery jobs all throughout Europe.
The center, Corderoy Harrington, is named in reference to one of Raven’s previous players: Corvo Havran. Corvo Havran declared for the season 14 ISFL draft and rumors began to fly about which team would draft him. As mock drafts began in earnest, someone misspelled his name as Corvo Harvan and it began to get copied everywhere. All of a sudden, all the mock drafts had Raven’s player’s name misspelled. So Raven made a thunderdome post calling these people out and jokingly suggesting that everyone who had misspelled the name should be denied TPE for the pick. As the league does of course, it became a bit of a running gag to misspell Corvo's name, often replaceing his name with any set of words starting with C and H respectively. So, Corduroy Harrington is a fun nod to those days. I got a particularly good chuckle out of this one since it sounds eerily familiar to the “Alexander @Hordle“ mocks from my first player’s ISFL draft.
Rat Shadows is exclusively an inside joke for Raven and Icebear. It comes from this past offseason when Raven was a free agent. While a free agency agreement had been reached between Raven and the Hahalua, Raven felt it was important to again keep Icebear humble. So, he decided to troll a bit before the signing period officially opened. Raven told Icebear that if he didn’t sign his player quickly, he would sign somewhere else. But then 3 minutes before the signing period began, Raven sent Icebear a message telling him 'brb going to boot up Dishonored and not respond to DMs for the next 3 hours'. And when Icebear instantly posted a contract thread and DM’ed it to Raven when the signing period officially opened, Raven simply sent back a picture of the settings in Dishonored which had a specific sliders for 'Rat Shadows' and just replied ‘hey Ice the rats in this game have shadows’ and just kept on playing. Fortunately for Icebear, Raven didn’t let him sweat it too long and did sign the contract quickly thereafter.
Finally we have Divper Gun, or really Dviper Gun (another mistake in submitting the bot names!). Raven explained that this is a reference to one of the emotes of GTA V speedrunner and streamer DarkViperAU. The streamer has a channel mascot Woofle and there is an emote with Woofie holding a gun that Raven likes to use in chat when someone is being silly.
If the names weren’t rampant with typos/misspellings, I would have been inclined to give the group a B- in line with the grade given to the Outlaws above for a group of bots that each have an insider meaning without much cohesion. But the mistakes in inputting the bots really bump it down for me and I have to give the Honolulu Hahalua a C.
New Orleans Second Line
Well, there have been a lot of recent changes to the New Orleans Second Line roster, but fortunately for my article this hasn’t changed the number of OL bots purchased at the start of the season. The New Orleans Second Line have only two OL bots: Jelly Roll at Center and Louis Armstrong at Guard.
Now, I was immediately drawn to the OL bot named Jelly Roll as my own player, Lionel Scrimmage, is based off of the NFL player Lional “Jellyroll” Dalton. In the case of the New Orleans bot, the name is assumed to be an homage to “Jelly Roll” Morton, a famous jazz pianist, arranger, and songwriter from the city. Named Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe, Jelly Roll Morton was born into the Creole community of New Orleans in 1885. At a young age, Morton began as a piano player in a brothel and often sang smutty lyrics and used the nickname "Jelly Roll", which was African-American slang for female genitalia. While his own claim of being the inventor/father of jazz is debatable, there is no doubt that he had a big hand in the early development and eventual popularization of jazz while it was still in its infancy.
The Second Line’s second bot name, Louis Armstrong, likely needs very little introduction. The amazing trumpeter and vocalist was an integral part of the jazz music scene from 1919 (at the age of 18) through his death in 1971. Nicknamed “Satchmo”, “Satch” or just “Pops,” he won numerous awards throughout his five decade-long career and you can’t think of New Orleans jazz without thinking of him. A fitting icon to be immortalized by an OL bot.
I have dubbed these two bots the Second Line’s Second (Offensive) Line and I award New Orleans a resounding A for their bot names!
