(S28) PT 3 - What If?

[Void_DCXI]

I was drafted 60th overall by the New York Silverbacks, but it certainly wasn’t what I was expecting. I was told by a few people to expect to go in the 4th round of the draft. I didn’t. It took until the end of the fifth round for my name to be called. The Orange County Otters selected an inactive running back over me, and I think that has kind of inspired me to continue to be active. To prove everyone wrong. So I think if I had gone a little bit earlier, I wouldn’t have had that chip on my shoulder that ales me pay attention to the league, and do every point task. Speaking of getting drafted by New York, they’ve been extremely helpful in my introduction to the ISFL, and have aided me tremendously. I can’t speak for the quality of Orange County’s locker room, and I’m sure they’re very helpful as well, but New York really seems like the place for me. They have morphed me into someone who does every point task, and someone that knows how the league operates. And for that, I am very grateful. Although I slid in the draft, I went to a place that I think really wants to help me succeed. That’s why I think if I went earlier, I wouldn’t be where I am today.

[SchwarzNarr]

One of the biggest impacts on the Colorado Yeti, and perhaps the New York Silverbacks, would have been if expansion had been announced a season later. As a member of the S24 class, I was auto-protected by the Colorado Yeti. If I had not been, given the friendship I had developed with Woelkers, would I have been a pick for them under expansion? Would I have requested to not be protected by the Yeti and join the Silverbacks? Would I have left in my free agency only a few seasons later? Would I have become the GM after Bwest stepped down instead of Zayn? (Could we have had a Zayn and Schwarz GM combo? The horror of management chat.) This could have also led to the Yeti losing de Pengu as a player as well, and not gaining multiple free agents over the past few seasons who are close friends of Isa and myself. Would they have focused on other free agents? Knowing Sylphreni, yes, they would. Would they have landed them? I don't know. Over the past few seasons, I've been a force to create an active chatroom, we've played multiple video games together, and have even ventured into the idea of starting a Yeti movie night. Would these have happened if I wasn't auto-protected in expansion? Very, very, possibly not.

[ddrector]

I'm going to jump in the time machine and take you to the S18 ISFL draft. Back then it was still called the NSFL, but regardless there was some big ramifications for NOLA in this draft. In the first round NOLA had an obvious pick at 1oa in Bjorn Ironside, but then they had another pick at #6. NOLA ended up taking Thudd Kassel at this spot continuing the longstanding connection between Tijuana and NOLA. DD ended up being traded for some S19 draft picks, which allowed NOLA to get a truly amazing S19 draft class in McCormick, Blaylock, Mack Arianlacher, and Jed Podolak. This group was huge in helping NOLA win the Ultimus in S21. If NOLA goes back and picks Virtanen there instead of Kassel and isn't forced to make the trade then it's a pretty big possibility that NOLA doesn't win the S21 Ultimus. Unforunately, we lost Mack and Podolak in expansion, but Blaylock and McCormick are still on the team and will someday be members of the NOLA Hall of Fame. It's weird to think that the decision, which seemed like the obvious right one at the time, lead to so much for this team.

Another fun what if for me is what if my update hadn't been wrong and everyone had known I was top 5 in TPE going into the S18 draft. I surely don't fall all the way to the top pick of the third round. I'm likely a first round pick and could be on a different team altogether. Who knows, maybe OCO would have taken me over Laser. Craziness.

[y2bobman]

For my ISFL draft I was my own one man hype band, thinking I would squeeze my way into the second round.  But TPE isn't everything.  That said, I did think AZ was my most likely landing spot, but at #22 rather than #36.  Good things come to those who wait, right?

So instead I'll just have a quick look at my fellow LB class from the third round, to see where I could have been now.

Pick #31, Philadelphia Liberty.  Now the Liberty have struggled a little, rebuild in progress but they have a solid core of S25 players.  Here is the interesting thing.  Their co-GM is @Punter715 who was selected by AZ @ #22 and in moving to the Liberty sent Wesley Eriksen to Arizona.  So AZ did pretty well from that.  There is no way Philadelphia would have made that trade to take me as their co-GM!

Pick #33, Yellowknife Wraiths.  The Wraiths were the first team to come scout Burfict so I dont know if that means he was high up on the list, or they just wanted to get him crossed off early.  In the end they took Donald McBobby who... interesting... is now playing alongside Burfict in Arizona (although he has bulked up since then and is now an OL).  If I'd headed to the Wraiths... who knows.  Maybe I'd be an OL right now somewhere.  I do like my food.

Pick #35, Chicago Butchers.  Burfict played alongside Juan Domine in London and would have relished the chance to continue the partnership after we had won the Ultimini together.  But that was me, or Burfict I should say, back then.  And maybe a move to Chicago would have led to Burfict sampling FA as he looked to be reunited with some other members of the S25 Royals gang in Rushmann, Jones and of course my current co-GM Crunk.  That sentence makes me sound like I'm a co‐GM, I'm not. It's Runner Thorbjornsson.

[jzajenius36]

I feel like I’m a bit stuck in the middle with this point task.  On the one hand, I haven’t really been around long enough or I guess paid enough attention to know what some of the ‘landscape shifting’ moves have been over the past few seasons.  And on the other hand, I’m not a rookie, I’ve been playing in the ISFL for several seasons now, so I probably shouldn’t be responding as if I was.  Well since my goal in the ISFL was to get some playing time early, I’d have to say I was taken at the right time, to the right team.  As Philly is in an all-out rebuild mode, it doesn’t hurt to have a young defensive tackle getting his butt kicked up front.  I think the only thing that would’ve changed if I had gone a pick or two in either direction is that I probably wouldn’t be playing very much.  Not very ‘landscape altering’ I suppose.  One pick earlier and I would’ve been a Wraith, or one pick later and I would’ve been a Butcher.  The Wraiths have one of the sack leaders for defensive tackles, while Chicago has two DTs who have nearly twice the tackles I have.  So safe to say those teams are set at DT and I would’ve spent quite some time on the bench.  All in all, glad to be a Liberty!

