Clickbaity title aside, we as a league need to talk about some things. Specifically, whether or not our current rate of bringing in new recruits is enough to sustain the league going forward.
Spoiler alert: It isn’t. Not from what I can see, at least.
I love this league a lot, and I’m going to try and be as objective as possible. The purpose of this article is to show where we’re at with recruitment and player retention, and then to bring up a couple of potential things we can do for the good of the league (ranging from small tweaks to pretty significant changes)
FIRST, SOME NUMBERS
So I combed through every non-retired player in the entire league (including FAs) and jotted down which draft class they were in and whether or not they are still active
For those unaware, the S4 draft class was super small because that was when the DSFL was created. The main conclusion from this is that, every given draft, we’re looking at about a 20% retention rate for players to stay active. This method obviously isn’t an exact science but it’s a pretty general snapshot.
The trend has actually been improving but that’s likely because the most recent/newer recruits have had less time to go inactive as compared to older users such as those from S1 and S2.
Now let’s check out how much TPE every player in the league from each draft class has. The first table is the total count and the one below it is the % of players from each draft class in each TPE tier.
So this kind of gives us a loose idea of exactly when people go inactive. And, surprise surprise, it’s right at the beginning. Roughly 42% of players never make it past 100 TPE. There’s clearly a “barrier” at the 100 TPE mark.
What’s cool though is that the past two draft classes have been much better, with 28% not getting past 100 TPE.
This could be due to a couple of things, possibly thanks to the DSFL or maybe we’re doing a better job at being welcoming to new users. Could also be because a few recreates are skewing the data in S6 and S7.
So next I wanted to look at how many players actually become useful. That is, how many players in each draft class eventually develop into a player that GMs can feel comfortable starting at the NSFL level.
I decided on 300+ TPE. This differs significantly based on the position but (in my opinion) the majority of 300+ TPE players can be solid and competitive players at the NSFL level. This is obviously up for debate but it’s what I’m rolling with.
So this next table shows the % of players in each TPE tier with emphasis on how many made it past 301 TPE
So this is more encouraging as far as retention goes. Obviously this leaves out your super-star quality players, but approximately 33% of players eventually develop into solid NSFL contributors. Lots of room for debate on this one so don’t put too much stock in this, just trying to get a general feel of things.
Predicting is hard, and this data is far from statistically significant. But we can sorta and debatably infer that in any given draft approximately 42% of players will be useless, 33% will be useful, and 20% will stay active for a reasonable amount of time.
The two most recent drafts have had 36 and 22 players. The S8 draft has (by my count) 25 players. This means that we can guesstimate with statistically UNsignificant and shaky confidence that about 10 or 11 of them will be completely useless at the NSFL level and 8 will develop to become at least solid. 5 of them will be active for a decent amount of time.
HOW DO THINGS LOOK RIGHT NOW?
There are 8 teams in the NSFL, each with around 18 spots that need to be filled by a player. That’s including all 11 spots on defense, QB, RB, two WRs, a TE/WR, another RB/TE/WR, and the K/P. That means the NSFL has 144 starting spots.
The table below shows how many players on each team updated this season, and how many times they updated. Keep in mind each team has approximately 18 starting spots, and the table isn’t entirely accurate because it includes a few send downs and there’s some players (like Blocksdale and Sharpei) who are undoubtedly active members of the community but are pretty much maxed out so they haven’t updated a lot this season.
*Credit to my man @Beaver
So at the moment, the average team has about 13 players who updated at least once this entire season, and about 8 who updated at least 4 times.
The biggest takeaway from this is that the NSFL as a whole has less people updating than it has needs for players. This is not a good thing.
Lots of teams also are built on S1 and S2 players, many of whom are inactive and will be hit by regression very shortly.
*Credit to my man @Beaver
You see all of that blue and red? Six out of the eight teams have over 50% of their total team TPE from S1 or S2 players. Five out of the eight teams have over 40% of their total team TPE from S1 players, who are about to hit regression.
