05-08-2023, 03:10 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-18-2023, 09:04 AM by Aneeqs. Edited 1 time in total.)
I'm not sure there's anything positive I will be able to say about the Liberty over the course of this article. The recently renamed Crash, might be a bit different, but still, this is not a team with a very uplifting history. So let's get down to business; just how bad is the team who has not won the Ultimus for a longer stretch than any team in league history and has not went to the Ultimus for over half of the league's existence, also the longest stretch in the ISFL's history?
S2: 5-9
S3: 8-5-1 (0-1 in Playoffs)
S4: 7-7 (0-1 in Playoffs)
S5: 8-6
S6: 9-5 (1-1 in Playoffs, 1st Ultimus berth)
S7: 10-4 (2-0 in Playoffs, 2nd Ultimus berth and 1st win)
S8: 7-7
S9: 4-10
S10: 0-14
During this 9 year stretch, the Liberty went 58-67-1, for a 46.0% win rate. I cannot decide whether this is a successful decade or not; they're barely below the average with two Ultimus berths and a win, through the same S2-S7 stretch of time that their fellow S2 expansion team in the Second Line/Las Vegas Legion were going 15-68-1, the Liberty put together a 47-36-1 record that would have their win rate at 56.6%. Overall, though, all of the stats I've been using would cast this period of time as below average, even with their status as the first NSFC team to win the Ultimus. 4/9 playoff berths when 50% of teams make the postseason is just below average, as are the already mentioned Ultimus berths and win, they went completely without awards, and after having a 6 year period without going below .500 after their first season, they finished the decade going 4-24 over two seasons and utterly tanking their win percent. This decade also saw the Liberty go 3-3 in the postseason over their 4 trips.
Still, being below average was almost the best that an NSFC team could hope for during this period where the ASFC won 7/10 Ultimus bowls. Not quite the best, but still vastly above the other NSFC elephant in the room. And going to the Ultimus in the team's 5th year of existence is something that I do not believe has been surpassed by any other expansion team since.
S11: 7-7
S12: 7-7 (0-1 in Playoffs)
S13: 8-6 (Marquise Brown wins MVP, tied with 2 others, and OPOY) (0-1 in Playoffs)
S14: 9-5 (1-1 in Playoffs, 3rd Ultimus berth)
S15: 8-6 (0-1 in Playoffs
S16: 7-6 (2-1 in Playoffs, 4th Ultimus berth)
S17: 5-8
S18: 4-9
S19: 6-7 (Richard D'Attoria V wins DPOY)
S20: 5-8
During this decade, the Liberty went 66-69 for a 48.9% win rate. Again, they came agonizingly close to .500 for the decade, but ended up a hair below average in basically every category. In a league that was 8 teams for half the decade and 10 teams for the other half, they ended up with around the average you'd expect if there were 10 teams in the league for the whole decade; 2 Ultimus berths, 5 playoff berths, 3 award wins with 2 coming from the same season...but it missed one major thing. The Liberty were completely unable to win the Ultimus during this time period. They even managed to avoid the criticism I usually give for middling records that made the playoffs between S16 and S21, as their one playoff berth over the 5 years listed did come as the 3rd seed, but they rode that playoff berth to their second Ultimus appearance of the decade. Still, they managed to exit the decade with a 4-5 playoff record, respectable in its own right, and opened their award cabinet in style by joining the three way tie for the MVP trophy along with an OPOY simultaneously. The fact remains, though, that the Liberty are one of a trio of teams who have not managed to put together an above average decade for either S1-10 or S11-20 out of those that we've covered so far, and I'm pretty certain that the Hawks are not going to be joining them in that category. In terms of overall performance, the Liberty are clearly better through S2-20 than either the Second Line or the Yeti during this period, despite the Second Line's greater awards cabinet and number of Ultimus trophies. Still, both of those teams had at least an above average S21 through S30 with an Ultimus trophy to go along with it, so how do the Liberty compare here?