[nlj04]

If I was not picked by the Portland Pythons I don't honestly know where I would be. Not a ton of Team Owners messaged me prior to the draft. So I can only think what if I was drafted by someone else and I really cannot answer that, that well. But I would most likely have fallen to the third round to a team who needed a backup Running Back. I may have even been drafted earlier in the draft to Start for a team who knows! Maybe I could of gone to Norfolk or what if I went to Bondi Beach. I don't know but just what if I did. It would be a big change from Portland in the winning environment to say the least. And the team might be trying to get back on track with trades more so than Portland where we are gaining lots of chemistry together and gettting better overall. Other than that I don't know where I would be, another winning team? I don't surely know because not a ton of scouts were very interested in me in the DSFL Draft so I just can't tell. I mean maybe I was just randomly selected last round to a great or bad team and can show the impact I am sort of making for Portland currently.

[IsaStarcrossed]

If I had to look at one moment in ISFL history that could have easily been different and potentially changed the scope of things in the league, we would need to go back to the free agency of Adelie de Pengu. Leaving NOLA was one of the hardest things I'd ever done in this league, but I knew I needed to do it for myself. When I hit free agency though, there were only two teams I'd have even seriously considered. One of them was in fact Colorado. They reached out within 10 minutes of free agency launching and I had soft committed by the next day. The decision was actually made easy by my number one choice never reaching out to me. During my time in GM chat, I'd gotten to somewhat know Bayley, a guy I hadn't really had much communication with before. While in GM chat thought I found that I liked his management style and I loved the direction he was taking Chicago. When leaving NOLA, I was looking for a chill environment where I could decompress and just have fun and that seemed to be what Bayley was building with the Butchers. Had he reached out and asked, I'd have gone to Chicago in a heartbeat. With Adelie de Pengu joining Chicago, it would be very likely that the team would have taken a different path. As one of the guys who has been highly involved with recruiting free agents and sim testing and theorizing for Colorado, I feel like Chicago would look like a very different team than they are now. If they'd be better or worse, I'm not brave enough to say, but they'd definitely be a different team. Unfortunately Bayley never reached out to me and we'll never know because I've fallen in love with Colorado and am likely to never leave. Smh, Bayley.

[WildfireMicro]

For this PT I will be discussing on if my pervious player Eric Richards never left Chicago. Obviously I will be assuming that I would still be on Chicago today. In my idea maybe if I never left and had a better attitude the Chicago rebuild could have eventually led to them maybe reaching an Ultimus and I could have a trophy next to my name on the forums. Plus maybe I would be considered a Chicago legend and eventually have Eric's number retired. Maybe my next player would be drafted quite high.

But then what about my current player Tsuyu Asui? Well obviously she wouldn't exist at least not yet until I retired Eric. This actually affects Philadelphia a lot as I am currently considered a big part of thier rebuild and culture and me still being a part of Chicago would be a blow to them. They probably would have drafted a different wide receiver. Plus I wouldn't have had that second run with the Royals and wouldn't be as active there as I am now. It would mean Philadelphia would be missing a War Room member. I personally think that things in the timeline we are in now went as well as they can.

[Yeenoghu]

The league's most recent expansion is ripe for developing these kinds of hypothetical scenarios, and there is no doubt that the specific expansion teams chosen shaped my course in this league. At the time expansion was announced, the GMs of the London Royals were Sylphreni and Highhaschdi, whose players were at the time on the Colorado Yeti and Baltimore Hawks. High's bid with Dewalt for an expansion team in Berlin was accepted, leading to one GM vacancy in London. Simultaneously, the New York franchise was awarded to bwestfield and woelkers, who was the Colorado GM at the time. This opening in Colorado was filled by Syl, which in turn meant that both GM roles in London needed to be replaced. Had either of these franchises not be selected in expansion, it's impossible to know how the 'line of succession' would have happened in London. Would one (or both) of the GMs stayed on for another season or two? Of course, they would have stepped down eventually and named a replacement, but perhaps the GM role skips over me and goes directly to one of the current London GMs. Thankfully events shaped up the way that they did, and I have the exclusive Royal Guard role in London now instead of being blue.

[Tesla]

What if the ISFL never decided to recruit from r/NFL? The obvious ramifications are that there are significantly fewer players in the league, and that we probably would not have seen even one instance of expansion compared to the four that we have seen courtesy of r/NFL drafts.

The S15 draft saw the Copperheads and Butchers come to reality and also kept the league alive with some of the important users to come from that draft class. While a large amount of S18 is now inactive it did also provide several important job holders in the league, and some major players outside of the job holders. It is the loss of S22 though that I think is most game changing as that means the Dallas Birddogs, London Royals, Honolulu Hahalua, and Sarasota Sailfish never come to fruition.

Honestly based on the talk of it that I have heard from league veterans the league might not even exist if that decision is not made and that is an interesting thing to think about to be honest. I know many in the S22 class spent their quarantine basically in the league and where would that time have gone if not for the ISFL?  This point task wants to talk about the league though and so I am going to conclude that if not for the r/NFL drafts that the league would have gone under before S25.

The epilogue to the story of the ISFL in-universe would be that it got bought out by a resurgent NFL and the teams fused with preexisting NFL teams. Unfortunately the fusion of the London Jaguars and Yellowknife Wraiths would lead to widespread rioting as the two international teams are forced to choose a country, and that would lead the world to end in an all out war. Somehow the Otters still make the playoffs that year though.

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