04-16-2023, 10:52 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-21-2023, 11:11 AM by xenosthelegend. Edited 1 time in total.)
Hi there! Rev here. You probably know me from my smash hit 1990s sitcom, Bojack Kumquatman. Or maybe you’re more familiar with my work in the mid to late ‘80s with guitarist and friend Slash in our band Guns ‘n’ Kumquats. What I’m driving at here, is that I’ve been around for a bit and I’m sure you’ve heard of me.
I heard a rumor from the ol’ grapevine that a fella can get 2.5x media pay for talking about how the ISFL and its many users have impacted me. That kind of thing sounds right up my alley, as I have the unique distinction of being one of the few users (or maybe there are more of us than I think and I just don’t pay attention) who have held a league job for 10+ consecutive seasons and still somehow manage to be poor. And I’m not talking like “tee hee I only have $45 million and don’t know how I’ll afford training six seasons from now!” poor. I mean more like “my in-the-red-at-the-end-of-every-season ass was only able to afford training consistently thanks to Infinite giving his money away in the most recent charity drive and a whole lot of luck.”
Anyway. A bit of background about myself and what this league and its users have meant to me! I’ll even try to make it less fictitious than that first paragraph. I joined the ISFL in July 2020 on the back of an /r/nfl post that netted the league its second largest recruiting class to date, the S25 class. A large number of users from the S25 draft class became pretty invested in the league from the get go, max earning, getting to know each other on discord, and rapidly gaining league jobs. Not just your average league jobs either! These users were becoming GMs, HO interns, department heads, and in some cases even helping to found and run new departments (shout out to the sim transfer/balance team; such a massive undertaking wasn’t just S25 folks of course, but they were a huge chunk of it, and so many of them were brand new to sim leagues relatively speaking!) all in their first few seasons in the league. All of this is to say: enjoyment is often a contagious thing, and as many of us know, it’s a lot easier to get invested in the league when you’re surrounded by many others who are invested, especially when they’re people who came into the league at the same time as you. Competitiveness is a funny thing (both in the sim and outside of it!) I genuinely don’t think I could have asked for a better group of people to enter the league alongside - my fellow S25 users were invested in both the social aspects and the sim aspects of the league and it greatly contributed to my initial interest in the league, and the investments I see from many of my fellow S25 users who are still around today continues to warm the cockles of the heart.
One of the things I love the most about this league is its ability to bring people together from all over the world. When my first player was on the Dallas Birddogs, I used to joke that there was rarely ever a dead moment in the team’s locker room because so many of us were from around the world and so many different time zones were represented. We had users on both coasts in America, as most teams in the league can probably boast, but we also had Europeans, South Americans, a general manager in Asia, and so on. I love getting to know the users I share these locker rooms with, and getting to learn about all of these less-than-familiar places my teammates were from, in addition to the foods they prepared or the holidays they celebrated or the languages they spoke. Getting to know so many different people from around the world, with so many different backgrounds, is among the most interesting things the ISFL has brought into my life.
Another thing I love about this league is the level of investment I’ve seen when it comes to fleshing out the ISFL universe. Without this “fleshing out”, our league could solely just be dots from a simulation and a text based index that tells you how your dot performed. Luckily, the ISFL we live in is so much more than that; our players aren’t just uniform dots! We’ve given them renders, and signatures/many other wonderful forms of graphics to flesh out their identity. We’re encouraged to flesh out their backgrounds and fill in details surrounding their career through PTs and media and the like. On a larger scale, we’re a league that is proud of our history (or in maybe more than a few cases, not so proud) and we’ve taken many steps to record and preserve that history. That’s why we can not only tell you who won the championship 32 seasons ago (probably OCO knowing how things were back then, right?), but we can even tell you who led the league in rushing attempts that season, or who won that year’s Most Dedicated Member. The record keeping and dare I even say immersion provided by the index and league wiki can easily go unappreciated but can both add a ton to the user experience here.
Ultimately, the thing I love the most about this league is its community, and the people I’ve met thanks to the ISFL. What started off as a celebration of dot football (something every human on earth naturally goes through at some point in their life) and the players we’ve created has turned into a celebration of friendships and milestones. I can say with great certainty ISFL has provided me with no joy greater than being able to call some of you guys my friends. Well, okay, maybe not *great* certainty; the -coachlist command in management admittedly might be pretty high up the list.
