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+---- Thread: S25 Expansion (/showthread.php?tid=25196)
RE: S25 Expansion - speculadora - 08-27-2020
(08-27-2020, 12:32 AM)infinitempg Wrote:(08-27-2020, 12:23 AM)speculadora Wrote: I spent like 12 seasons as a GM and I just have to say I fundamentally disagree with this idea that GMing is some incredible burden that only those select few who've been through it before could possibly understand and therefore be fit for. I'm not sure how many people were hired to GM teams during my tenure, but what I do know is a lot of them hired people who had never been GMs before and nobody batted an eye. There is no secret formula to success, and most of the skill set isn't really demonstrable. If you hire people who are dedicated to their team and are willing and able to put in the effort to scout, sim, whatever, you're going to find successful GMs. I think that they've been found either way here, but if lack of experience is a barrier to entry here there's absolutely no reason it should be
I actually agree with you here - after all I was hired as Co-GM of the Yeti with only a season or two of war room experience. Granted at the time it was because our team had no other actives but uh it’s still true. I think there is an extra level of difficulty with an expansion team though - and as such I’m more inclined to want to give teams to the most experienced and trustworthy users.
I think it's more difficult, but significantly so? I'm not sure. like expansion teams get to build from scratch, so if you scout the draft processes well enough you should be able to build a team that meshes well from day one. if the concern is long term stability in the role, I'm not sure there's any more evidence that experienced hires provide that (see Chicago, Austin). And if the absolute worst case scenario from botching a hire is Chicago pre-Bayley and Muford, we have some evidence that the fallout from that is still reconcilable within a couple of seasons. Anyway, I don't want to drag this discussion out any further and detract from what should be an exciting moment for the league. Just my two cents.
RE: S25 Expansion - Bwestfield - 08-27-2020
My ultimate goal here is to have fun and you all having fun as well. I love being able to share my love for simulation football with all of you. Starting a franchise from scratch will be a most difficult task. It will be important to draft the right people to create something wonderful. There are lots of amazing teams already, I hope that the two new teams selected will be just as amazing.
I can promise that I will do my best and move aside when the time comes. While I am full committed to the team, I know and understand that there are awesome people just waiting for the opportunity to take my place. I've been on 2 ISFL teams in 24 seasons and I've GM'd both of them for no more than 4 seasons each. When the right person comes along you know it and need to move over and let them take the reigns.
RE: S25 Expansion - NicholasTheGreat - 08-27-2020
I get the experience angle, I think my problem is current GM's getting the gig. You can't say "those jobs will need replacing" when 3/4 of them are already filled immediately. I also don't think its fair to say to someone "Just ask your GM", there are so many people that the path to becoming a GM is blocked and if someone doesn't like you, you won't get the job.
RE: S25 Expansion - woelkers - 08-27-2020
(08-27-2020, 12:42 AM)Bauer Wrote: I'm obligated to say heck HO, also nobody likes me. I love you @woelkersI love you too BauBau.
Oh also @bex is cute but you all already knew that. Heck you if you hurt her feelings.
RE: S25 Expansion - Buttersqauch101 - 08-27-2020
Tfw the guy you applied with gets the job with a different co
RE: S25 Expansion - infinitempg - 08-27-2020
(08-27-2020, 12:51 AM)NicholasTheGreat Wrote: I get the experience angle, I think my problem is current GM's getting the gig. You can't say "those jobs will need replacing" when 3/4 of them are already filled immediately. I also don't think its fair to say to someone "Just ask your GM", there are so many people that the path to becoming a GM is blocked and if someone doesn't like you, you won't get the job.
This is a fair and legitimate gripe (although it’s 2/3? Westy isn’t a current GM, and Baltimore’s is still open IIRC). The DSFL GM->ISFL GM pipeline is pretty common, but having two spots going to current ISFL CO’s can be concerning and I understand that. In my thought process, I saw woelkers already stepping down and pairing himself with an experienced former GM - and I thought it was a home run pick. Obviously I’m friends with them, but regardless of that fact I thought their experience taking what was the league laughingstock for 18 seasons into a title winner was a no brainer. I saw dewalt’s strengths and attitude from his time in Minnesota (with woelkers ironically) and Baltimore and thought he would also make an excellent expansion GM. One of the biggest weaknesses of his application though, and something we debated in HO, was your concern - we would be taking a current GM who had no real plans of leaving prior to expansion from a team. But in the end we thought that it was a strong enough bid and that Baltimore had many very good options to replace him with.
That being said, I am all for (a) encouraging more newer people to try and join war rooms at all levels and (b) expanding war rooms in the ISFL. This can help newer users get their toes in the water of GMing and all the fun responsibilities of it, though it doesn’t help with the liking or friends part. For the most part we are hands off with who teams select as their successor GMs, and so that’s a team side issue. The last thing this league needs is HO meddling too much in team management decisions unless absolutely necessary.
RE: S25 Expansion - iStegosauruz - 08-27-2020
(08-27-2020, 01:32 AM)infinitempg Wrote:(08-27-2020, 12:51 AM)NicholasTheGreat Wrote: I get the experience angle, I think my problem is current GM's getting the gig. You can't say "those jobs will need replacing" when 3/4 of them are already filled immediately. I also don't think its fair to say to someone "Just ask your GM", there are so many people that the path to becoming a GM is blocked and if someone doesn't like you, you won't get the job.