S21: 3-10
S22: 6-7
S23: 9-7 (0-1 in Playoffs)
S24: 3-13
S25: 7-9
S26: 4-12
S27: 6-10
S28: 6-10
S29: 5-11
S30: 4-12
I mean, do you SEE that series of seasonal records? The Liberty were unable to get to 10 wins in a season and only managed to get to the playoffs once. 7 of the 10 seasons were 10 loss seasons, including a 10 loss season during the 13 game schedule of S21. This set of seasons amounts to an abysmal 53-101 record, a 34.4% win rate, and the first 100 loss decade I've covered. Granted, this isn't the absolute bottom of the barrel, the first decade of the Yeti was still noticeably worse; this just came in a decade with 154 games as opposed to 140. Still, that doesn't make this good, acceptable, or even merely bad. A similarly listless and lifeless Hahalua squad who only managed a single playoff appearances and the same number of 0 major awards over this time period, along with one less season played, managed to put together 6 more wins in the decade. The Butchers who barely crested 40%, the previous worst record for this time period, put together a full 10 more wins, an entire good season with the possibility of awards and playoff success more. Really, the most damning indictment of this decade is that it took a team who was slightly below average and disappointing in the previous 19 years to a candidate for the worst franchise in the history of the ISFL in a single, solitary, really abysmally awful decade. The funny part is that I'm not sure this is the worst record for any team for the decade overall. That doesn't change the fact that on its own, this is the second worst decade in the history of the ISFL of any team that I've covered.
S31: 8-8
S32: 11-5 (0-1 in Playoffs)
S33: 6-10
S34: 6-9-1
S35: 8-8
S36: 8-8
S37: 9-7
S38: 7-9
S39: 8-8 (renamed to Cape Town Crash)
S40: 10-6 (Jarvis Harbinger-Marjin wins MVP, 0-1 in Playoffs
During this decade, the Liberty and then the Crash would do something they had never done before, and yet still manage to leave a worse taste in my mouth than either of their first 2 decades. With an 81-78-1 record, a 50.9% win rate, and an MVP trophy without any ties for the first time in their history. And yet, there are a couple big ways in which this decade is almost as bad as the previous one, and worse than their first two. For one, due to how middling they were for all but 2 seasons, despite a winning record overall they only got to the playoffs twice, and they were completely unable to win a game, much less make the Ultimus, in either season. This stretches the current Ultimus drought of the Liberty/Crash to 24 seasons without an appearance, and 33 seasons without a win. The last time this franchise made the Ultimus, the Copperheads were a winless expansion franchise. Since then, only a single other team, the Chicago Butchers, has not made the Ultimus on two separate occasions. Since then, the Otters have gone from a powerhouse to a shell of their former selves, the Yeti went from worse than them to the team with the best win rate for the decade to worse than them again, and the Outlaws who they met in their last Ultimus would have one of the most unfortunate playoff decades in league history and then have the greatest decade in league history. The average team would have made the Ultimus almost 4 times since then, it's something like 3.75 Ultimus appearances. And since their last win in S7, the average team would have won over 2.5 Ultimus titles. This is the other twin pillar on which the Liberty/Crash's claim of the Worst Franchise Ever status rests, the fact that they have not made the Ultimus in over half the league's existence and have not won it for 3/4ths of the league's existence. And unlike the Otters, they weren't anywhere near good enough for not winning the Ultimus in the last 20 seasons to not be such a massive negative on the franchise.