Part 2: electric boogaloo
That first part was exactly 1000 words! Seems like a natural pivoting point to quickly take advantage of Joe’s very generous media bonus and talk about a subject I’ve been curious about for a bit; how do the S39 Yellowknife Wraiths stack up to the 1985 Chicago Bears in a few different categories? I think the teams have two key similarities in my view, and one of them is admittedly pretty selfish and ego-stroking; both teams had defenses that pretty easily rank among the best in their respective league’s histories. And both teams had studly future hall of fame running backs to help prod their offenses to a championship victory. Alright, I may be really fluffing up my player Kumquat Archipelago’s resume here, but in all seriousness, I *did* make Kumquat’s render Walter Payton because I wanted to make a RB as similar to Walter as I could, seeing how he’s one of the coolest and most dominant NFL players of all time. Obviously making a Walter Payton level runningback much easier said than done, but season 39 definitely gave me a glimmer of that sweetness!
Team Records
1985 Chicago Bears: 15-1 record, won playoff games 21-0, 24-0, and finally 46-10 in the championship.
Season 39 Yellowknife Wraiths: 13-3 record, won playoff games 45-21, 48-27, and 34-6.
Team Stats
1985 Chicago Bears: 456 points scored in 16 games (28.5 per game), 198 points against (12.4 per game.) Offense averaged 364.8 yards per game (172.6 yards rushing, 192.2 yards passing) while the defense gave up 258.4 yards per game (176 yards passing, 82.4 yards rushing)
Season 39 Yellowknife Wraiths: 510 points scored in 16 games (31.9 per game), 221 points against (13.8 per game.) Offense averaged 386.8 yards per game (122.6 yards rushing, 264.2 yards passing) while the defense gave up 288.6 yards per game (65.4 yards rushing, 223.2 yards passing)
Team Defensive Leaders
1985 Chicago Bears: Richard Dent 17 sacks, Richard Dent 7 fumbles forced, Leslie Frazier 6 interceptions (yes, that Leslie Frazier), I couldn’t tell you who led the ‘85 bears in tackles because apparently nobody cared about tackles in the 80s but I’m willing to bet it was probably Mike Singletary. Weirdly enough, PFR gives career/yearly tackle numbers for another Bears linebacker, Wilber Marshall (he had 78 in 1985), but not for Singletary.
Season 39 Yellowknife Wraiths: Zephyr Greywolf 19 sacks, Jack McPherson 6 fumbles forced, Kalam Mekhar 9 interceptions, Zephyr Greywolf 118 tackles.
Team Passing
1985 Chicago Bears: 237 completions, 432 attempts (54.9%), 3303 yards, 16 TDs, 16 INTs, 7.6 Y/A, 77.3 rating (split between two starters, Jim McMahon and Steve Fuller)
Season 39 Yellowknife Wraiths: 368 completions, 593 attempts (62.1%), 4227 yards, 30 TDs, 12 INTs, 7.1 Y/A, 91.9 rating
Team Rushing
1985 Chicago Bears: 610 attempts, 2761 yards, 4.5 YPC, 27 TDs,
Walter Payton: 324 attempts, 1551 yards, 9 TDs, 483 receiving yards, 2 rec TDs, 6 fumbles
Season 39 Yellowknife Wraiths: 450 attempts, 1962 yards, 4.4 YPC, 25 TDs
Kumquat Archipelago: 309 attempts, 1336 yards, 19 TDs, 720 receiving yards, 3 rec TDs, 4 fumbles
And lastly, and most importantly..
Team Punting
1985 Chicago Bears: 2870 yards, 42.2 yards per punt. 18 punts inside the 20
Season 39 Yellowknife Wraiths: 3409 yards, 47.3 yards per punt, 31 punts inside the 20
Key takeaways: Wow hey the S39 YKW defense was pretty darn tootin’ good. Probably not quite as strong as an all around unit as the 85 bears, but you sure wouldn’t know/be able to argue that point by comparing stat leaders! YKW’s passing attack was much flashier (despite a surprisingly lower Y/A number!), but I think I may have been flattering myself a bit comparing our rushing attack to theirs. I am pretty happy with how Kumquat stacked up against this particular Walter Payton season though!
