10.
Richard Gilbert came into the league during season 21 and entered the draft. Due to a slight drop in activity in the days leading up to the draft, Gilbert slipped all the way to the 97th pick to the Tijuana Luchadores, in a time when many of the picks were IA or semi-active users. Despite his late draft position, Gilbert earned well and went on to become one of the better running backs in the league. His first season he was borderline top ten, despite playing as a backup role. In his second season, Gilbert was granted the starting spot. He proceeded to go on a tear through the league, ending up as one of the top running backs, though ultimately would not win an award despite being nominated for both the positional award and a performance award. Gilbert was part of a team that would dominate the league, and went on to win the Ultimini for Tijuana. The game was all in all a nailbiter that ended very close, however the difference maker being Richard Gilbert’s rushing touchdown, which would end up being the only touchdown scored by either team for the whole game. This game would be a fitting send off for Richard Gilbert as afterwards he was called up to begin playing for the Colorado Yeti.
While Gilbert had jumped in draft position for the NSFL (now ISFL), the jump was not as significant as he expected. He was taken 77 OA by the Colorado Yeti, despite being very nearly capped at the time of the draft. Nevertheless, Gilbert stuck with Colorado for his entire career to date, kept his head up, and continued earning. Despite spending his first couple seasons bouncing around wherever the team needed him, including fullback, tight end, and his designated position as running back, Gilbert never formally swapped positions. Ever a team player, when finally seemingly in a position to take over starting duties for the Yeti he was approached by the general managers regarding the potential acquisition of another higher TPE running back. While this would mean Gilbert would continue as a backup for another couple of seasons, he was happy if it meant the team would improve. After that couple seasons, Gilbert finally was granted the starting spot for running back. Since that time, he’s consistently been one of the top runners in the league, though never the best. His greatest accomplishments actually came in the pass block aspect of his game, in which he almost single handedly caused fantasy football to stop granting points for pancakes for non offensive linemen.
13.
So expansion has definitely been a hot topic recently. I’ve been very much against it (for now) and from what I’ve been seeing it seems like discussion has cooled down a bit and people are starting to finally come to terms with the fact that expansion right now is probably not going to happen, nor should it. First off, the league just isn’t ready for expansion in terms of player growth. Between the S21 and S25 seasons the league experienced a huge boom of users, with probably at least 3 of those seasons being some of the biggest classes ever. That resulted in pretty rapid expansion of the league, growing from 10 teams to 14 in that same timespan. Coincidentally (not), this boom in league users happened right around the time the lockdowns were starting, and ever since the S25 class, the draft classes have been relatively small. For reference, we generally now struggle to have 4 full rounds in a 14 team ISFL draft. People know this and still push for expansions, usually parroting a couple different points to argue it. I’m going to tackle a couple of the most common arguments for expansion I see.
The first is in regards to the cap and team sizes. Right now teams are filled to the brim with quality, active users. As a result, it has been great amounts of pressure on teams to both find space to bring up the users they drafted while simultaneously making sure they don’t go over the cap limits. While a couple people have argued to expand the cap, in my opinion expanding the league and expanding the cap are solutions to the same problem, and neither is appropriate at the moment. As I mentioned before, the league is currently saturated with people from the S21-25 classes. These players will start to retire soon, which will leave huge holes in a bunch of the teams since they make up a bulk of the league at the moment. On top of that, I can guarantee we won’t see a 100% retention rate meaning the league is going to shrink. Expanding now while counting on these aging players would be a huge mistake for this reason, likely leading to eventual contraction when combined with the smaller draft classes that can’t support 16 teams.
The other argument I’ve seen involves DSFL contraction. My main issue with this one is that many people seem to have it backwards. They seem to think that by contracting the DSFL, there will be more users available for the ISFL. In reality the reverse is true. If the ISFL expands, the DSFL would be forced to contract as a result. Contracting the DSFL on it’s own doesn’t lead to a larger player pool, it just concentrates them more closely.
