My experience as a rookie for the Norfolk Seawolves has been nothing but positive. I’m not sure much about the locker rooms and or leadership for the other Developmental Simulation Football League teams, but I have had a great experience so far. Below, I am going to describe my experience as a user on here. From getting started, to playing through my first season in the Developmental Simulation Football League, and everything in between.
I jumped into the International Sim Football league after Ice Bear harassed me about it for a month or more. I’ve told a lot of scouts this, but I really wish I had joined sooner. I joined within a week or so of the Developmental Simulation Football League draft and was extremely confused. For all the crap I give Ice Bear he really helped me a ton getting me to understanding the threads, discord, TPE, etc. I’m not sure how others feel, but I think that getting started is definitely the worst part for someone that is new. It makes me wonder what the numbers are on people who join, but then aren’t active due to confusion and effort. The rookie point thread that explains things in detail helped a lot. But it does make me wonder if a league job(s) could be created as new player mentors. This may already exist but I’m not sure, and there may not be any interest but I think it would be helpful with future growth of the Sim.
The night of the draft I watched pretty closely having no idea who anyone was or if I would even get drafted. It was great seeing all the effort everyone put in to the production of the draft and the feedback that people were giving on each pick. I knew then that I was going to love my experience here. Pick by pick went by and my excitement began to diminish some as I realized I hadn’t really been scouted and probably wasn’t going to get drafted. I honestly can’t remember exactly how everything went down but I was scouted by two teams. One that will remain unnamed and then the Legend that they call IsaStarCrossed. To my surprise I got drafted in the thirty-third overall and couldn’t have been more excited. I even saw a Tim Tebow graphic on the stream and immediately had to take a screenshot.
Isa is a legend for more than just drafting me (although that helps ). In my scouting conversation Isa revealed that Norfolk had recently lost their GM and so Isa volunteered to help out for the time being. I’m not sure if Negs (more info on Negs later) was the co GM at the time but either way they had a heck of a draft. In the first round they took Nick L. Back. While Nickleback is generally sure to disappoint, Nick L. Back has done everything but that. He plays the same position that I do (Tight end) and wears the same number (sixty-nine) but comparisons end right about there. I think he ended up being a top 5 or so receiver in the league this year so that was fun to watch.
Anyway fast forwarding to the getting in the Norfolk Seawolves’ locker room, I got a little more confused. Discord was still extremely new to me. There were a bunch of different channels on there and then there were also bots. There were also commands for the bot dog Wolfie and I thought that I would be lost forever. But I caught on pretty quick to things and was able to join in chat with everyone.
At some point early on or midway through the season Negs was promoted to General Manager in an official capacity. Negs is another legend. I first ever met and spoke with Negs while playing the Jeopardy game on one of the discord channels. He was hilarious in there and also not the greatest at jeopardy. So when news broke that he was the new general manager I was really excited. I spoke with a general manager of another team and they told me that Norfolk has had a ton of turnover at the general manger position and it has been kinda abnormal even. Negs has been awesome and I think has already made a big impact on the locker room. He is super active and always willing to help everyone. From rumblings I have heard, Negs player hasn’t been super successful, but I have no doubt he will have tons of sustained success as a general manger.
We did not have a very successful season record wise this year. I went into the season with one goal: to beat the Minnesota Grey Ducks (because of Ice Bear). I quickly realized that wanting to beat the Grey Ducks was a lot simpler than actually beating them. The first game we played against them, my other friend Fronk ran for what seemed like 500 yards and 10 touchdowns. From that moment forward I decided I needed to take the battle with Ice Bear off the gridiron and onto Twitter. Unfortunately losing as much as we did this season didn’t give me much ammo to fire at Ice Bear, so unfortunately I have been takings L’s on Twitter too.
Back to my observations:
Watching the games was fun. I find watching the sim hilarious and also frustrating at times. The locker room was a fun place to be during games. We have a seemingly young team this season so I tried to make an effort to be fun but also a positive example. The sim gets frustrating when some games we would throw nothing but short passes or run on 4th and 10. Weird things like that would happen from time to time even though our settings were different. It sucks to get screwed by the Sim like that but hopefully moving forward we have better luck as our team progresses and we all begin getting closer to maxing out our TPE levels. One side note: I loved color rush week and hope to see more things like that in the future. I am bias possibly but Norfolk definitely had the best field in my opinion.
As the season winded down, more and more scouts from the ISFL began reaching out. This took the fun level up an entirely new notch. I missed this all the first time around so it has been great having so many conversations, and I am more intrigued now than I was a month ago when I first began this. I think it is pretty cool that there are so many layers to this league. Seeing how the scouting process works and talking with people that have different positions has been really nice. There are owners, managers, scouts, coaches (I think?), and players. I think that it’s been cool to see how much goes into making this work and a good experience for everyone.
Separately from my team or anything involving my team, I think some of the scandals recently have been absolutely hilarious. One person cheated on betting and I think correctly predicted all games for 12 weeks in a row and also had like $130 million saved up. The folks who were forced to clean that mess up probably didn’t find that enjoyable but when I read through that thread I couldn’t stop laughing.
In conclusion, this has been a great experience so far and I look forward to diving in and learning more. I probably won’t generally do media that is kind of serious like this, I like to keep things pretty light generally, but I figured a reflection would be a good thing. If I do one in the future it will probably be more about myself getting into scouting, war room stuff, etc. I think that is the next step of my immersion into this league. Hopefully we have somewhat of a more successful season once things get started back up, I am sure that will add a lot of enjoyable moments to this experience as well.