ANYWAY with all of that said and done, thank you for reading! I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it. Thanks for being a part of this league and making it as special as it is; it most certainly wouldn’t be the same without you. <3
I heard a rumor from the ol’ grapevine that a fella can get 2.5x media pay for talking about how the ISFL and its many users have impacted me. That kind of thing sounds right up my alley, as I have the unique distinction of being one of the few users (or maybe there are more of us than I think and I just don’t pay attention) who have held a league job for 10+ consecutive seasons and still somehow manage to be poor. And I’m not talking like “tee hee I only have $45 million and don’t know how I’ll afford training six seasons from now!” poor. I mean more like “my in-the-red-at-the-end-of-every-season ass was only able to afford training consistently thanks to Infinite giving his money away in the most recent charity drive and a whole lot of luck.”
Anyway. A bit of background about myself and what this league and its users have meant to me! I’ll even try to make it less fictitious than that first paragraph. I joined the ISFL in July 2020 on the back of an /r/nfl post that netted the league its second largest recruiting class to date, the S25 class. A large number of users from the S25 draft class became pretty invested in the league from the get go, max earning, getting to know each other on discord, and rapidly gaining league jobs. Not just your average league jobs either! These users were becoming GMs, HO interns, department heads, and in some cases even helping to found and run new departments (shout out to the sim transfer/balance team; such a massive undertaking wasn’t just S25 folks of course, but they were a huge chunk of it, and so many of them were brand new to sim leagues relatively speaking!) all in their first few seasons in the league. All of this is to say: enjoyment is often a contagious thing, and as many of us know, it’s a lot easier to get invested in the league when you’re surrounded by many others who are invested, especially when they’re people who came into the league at the same time as you. Competitiveness is a funny thing (both in the sim and outside of it!) I genuinely don’t think I could have asked for a better group of people to enter the league alongside - my fellow S25 users were invested in both the social aspects and the sim aspects of the league and it greatly contributed to my initial interest in the league, and the investments I see from many of my fellow S25 users who are still around today continues to warm the cockles of the heart.
One of the things I love the most about this league is its ability to bring people together from all over the world. When my first player was on the Dallas Birddogs, I used to joke that there was rarely ever a dead moment in the team’s locker room because so many of us were from around the world and so many different time zones were represented. We had users on both coasts in America, as most teams in the league can probably boast, but we also had Europeans, South Americans, a general manager in Asia, and so on. I love getting to know the users I share these locker rooms with, and getting to learn about all of these less-than-familiar places my teammates were from, in addition to the foods they prepared or the holidays they celebrated or the languages they spoke. Getting to know so many different people from around the world, with so many different backgrounds, is among the most interesting things the ISFL has brought into my life.
Another thing I love about this league is the level of investment I’ve seen when it comes to fleshing out the ISFL universe. Without this “fleshing out”, our league could solely just be dots from a simulation and a text based index that tells you how your dot performed. Luckily, the ISFL we live in is so much more than that; our players aren’t just uniform dots! We’ve given them renders, and signatures/many other wonderful forms of graphics to flesh out their identity. We’re encouraged to flesh out their backgrounds and fill in details surrounding their career through PTs and media and the like. On a larger scale, we’re a league that is proud of our history (or in maybe more than a few cases, not so proud) and we’ve taken many steps to record and preserve that history. That’s why we can not only tell you who won the championship 32 seasons ago (probably OCO knowing how things were back then, right?), but we can even tell you who led the league in rushing attempts that season, or who won that year’s Most Dedicated Member. The record keeping and dare I even say immersion provided by the index and league wiki can easily go unappreciated but can both add a ton to the user experience here.
Ultimately, the thing I love the most about this league is its community, and the people I’ve met thanks to the ISFL. What started off as a celebration of dot football (something every human on earth naturally goes through at some point in their life) and the players we’ve created has turned into a celebration of friendships and milestones. I can say with great certainty ISFL has provided me with no joy greater than being able to call some of you guys my friends. Well, okay, maybe not *great* certainty; the -coachlist command in management admittedly might be pretty high up the list.