Richard Gilbert came into the league during season 21 and entered the draft. Due to a slight drop in activity in the days leading up to the draft, Gilbert slipped all the way to the 97th pick to the Tijuana Luchadores, in a time when many of the picks were IA or semi-active users. Despite his late draft position, Gilbert earned well and went on to become one of the better running backs in the league. His first season he was borderline top ten, despite playing as a backup role. In his second season, Gilbert was granted the starting spot. He proceeded to go on a tear through the league, ending up as one of the top running backs, though ultimately would not win an award despite being nominated for both the positional award and a performance award. Gilbert was part of a team that would dominate the league, and went on to win the Ultimini for Tijuana. The game was all in all a nailbiter that ended very close, however the difference maker being Richard Gilbert’s rushing touchdown, which would end up being the only touchdown scored by either team for the whole game. This game would be a fitting send off for Richard Gilbert as afterwards he was called up to begin playing for the Colorado Yeti.
While Gilbert had jumped in draft position for the NSFL (now ISFL), the jump was not as significant as he expected. He was taken 77 OA by the Colorado Yeti, despite being very nearly capped at the time of the draft. Nevertheless, Gilbert stuck with Colorado for his entire career to date, kept his head up, and continued earning. Despite spending his first couple seasons bouncing around wherever the team needed him, including fullback, tight end, and his designated position as running back, Gilbert never formally swapped positions. Ever a team player, when finally seemingly in a position to take over starting duties for the Yeti he was approached by the general managers regarding the potential acquisition of another higher TPE running back. While this would mean Gilbert would continue as a backup for another couple of seasons, he was happy if it meant the team would improve. After that couple seasons, Gilbert finally was granted the starting spot for running back. Since that time, he’s consistently been one of the top runners in the league, though never the best. His greatest accomplishments actually came in the pass block aspect of his game, in which he almost single handedly caused fantasy football to stop granting points for pancakes for non offensive linemen.
13.
So expansion has definitely been a hot topic recently. I’ve been very much against it (for now) and from what I’ve been seeing it seems like discussion has cooled down a bit and people are starting to finally come to terms with the fact that expansion right now is probably not going to happen, nor should it. First off, the league just isn’t ready for expansion in terms of player growth. Between the S21 and S25 seasons the league experienced a huge boom of users, with probably at least 3 of those seasons being some of the biggest classes ever. That resulted in pretty rapid expansion of the league, growing from 10 teams to 14 in that same timespan. Coincidentally (not), this boom in league users happened right around the time the lockdowns were starting, and ever since the S25 class, the draft classes have been relatively small. For reference, we generally now struggle to have 4 full rounds in a 14 team ISFL draft. People know this and still push for expansions, usually parroting a couple different points to argue it. I’m going to tackle a couple of the most common arguments for expansion I see.
The first is in regards to the cap and team sizes. Right now teams are filled to the brim with quality, active users. As a result, it has been great amounts of pressure on teams to both find space to bring up the users they drafted while simultaneously making sure they don’t go over the cap limits. While a couple people have argued to expand the cap, in my opinion expanding the league and expanding the cap are solutions to the same problem, and neither is appropriate at the moment. As I mentioned before, the league is currently saturated with people from the S21-25 classes. These players will start to retire soon, which will leave huge holes in a bunch of the teams since they make up a bulk of the league at the moment. On top of that, I can guarantee we won’t see a 100% retention rate meaning the league is going to shrink. Expanding now while counting on these aging players would be a huge mistake for this reason, likely leading to eventual contraction when combined with the smaller draft classes that can’t support 16 teams.
The other argument I’ve seen involves DSFL contraction. My main issue with this one is that many people seem to have it backwards. They seem to think that by contracting the DSFL, there will be more users available for the ISFL. In reality the reverse is true. If the ISFL expands, the DSFL would be forced to contract as a result. Contracting the DSFL on it’s own doesn’t lead to a larger player pool, it just concentrates them more closely.