This is where the biggest problem lies. The league was built on the backs of two huge draft classes (s1 and S2), and the league was quickly expanded. Some people back then claimed that this expansion was way too early, and there isn’t really any doubt left that they were right. There are too many teams, not enough recruits, and not enough retention for the league to be sustainable in its current state.
This is something a few of us have talked about but I think it’s time to open it up and start having real, serious, objective talks about what we can do. We obviously are not at the cliff yet, but if we aren’t proactive then we’re going to run into some big problems down the line.
So below are some random ideas I and some others have come up with that may help. Some are simple, others pretty big. Some might get some people angry, and that’s perfectly understandable. But we’re getting to a point where we need to do something.
1. Step up Recruitment
So this one is pretty obvious. If we had more new recruits and better player retention we wouldn’t need to have this conversation. I would think shooting for 50 prospects each draft would help make the league much more sustainable in its current state. The problem is that 50 prospects is pretty much double what the recent draft classes have been.
2. Introduce Filler Bots
This is something I’m actually planning on proposing during the GM summit, so we’ll see how that goes. Specifically, I’m currently thinking DL and K/P 200 TPE filler bots.
These bots WILL NOT replace the positions with bots like the OL bots did. These bots will only be 200 TPE so that any user can quickly surpass them and enjoy the position is they so wish. You could even have all the DL bots be 50ibs lighter than their archetypes and the K/P bots not receive the recent K/P experience buff. If a user wants to be a DL or a K/P, they will become better than the bots over the course of one, maybe two seasons depending on activity.
The purpose of this is that it would reduce that 18 players needed per-team thing from earlier all the way down to 13 players needed. So instead of the league needing 144 players, the league only needs 104 players. That’s almost as many as many players as we had update in S7.
3. Fold or Contract the DSFL
The DSFL came too early, unfortunately. We don’t have enough players to currently sustain the NSFL and we certainly don’t have enough for the current DSFL. If we contract the DSFL to just two teams (which we kinda used to do if you remember the Sun Tropics and Mongoose from back in S1 and S2, which was actually pretty fun in my opinion), we could shed the bot teams and have much more active DSFL LRs to help foster activity and player retention. Frankly, it’s also hard to find enough high-quality GMs for the DSFL.
Or we could just fold the DSFL and go back to the old waiver system, where new creates get to instantly join a NSFL LR and get acquainted with the strongest aspect of this league: the community. But right now we simply don’t have enough users to populate the DSFL in its current state.
3. Contract the NSFL
The NSFL was expanded too early and it might become necessary to contract it. It would suck a lot. There wouldn’t be any way to do it without pissing off at least a few people. But objectively speaking, if we can’t improve recruitment and retention, this may be what’s best for the league. I’m going to talk about this one the most because it’s easy to hand waive it away as an overreaction (which honestly it might be, idk)
There aren’t enough players to sustain the NSFL’s competition in its current state. There just aren’t enough users for parity. The Yeti just went 0-14 two years in a row. The Otters three-peated and might four-peat. The Legion/NOLA have been bottom feeders for a while. SJS and ARI were both tanking at the end of S7. Not to mention all of the recent GM turnover.
By contracting the league to 6 teams the average number of players on each team that updated at least once per season jumps from 12 to about 16 or 17. LRs would become more active, helping with league-wide retention. Parity would improve because it would help even out the playing field, reducing the distance between the bottom feeders and the top dogs, making the league more competitive overall. Drafts would have more relevant rounds so they’d be more exciting.
There’s a few different ways to go about this, but like I said, it’d be hard to do it without pissing anybody off. There are some teams I think would be decent candidates for folding but I’m leave that out of this for now because I don’t want the discussion to focus on that rather than what we can and should do to help out with these problems.
I love the NSFL a lot. I really, really do. We’ve got a special thing going here. But I genuinely think it’s time we start strategizing (not just discussing) different ways we can help ensure that the NSFL is around for a long time. We aren’t at the cliff quite yet, but it’d be nice if we could do something before we get to that point.