Part 2: electric boogaloo
That first part was exactly 1000 words! Seems like a natural pivoting point to quickly take advantage of Joe’s very generous media bonus and talk about a subject I’ve been curious about for a bit; how do the S39 Yellowknife Wraiths stack up to the 1985 Chicago Bears in a few different categories? I think the teams have two key similarities in my view, and one of them is admittedly pretty selfish and ego-stroking; both teams had defenses that pretty easily rank among the best in their respective league’s histories. And both teams had studly future hall of fame running backs to help prod their offenses to a championship victory. Alright, I may be really fluffing up my player Kumquat Archipelago’s resume here, but in all seriousness, I *did* make Kumquat’s render Walter Payton because I wanted to make a RB as similar to Walter as I could, seeing how he’s one of the coolest and most dominant NFL players of all time. Obviously making a Walter Payton level runningback much easier said than done, but season 39 definitely gave me a glimmer of that sweetness!
Team Records
1985 Chicago Bears: 15-1 record, won playoff games 21-0, 24-0, and finally 46-10 in the championship.
Season 39 Yellowknife Wraiths: 13-3 record, won playoff games 45-21, 48-27, and 34-6.
Team Stats
1985 Chicago Bears: 456 points scored in 16 games (28.5 per game), 198 points against (12.4 per game.) Offense averaged 364.8 yards per game (172.6 yards rushing, 192.2 yards passing) while the defense gave up 258.4 yards per game (176 yards passing, 82.4 yards rushing)
Season 39 Yellowknife Wraiths: 510 points scored in 16 games (31.9 per game), 221 points against (13.8 per game.) Offense averaged 386.8 yards per game (122.6 yards rushing, 264.2 yards passing) while the defense gave up 288.6 yards per game (65.4 yards rushing, 223.2 yards passing)
Team Defensive Leaders
1985 Chicago Bears: Richard Dent 17 sacks, Richard Dent 7 fumbles forced, Leslie Frazier 6 interceptions (yes, that Leslie Frazier), I couldn’t tell you who led the ‘85 bears in tackles because apparently nobody cared about tackles in the 80s but I’m willing to bet it was probably Mike Singletary. Weirdly enough, PFR gives career/yearly tackle numbers for another Bears linebacker, Wilber Marshall (he had 78 in 1985), but not for Singletary.
Season 39 Yellowknife Wraiths: Zephyr Greywolf 19 sacks, Jack McPherson 6 fumbles forced, Kalam Mekhar 9 interceptions, Zephyr Greywolf 118 tackles.
Team Passing
1985 Chicago Bears: 237 completions, 432 attempts (54.9%), 3303 yards, 16 TDs, 16 INTs, 7.6 Y/A, 77.3 rating (split between two starters, Jim McMahon and Steve Fuller)
Season 39 Yellowknife Wraiths: 368 completions, 593 attempts (62.1%), 4227 yards, 30 TDs, 12 INTs, 7.1 Y/A, 91.9 rating
Team Rushing
1985 Chicago Bears: 610 attempts, 2761 yards, 4.5 YPC, 27 TDs,
Walter Payton: 324 attempts, 1551 yards, 9 TDs, 483 receiving yards, 2 rec TDs, 6 fumbles
Season 39 Yellowknife Wraiths: 450 attempts, 1962 yards, 4.4 YPC, 25 TDs
Kumquat Archipelago: 309 attempts, 1336 yards, 19 TDs, 720 receiving yards, 3 rec TDs, 4 fumbles
And lastly, and most importantly..
Team Punting
1985 Chicago Bears: 2870 yards, 42.2 yards per punt. 18 punts inside the 20
Season 39 Yellowknife Wraiths: 3409 yards, 47.3 yards per punt, 31 punts inside the 20
Key takeaways: Wow hey the S39 YKW defense was pretty darn tootin’ good. Probably not quite as strong as an all around unit as the 85 bears, but you sure wouldn’t know/be able to argue that point by comparing stat leaders! YKW’s passing attack was much flashier (despite a surprisingly lower Y/A number!), but I think I may have been flattering myself a bit comparing our rushing attack to theirs. I am pretty happy with how Kumquat stacked up against this particular Walter Payton season though!
ANYWAY with all of that said and done, thank you for reading! I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it. Thanks for being a part of this league and making it as special as it is; it most certainly wouldn’t be the same without you. <3