All Time Record: 258-315-2 (45.0% win rate)
Playoff Record: 7-11 (38.8% win rate)
Ultimus Record: 1-3
Playoff Berths: 12 over 39 seasons, 30.8%
Hall of Famers: 5 (Paul DiMirio, Marquise Brown, Lennox Garnett, Sam Torenson, Jake Fencik)
Major Award Wins: 2 MVPs, 1 OPOY, 1 DPOY (1 MVP and DPOY came from the same season)
Best Team Period: S6-S7 (2 playoff berths, 2 Ultimus Appearances, 1 title, 19-9 record over 2 seasons, 67.9% win rate)
Worst Team Period: S26-S30 (25-55 record over 5 seasons, 31.25% win rate)
It feels both wrong, and extremely difficult, for a guy who has been in the ISFL for like 8 total seasons and only joined in S24-S25 to judge between this team and the Yeti. All in all, there's really not a question that it's one of these two teams that's the worst. Sure, the win rate is slightly higher than the Second Line and the Sabercats, and similarly the playoff berth rate is better, but those teams have 3 titles apiece to each of these team's single title. From there, it goes to other ways to look at things: The Liberty have one of the worst proportions of 10 win seasons to total seasons in the league, maybe the single worst. They have 5 total seasons that end up as 10 win seasons for a 16 game season as it should be; a pair of 9-5 seasons, a 10-4 season and 11-5 season, and a 10-6 season. This team had more 10 loss seasons than that in the S21-30 decade on its own, and double the 10 loss seasons overall without even extrapolating like you have to do to get their 10 win season total to 5; with extrapolation they have 12 total 10 loss seasons. They also don't have anywhere near the Hall of Famer count or award cabinet of the Yeti, and their best stretch isn't anywhere near as good as the Yeti's, either. So where do the Crash/Liberty have the advantage? Well, all time Win Record, for one. And the number of 10 win and 10 loss seasons isn't that different from the Yeti's 7 and 13, respectively. But the real thing is that, even despite having the second worst record for a full decade between S21 and S30 of any team I've covered so far, it's not quite as bad as that in terms of bad stretches. Sure, 101 losses over a decade period is the current most of any team, but they got there via 4 and 5 and 6 win seasons. Other teams, such as the Butchers, the Second Line, the Sabercats, and even the Wraiths and Outlaws have comparably bad or even much worse stretches than the Liberty's worst.
So I cannot make a complete judgement yet. If nothing else, the fact that the Crash are on track for the first seed and a record well north of 10 wins right now, while the Yeti are currently .500 and outside the playoff picture, makes me much more inclined to put the Yeti below the Crash/Liberty than Vice-versa. And if the Crash make, and especially win, this current season's Ultimus trophy, then they put themselves into an argument with the Sabercats and Second line, and leave the Yeti in an easy 14th.
Season 2 through 10
The Decently Successful Early Years
The Decently Successful Early Years
S2: 5-9
S3: 8-5-1 (0-1 in Playoffs)
S4: 7-7 (0-1 in Playoffs)
S5: 8-6
S6: 9-5 (1-1 in Playoffs, 1st Ultimus berth)
S7: 10-4 (2-0 in Playoffs, 2nd Ultimus berth and 1st win)
S8: 7-7
S9: 4-10
S10: 0-14
During this 9 year stretch, the Liberty went 58-67-1, for a 46.0% win rate. I cannot decide whether this is a successful decade or not; they're barely below the average with two Ultimus berths and a win, through the same S2-S7 stretch of time that their fellow S2 expansion team in the Second Line/Las Vegas Legion were going 15-68-1, the Liberty put together a 47-36-1 record that would have their win rate at 56.6%. Overall, though, all of the stats I've been using would cast this period of time as below average, even with their status as the first NSFC team to win the Ultimus. 4/9 playoff berths when 50% of teams make the postseason is just below average, as are the already mentioned Ultimus berths and win, they went completely without awards, and after having a 6 year period without going below .500 after their first season, they finished the decade going 4-24 over two seasons and utterly tanking their win percent. This decade also saw the Liberty go 3-3 in the postseason over their 4 trips.
Still, being below average was almost the best that an NSFC team could hope for during this period where the ASFC won 7/10 Ultimus bowls. Not quite the best, but still vastly above the other NSFC elephant in the room. And going to the Ultimus in the team's 5th year of existence is something that I do not believe has been surpassed by any other expansion team since.