****
Please give @Beaver 50% of the pay for this as he helped with data collection/visualization and other stuff
Spoiler alert: It isn’t. Not from what I can see, at least.
I love this league a lot, and I’m going to try and be as objective as possible. The purpose of this article is to show where we’re at with recruitment and player retention, and then to bring up a couple of potential things we can do for the good of the league (ranging from small tweaks to pretty significant changes)
FIRST, SOME NUMBERS
So I combed through every non-retired player in the entire league (including FAs) and jotted down which draft class they were in and whether or not they are still active
For those unaware, the S4 draft class was super small because that was when the DSFL was created. The main conclusion from this is that, every given draft, we’re looking at about a 20% retention rate for players to stay active. This method obviously isn’t an exact science but it’s a pretty general snapshot.
The trend has actually been improving but that’s likely because the most recent/newer recruits have had less time to go inactive as compared to older users such as those from S1 and S2.
Now let’s check out how much TPE every player in the league from each draft class has. The first table is the total count and the one below it is the % of players from each draft class in each TPE tier.
So this kind of gives us a loose idea of exactly when people go inactive. And, surprise surprise, it’s right at the beginning. Roughly 42% of players never make it past 100 TPE. There’s clearly a “barrier” at the 100 TPE mark.
What’s cool though is that the past two draft classes have been much better, with 28% not getting past 100 TPE.
This could be due to a couple of things, possibly thanks to the DSFL or maybe we’re doing a better job at being welcoming to new users. Could also be because a few recreates are skewing the data in S6 and S7.
So next I wanted to look at how many players actually become useful. That is, how many players in each draft class eventually develop into a player that GMs can feel comfortable starting at the NSFL level.
I decided on 300+ TPE. This differs significantly based on the position but (in my opinion) the majority of 300+ TPE players can be solid and competitive players at the NSFL level. This is obviously up for debate but it’s what I’m rolling with.
So this next table shows the % of players in each TPE tier with emphasis on how many made it past 301 TPE
So this is more encouraging as far as retention goes. Obviously this leaves out your super-star quality players, but approximately 33% of players eventually develop into solid NSFL contributors. Lots of room for debate on this one so don’t put too much stock in this, just trying to get a general feel of things.
Predicting is hard, and this data is far from statistically significant. But we can sorta and debatably infer that in any given draft approximately 42% of players will be useless, 33% will be useful, and 20% will stay active for a reasonable amount of time.
The two most recent drafts have had 36 and 22 players. The S8 draft has (by my count) 25 players. This means that we can guesstimate with statistically UNsignificant and shaky confidence that about 10 or 11 of them will be completely useless at the NSFL level and 8 will develop to become at least solid. 5 of them will be active for a decent amount of time.
HOW DO THINGS LOOK RIGHT NOW?
There are 8 teams in the NSFL, each with around 18 spots that need to be filled by a player. That’s including all 11 spots on defense, QB, RB, two WRs, a TE/WR, another RB/TE/WR, and the K/P. That means the NSFL has 144 starting spots.
The table below shows how many players on each team updated this season, and how many times they updated. Keep in mind each team has approximately 18 starting spots, and the table isn’t entirely accurate because it includes a few send downs and there’s some players (like Blocksdale and Sharpei) who are undoubtedly active members of the community but are pretty much maxed out so they haven’t updated a lot this season.
*Credit to my man @Beaver
So at the moment, the average team has about 13 players who updated at least once this entire season, and about 8 who updated at least 4 times.
The biggest takeaway from this is that the NSFL as a whole has less people updating than it has needs for players. This is not a good thing.
Lots of teams also are built on S1 and S2 players, many of whom are inactive and will be hit by regression very shortly.
*Credit to my man @Beaver
You see all of that blue and red? Six out of the eight teams have over 50% of their total team TPE from S1 or S2 players. Five out of the eight teams have over 40% of their total team TPE from S1 players, who are about to hit regression.