I jumped into the International Sim Football league after Ice Bear harassed me about it for a month or more. I’ve told a lot of scouts this, but I really wish I had joined sooner. I joined within a week or so of the Developmental Simulation Football League draft and was extremely confused. For all the crap I give Ice Bear he really helped me a ton getting me to understanding the threads, discord, TPE, etc. I’m not sure how others feel, but I think that getting started is definitely the worst part for someone that is new. It makes me wonder what the numbers are on people who join, but then aren’t active due to confusion and effort. The rookie point thread that explains things in detail helped a lot. But it does make me wonder if a league job(s) could be created as new player mentors. This may already exist but I’m not sure, and there may not be any interest but I think it would be helpful with future growth of the Sim.
The night of the draft I watched pretty closely having no idea who anyone was or if I would even get drafted. It was great seeing all the effort everyone put in to the production of the draft and the feedback that people were giving on each pick. I knew then that I was going to love my experience here. Pick by pick went by and my excitement began to diminish some as I realized I hadn’t really been scouted and probably wasn’t going to get drafted. I honestly can’t remember exactly how everything went down but I was scouted by two teams. One that will remain unnamed and then the Legend that they call IsaStarCrossed. To my surprise I got drafted in the thirty-third overall and couldn’t have been more excited. I even saw a Tim Tebow graphic on the stream and immediately had to take a screenshot.
Isa is a legend for more than just drafting me (although that helps ). In my scouting conversation Isa revealed that Norfolk had recently lost their GM and so Isa volunteered to help out for the time being. I’m not sure if Negs (more info on Negs later) was the co GM at the time but either way they had a heck of a draft. In the first round they took Nick L. Back. While Nickleback is generally sure to disappoint, Nick L. Back has done everything but that. He plays the same position that I do (Tight end) and wears the same number (sixty-nine) but comparisons end right about there. I think he ended up being a top 5 or so receiver in the league this year so that was fun to watch.
Anyway fast forwarding to the getting in the Norfolk Seawolves’ locker room, I got a little more confused. Discord was still extremely new to me. There were a bunch of different channels on there and then there were also bots. There were also commands for the bot dog Wolfie and I thought that I would be lost forever. But I caught on pretty quick to things and was able to join in chat with everyone.
At some point early on or midway through the season Negs was promoted to General Manager in an official capacity. Negs is another legend. I first ever met and spoke with Negs while playing the Jeopardy game on one of the discord channels. He was hilarious in there and also not the greatest at jeopardy. So when news broke that he was the new general manager I was really excited. I spoke with a general manager of another team and they told me that Norfolk has had a ton of turnover at the general manger position and it has been kinda abnormal even. Negs has been awesome and I think has already made a big impact on the locker room. He is super active and always willing to help everyone. From rumblings I have heard, Negs player hasn’t been super successful, but I have no doubt he will have tons of sustained success as a general manger.
We did not have a very successful season record wise this year. I went into the season with one goal: to beat the Minnesota Grey Ducks (because of Ice Bear). I quickly realized that wanting to beat the Grey Ducks was a lot simpler than actually beating them. The first game we played against them, my other friend Fronk ran for what seemed like 500 yards and 10 touchdowns. From that moment forward I decided I needed to take the battle with Ice Bear off the gridiron and onto Twitter. Unfortunately losing as much as we did this season didn’t give me much ammo to fire at Ice Bear, so unfortunately I have been takings L’s on Twitter too.
Back to my observations:
Watching the games was fun. I find watching the sim hilarious and also frustrating at times. The locker room was a fun place to be during games. We have a seemingly young team this season so I tried to make an effort to be fun but also a positive example. The sim gets frustrating when some games we would throw nothing but short passes or run on 4th and 10. Weird things like that would happen from time to time even though our settings were different. It sucks to get screwed by the Sim like that but hopefully moving forward we have better luck as our team progresses and we all begin getting closer to maxing out our TPE levels. One side note: I loved color rush week and hope to see more things like that in the future. I am bias possibly but Norfolk definitely had the best field in my opinion.
As the season winded down, more and more scouts from the ISFL began reaching out. This took the fun level up an entirely new notch. I missed this all the first time around so it has been great having so many conversations, and I am more intrigued now than I was a month ago when I first began this. I think it is pretty cool that there are so many layers to this league. Seeing how the scouting process works and talking with people that have different positions has been really nice. There are owners, managers, scouts, coaches (I think?), and players. I think that it’s been cool to see how much goes into making this work and a good experience for everyone.
Separately from my team or anything involving my team, I think some of the scandals recently have been absolutely hilarious. One person cheated on betting and I think correctly predicted all games for 12 weeks in a row and also had like $130 million saved up. The folks who were forced to clean that mess up probably didn’t find that enjoyable but when I read through that thread I couldn’t stop laughing.
In conclusion, this has been a great experience so far and I look forward to diving in and learning more. I probably won’t generally do media that is kind of serious like this, I like to keep things pretty light generally, but I figured a reflection would be a good thing. If I do one in the future it will probably be more about myself getting into scouting, war room stuff, etc. I think that is the next step of my immersion into this league. Hopefully we have somewhat of a more successful season once things get started back up, I am sure that will add a lot of enjoyable moments to this experience as well.