Season 11 through 20
A Below Average Team in Almost Every Metric
A Below Average Team in Almost Every Metric
S11: 7-7
S12: 7-7 (0-1 in Playoffs)
S13: 8-6 (Marquise Brown wins MVP, tied with 2 others, and OPOY) (0-1 in Playoffs)
S14: 9-5 (1-1 in Playoffs, 3rd Ultimus berth)
S15: 8-6 (0-1 in Playoffs
S16: 7-6 (2-1 in Playoffs, 4th Ultimus berth)
S17: 5-8
S18: 4-9
S19: 6-7 (Richard D'Attoria V wins DPOY)
S20: 5-8
During this decade, the Liberty went 66-69 for a 48.9% win rate. Again, they came agonizingly close to .500 for the decade, but ended up a hair below average in basically every category. In a league that was 8 teams for half the decade and 10 teams for the other half, they ended up with around the average you'd expect if there were 10 teams in the league for the whole decade; 2 Ultimus berths, 5 playoff berths, 3 award wins with 2 coming from the same season...but it missed one major thing. The Liberty were completely unable to win the Ultimus during this time period. They even managed to avoid the criticism I usually give for middling records that made the playoffs between S16 and S21, as their one playoff berth over the 5 years listed did come as the 3rd seed, but they rode that playoff berth to their second Ultimus appearance of the decade. Still, they managed to exit the decade with a 4-5 playoff record, respectable in its own right, and opened their award cabinet in style by joining the three way tie for the MVP trophy along with an OPOY simultaneously. The fact remains, though, that the Liberty are one of a trio of teams who have not managed to put together an above average decade for either S1-10 or S11-20 out of those that we've covered so far, and I'm pretty certain that the Hawks are not going to be joining them in that category. In terms of overall performance, the Liberty are clearly better through S2-20 than either the Second Line or the Yeti during this period, despite the Second Line's greater awards cabinet and number of Ultimus trophies. Still, both of those teams had at least an above average S21 through S30 with an Ultimus trophy to go along with it, so how do the Liberty compare here?
Season 21 through 30
The Answer: Extremely Poorly, and that feels like a Massive Understatement
S21: 3-10
S22: 6-7
S23: 9-7 (0-1 in Playoffs)
S24: 3-13
S25: 7-9
S26: 4-12
S27: 6-10
S28: 6-10
S29: 5-11
S30: 4-12
I mean, do you SEE that series of seasonal records? The Liberty were unable to get to 10 wins in a season and only managed to get to the playoffs once. 7 of the 10 seasons were 10 loss seasons, including a 10 loss season during the 13 game schedule of S21. This set of seasons amounts to an abysmal 53-101 record, a 34.4% win rate, and the first 100 loss decade I've covered. Granted, this isn't the absolute bottom of the barrel, the first decade of the Yeti was still noticeably worse; this just came in a decade with 154 games as opposed to 140. Still, that doesn't make this good, acceptable, or even merely bad. A similarly listless and lifeless Hahalua squad who only managed a single playoff appearances and the same number of 0 major awards over this time period, along with one less season played, managed to put together 6 more wins in the decade. The Butchers who barely crested 40%, the previous worst record for this time period, put together a full 10 more wins, an entire good season with the possibility of awards and playoff success more. Really, the most damning indictment of this decade is that it took a team who was slightly below average and disappointing in the previous 19 years to a candidate for the worst franchise in the history of the ISFL in a single, solitary, really abysmally awful decade. The funny part is that I'm not sure this is the worst record for any team for the decade overall. That doesn't change the fact that on its own, this is the second worst decade in the history of the ISFL of any team that I've covered.