This is where the biggest problem lies. The league was built on the backs of two huge draft classes (s1 and S2), and the league was quickly expanded. Some people back then claimed that this expansion was way too early, and there isn’t really any doubt left that they were right. There are too many teams, not enough recruits, and not enough retention for the league to be sustainable in its current state.
This is something a few of us have talked about but I think it’s time to open it up and start having real, serious, objective talks about what we can do. We obviously are not at the cliff yet, but if we aren’t proactive then we’re going to run into some big problems down the line.
So below are some random ideas I and some others have come up with that may help. Some are simple, others pretty big. Some might get some people angry, and that’s perfectly understandable. But we’re getting to a point where we need to do something.
1. Step up Recruitment
So this one is pretty obvious. If we had more new recruits and better player retention we wouldn’t need to have this conversation. I would think shooting for 50 prospects each draft would help make the league much more sustainable in its current state. The problem is that 50 prospects is pretty much double what the recent draft classes have been.
2. Introduce Filler Bots
This is something I’m actually planning on proposing during the GM summit, so we’ll see how that goes. Specifically, I’m currently thinking DL and K/P 200 TPE filler bots.
These bots WILL NOT replace the positions with bots like the OL bots did. These bots will only be 200 TPE so that any user can quickly surpass them and enjoy the position is they so wish. You could even have all the DL bots be 50ibs lighter than their archetypes and the K/P bots not receive the recent K/P experience buff. If a user wants to be a DL or a K/P, they will become better than the bots over the course of one, maybe two seasons depending on activity.
The purpose of this is that it would reduce that 18 players needed per-team thing from earlier all the way down to 13 players needed. So instead of the league needing 144 players, the league only needs 104 players. That’s almost as many as many players as we had update in S7.
3. Fold or Contract the DSFL
The DSFL came too early, unfortunately. We don’t have enough players to currently sustain the NSFL and we certainly don’t have enough for the current DSFL. If we contract the DSFL to just two teams (which we kinda used to do if you remember the Sun Tropics and Mongoose from back in S1 and S2, which was actually pretty fun in my opinion), we could shed the bot teams and have much more active DSFL LRs to help foster activity and player retention. Frankly, it’s also hard to find enough high-quality GMs for the DSFL.
Or we could just fold the DSFL and go back to the old waiver system, where new creates get to instantly join a NSFL LR and get acquainted with the strongest aspect of this league: the community. But right now we simply don’t have enough users to populate the DSFL in its current state.
3. Contract the NSFL
The NSFL was expanded too early and it might become necessary to contract it. It would suck a lot. There wouldn’t be any way to do it without pissing off at least a few people. But objectively speaking, if we can’t improve recruitment and retention, this may be what’s best for the league. I’m going to talk about this one the most because it’s easy to hand waive it away as an overreaction (which honestly it might be, idk)
There aren’t enough players to sustain the NSFL’s competition in its current state. There just aren’t enough users for parity. The Yeti just went 0-14 two years in a row. The Otters three-peated and might four-peat. The Legion/NOLA have been bottom feeders for a while. SJS and ARI were both tanking at the end of S7. Not to mention all of the recent GM turnover.
By contracting the league to 6 teams the average number of players on each team that updated at least once per season jumps from 12 to about 16 or 17. LRs would become more active, helping with league-wide retention. Parity would improve because it would help even out the playing field, reducing the distance between the bottom feeders and the top dogs, making the league more competitive overall. Drafts would have more relevant rounds so they’d be more exciting.
There’s a few different ways to go about this, but like I said, it’d be hard to do it without pissing anybody off. There are some teams I think would be decent candidates for folding but I’m leave that out of this for now because I don’t want the discussion to focus on that rather than what we can and should do to help out with these problems.
I love the NSFL a lot. I really, really do. We’ve got a special thing going here. But I genuinely think it’s time we start strategizing (not just discussing) different ways we can help ensure that the NSFL is around for a long time. We aren’t at the cliff quite yet, but it’d be nice if we could do something before we get to that point.
****
Please give @Beaver 50% of the pay for this as he helped with data collection/visualization and other stuff