New York Silverbacks
The New York Silverbacks have three bot monkeys holding down the line of scrimmage for their offense: Ko Ko ©, Bo Bo (G), and Chim Chim (T). The names hand together quite nicely as cute double/repeat names and are relatively on-brand for the team mascot as they are all on monkeys. However, as you inspect closer, a few holes appear in the theming, including mixing in different kinds of monkeys with apes and real vs. fictitious characters. This makes it feel like a less cohesive set to me…
Ko Ko was one of the most famous gorillas in the world. A female western lowland gorilla born in 1971 at the San Francisco Zoo, Koko had an active vocabulary of more than 1000 signs in Gorilla Sign Language and reportedly understood more than 2000 words of spoken English. In addition to her role in great-ape language experiments, Koko gained fame when she adopted a kitten as a pet and named him “All Ball.” The pair was featured on the cover of National Geographic magazine in 1985 and Koko went on to meet many famous celebrities. Koko is almost the perfect choice for the center of the team’s OL with the only minor negative point being that she is a female gorilla and hence not a “silverback” (an adult male gorilla) in its truest sense.
Next we move to Bo Bo. I ended up asking the New York Silverbacks war room about the origins of this name because an internet search brought up two different options. I was informed that Bo Bo the bot was named after Professor Bobo, a fictional character who appeared in the final three seasons of Mystery Science Theater 3000, the comedy television series that mocks B-list movies. Professor Bobo is a sapient, speaking gorilla from the year 2525, an homage to the film Planet of the Apes. In researching this article, we also learned about the sad life of Bobo the western lowland gorilla. Bobo was born in French Equatorial Africa in 1951 but lost his mother to poachers/sport shooters at only a few weeks old. He was brought to the United States where he was sold to a family ill-equipped to care for a growing gorilla. Bobo was then sold to the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. Even after death, controversy and woe followed Bobo’s remains, but this is a story for another day.
The final bot for New York is Chim Chim, who is named after the fictional companion of Spritle Racer in the Speed Racer series. Chim Chim is not a gorilla, but instead a pet (maybe robot) chimpanzee who does his best to help get the Speed team out of trouble.
So, all-in-all, I love the cute repeat names, but mixing types of monkeys and real and fictional characters knocks it down a smidge. So I give the New York Silverbacks a B+ for their OL bot names.
Orange County Otters
Next up is another animal-lover’s team: the Orange County Otters! They have a whole family of Otter bots on their offensive line: P. Otter (G), B. Otter (T), J. Otter (T), and C. Otter ©. These bots have only initials as their first names and the first three are a clear homage to the animated musical television series PB&J Otter that aired 65 episodes in three seasons from 1998-2000. The show centers around siblings Peanut, Baby Butter, and Jelly Otter named after the children’s lunchbox staple the PB&J sandwich. So these three bot names are a clear set, but what about the mysterious C. Otter?
Well, here’s where it gets interesting. GM @slate is adamant that C. Otter is a play on “sea otter” and that there is no other meaning behind it. But, as anyone who listened to the episode of the ISFL podcast “Pat and Cody Won’t Shut Up” featuring Slate as a guest will know, he also has a not-so-pleasant experience with a PBJ&C sandwich. On the podcast, he was asked to share one of the strangest food combinations he had ever tried. And he told a story about when he decided to try a peanut butter, jelly, and cucumber sandwich: eww! And, as you may be able to guess, he does not recommend it to others.
Now, as his wife, I do need to take this opportunity to point out that Slate not only passes up every opportunity to draft my players but also missed a golden opportunity to give a slight nod to my first player in the league, Ernest Lover, when naming these bots. In the show PB&J Otter, the sibling’s dad is named “Ernest Otter” so he could have kept it in the family and scored some husband points by going with E. Otter instead.
I will end by giving kudos to Orange County for making C. Otter the Center since it’s just right that C. plays at C.
Fortunately for the Otters, with a cute family of animated creatures and C playing at C, their OL bots warrant a higher grade than C. I give them an A-
San Jose Sabercats
And last and very much least we have the San Jose Sabercats. Folks, we did not save the best for last. The San Jose Sabercats have four OL bots on the roster: Grubbs Peterson (G), Snappy Gilmore (G), Beep Bot (T), and General Disarray (T). Now, I really don’t understand these bot names and I can only assume that these are just individual names that the GMs or war room thought were funny. But as a group, there doesn’t appear to be any coherence. I will also register a complaint that Snappy Gilmore is rostered at Guard rather than Center – his name is Snappy so let him snap the ball! The best name of the bunch goes to General Disarray, which I think pretty much sums up the theme of these bot names.
Overall, I give the San Jose Sabercats a F for their bot names.
Grade Summary for the ASFC
A
A-
B+
B (revised from previous grade of C-)
B-
C
F