Season 31 through 40
Solidifying the Legacy of a Lolcow
S31: 8-8
S32: 11-5 (0-1 in Playoffs)
S33: 6-10
S34: 6-9-1
S35: 8-8
S36: 8-8
S37: 9-7
S38: 7-9
S39: 8-8 (renamed to Cape Town Crash)
S40: 10-6 (Jarvis Harbinger-Marjin wins MVP, 0-1 in Playoffs
During this decade, the Liberty and then the Crash would do something they had never done before, and yet still manage to leave a worse taste in my mouth than either of their first 2 decades. With an 81-78-1 record, a 50.9% win rate, and an MVP trophy without any ties for the first time in their history. And yet, there are a couple big ways in which this decade is almost as bad as the previous one, and worse than their first two. For one, due to how middling they were for all but 2 seasons, despite a winning record overall they only got to the playoffs twice, and they were completely unable to win a game, much less make the Ultimus, in either season. This stretches the current Ultimus drought of the Liberty/Crash to 24 seasons without an appearance, and 33 seasons without a win. The last time this franchise made the Ultimus, the Copperheads were a winless expansion franchise. Since then, only a single other team, the Chicago Butchers, has not made the Ultimus on two separate occasions. Since then, the Otters have gone from a powerhouse to a shell of their former selves, the Yeti went from worse than them to the team with the best win rate for the decade to worse than them again, and the Outlaws who they met in their last Ultimus would have one of the most unfortunate playoff decades in league history and then have the greatest decade in league history. The average team would have made the Ultimus almost 4 times since then, it's something like 3.75 Ultimus appearances. And since their last win in S7, the average team would have won over 2.5 Ultimus titles. This is the other twin pillar on which the Liberty/Crash's claim of the Worst Franchise Ever status rests, the fact that they have not made the Ultimus in over half the league's existence and have not won it for 3/4ths of the league's existence. And unlike the Otters, they weren't anywhere near good enough for not winning the Ultimus in the last 20 seasons to not be such a massive negative on the franchise.
Overall Stats
More than just all time records here
More than just all time records here
All Time Record: 258-315-2 (45.0% win rate)
Playoff Record: 7-11 (38.8% win rate)
Ultimus Record: 1-3
Playoff Berths: 12 over 39 seasons, 30.8%
Hall of Famers: 5 (Paul DiMirio, Marquise Brown, Lennox Garnett, Sam Torenson, Jake Fencik)
Major Award Wins: 2 MVPs, 1 OPOY, 1 DPOY (1 MVP and DPOY came from the same season)
Best Team Period: S6-S7 (2 playoff berths, 2 Ultimus Appearances, 1 title, 19-9 record over 2 seasons, 67.9% win rate)
Worst Team Period: S26-S30 (25-55 record over 5 seasons, 31.25% win rate)
It feels both wrong, and extremely difficult, for a guy who has been in the ISFL for like 8 total seasons and only joined in S24-S25 to judge between this team and the Yeti. All in all, there's really not a question that it's one of these two teams that's the worst. Sure, the win rate is slightly higher than the Second Line and the Sabercats, and similarly the playoff berth rate is better, but those teams have 3 titles apiece to each of these team's single title. From there, it goes to other ways to look at things: The Liberty have one of the worst proportions of 10 win seasons to total seasons in the league, maybe the single worst. They have 5 total seasons that end up as 10 win seasons for a 16 game season as it should be; a pair of 9-5 seasons, a 10-4 season and 11-5 season, and a 10-6 season. This team had more 10 loss seasons than that in the S21-30 decade on its own, and double the 10 loss seasons overall without even extrapolating like you have to do to get their 10 win season total to 5; with extrapolation they have 12 total 10 loss seasons. They also don't have anywhere near the Hall of Famer count or award cabinet of the Yeti, and their best stretch isn't anywhere near as good as the Yeti's, either. So where do the Crash/Liberty have the advantage? Well, all time Win Record, for one. And the number of 10 win and 10 loss seasons isn't that different from the Yeti's 7 and 13, respectively. But the real thing is that, even despite having the second worst record for a full decade between S21 and S30 of any team I've covered so far, it's not quite as bad as that in terms of bad stretches. Sure, 101 losses over a decade period is the current most of any team, but they got there via 4 and 5 and 6 win seasons. Other teams, such as the Butchers, the Second Line, the Sabercats, and even the Wraiths and Outlaws have comparably bad or even much worse stretches than the Liberty's worst.
So I cannot make a complete judgement yet. If nothing else, the fact that the Crash are on track for the first seed and a record well north of 10 wins right now, while the Yeti are currently .500 and outside the playoff picture, makes me much more inclined to put the Yeti below the Crash/Liberty than Vice-versa. And if the Crash make, and especially win, this current season's Ultimus trophy, then they put themselves into an argument with the Sabercats and Second line, and leave the Yeti in an easy 14th.