This is a fair and legitimate gripe (although it’s 2/3? Westy isn’t a current GM, and Baltimore’s is still open IIRC). The DSFL GM->ISFL GM pipeline is pretty common, but having two spots going to current ISFL CO’s can be concerning and I understand that. In my thought process, I saw woelkers already stepping down and pairing himself with an experienced former GM - and I thought it was a home run pick. Obviously I’m friends with them, but regardless of that fact I thought their experience taking what was the league laughingstock for 18 seasons into a title winner was a no brainer. I saw dewalt’s strengths and attitude from his time in Minnesota (with woelkers ironically) and Baltimore and thought he would also make an excellent expansion GM. One of the biggest weaknesses of his application though, and something we debated in HO, was your concern - we would be taking a current GM who had no real plans of leaving prior to expansion from a team. But in the end we thought that it was a strong enough bid and that Baltimore had many very good options to replace him with.
That being said, I am all for (a) encouraging more newer people to try and join war rooms at all levels and (b) expanding war rooms in the ISFL. This can help newer users get their toes in the water of GMing and all the fun responsibilities of it, though it doesn’t help with the liking or friends part. For the most part we are hands off with who teams select as their successor GMs, and so that’s a team side issue. The last thing this league needs is HO meddling too much in team management decisions unless absolutely necessary.
I like the way this conversation is trending because one of the things I've advocated for a lot recently - and there are multiple members of HO who can back me up on that fact - is that HO should be more transparent in their decision making. I absolutely believe Dewalt had a strong application and definitely believe that him and High will make an amazing pair, but I think that the points you make open up the question of whether or not there were any applications you felt were strong enough to dissuade that potential fear? It feels obvious that you're weighing pros and cons when deciding on who to put your support behind for expansion, and if that was such a hotly debated issue in HO there really are two lines of thinking that come out of it to me:
1. That no other application was anywhere close enough to Dewalt/High and y'all felt that it was more of an acceptable risk to take that you could be crippling Baltimore instead of entrusting a slot to another bid.
2. Dewalt/High (along with woelkers/Bwest too) were abnormally strong applications this cycle and although there were ones that would have been top quality in the past you couldn't overlook the strengths of theirs in comparison to the glaring issue that you referenced about Baltimore.
Now it definitely could be a combination of those two factors, but I think this is one of those things people are more curious about. I don't think anyone doubt's y'all picked strong candidates - all you have to do is talk to any of them for 5 minutes and you'll know they're great choices - but I do think there are a lot of people who are looking for a more finer parsing of what makes them such strong candidates in comparison to the rest of the pool of applicants. When we're having these discussions about experience and how it factors in I think its hard for some people to see past the initial perception that of course they had a strong application - they have experience - but how did that actually relate to the decision making. What were the actual strengths of their experience, how did that compare to other applications, etc? Joining a war room is a very generic ask of people who applied for expansion and I'm sure there are tons of people who did apply who are war room members currently - finer details can help guide them for next time in the process. Within the limits of what you're comfortable talking about of course.
RE: S25 Expansion - SDCore - 08-27-2020
(08-27-2020, 12:42 AM)Bauer Wrote: I'm obligated to say heck HO, also nobody likes me. I love you @woelkersI hear Bauer smells
Oh also @bex is cute but you all already knew that. Heck you if you hurt her feelings.
RE: S25 Expansion - Colabear - 08-27-2020
So I'll add a little to elaborate a bit on the process, and a few of the other topics that have come up...
The way we vote is, each member of HO ranks their top 5 bids in order. We then scored those votes (5 points for a 1st preference, 4 points for a 2nd, etc.). After that stage there were 3 clear leading bids. We then had a fairly long discussion about the merits of those specific bids: the proposals, the applicants, the impact on other teams, the overall benefit to the league. When we still were unresolved we solicited the views of an Mav who's someone impartial of the bids, with a ton of experience, sound judgement and the interests of the league at heart. It's also good to get someone to look at them with a clean pair of eyes who hasn't been part of the discussion leading up to that. As a group we were I think largely leaning towards the bids that were ultimately chosen (and they had been the top two in that first round of voting) but it was good to get a little more validation.
We don't have a rigid weighting or guidelines for how we make our selections or vote, it's at the discretion of each member of HO to choose what they think is important, so I'll only speak for myself here. Someone asked if we would publish the full list of bids - personally I'm not sure it's our place to out people's failed bids if they've chosen to keep them private. There were people with good experience and high character (comparable to the final 3 bids) who I ranked lower because their written proposals were weaker in my opinion. There was also a bid from a relatively inexperienced pair that scored quite well in the initial votes but it would have been a very big step up for them with a lot of unknowns for us.
I viewed ISFL GMing experience as a positive in a bid (I do find it a bit weird people view this as a negative), but it wasn't something that I weighted much more than DSFL GMing experience. I will say not all ISFL GMs have the same roles or responsibilities. Yes Woelkers and Dewalt were both ISFL GMs but for very different tenures, with different partners, and different responsibilities. While they are the names people will recognise first, they were also just half of their respective bids and I think it's unfair on BWest and High to ignore them and their roles.
In addition I do view Expansion GMing as a bigger responsibility than ISFL GMing. I agree with Spec's point that the technical aspects (scouting, making picks, testing, managing cap and budget, submitting depth charts, etc.) are all learnable skills that most smart, reliable people can learn relatively quickly and mistakes are fixable. I'm a big believer in the importance of cultures in groups, and that once a culture becomes established it can be quite hard to undo. You see organisations which have a complete turnover of people but the culture persists because it's bigger and deeper than the just the individuals. That is one area where I would gave additional weight to people more experience, tried and tested around the league.
RE: S25 Expansion - Frostbite - 08-27-2020
Quote:I viewed ISFL GMing experience as a positive in a bid (I do find it a bit weird people view this as a negative)
I think the main issue people had with this wasn't that they had ISFL GM experience, it was that they were current ISFL GMs. Its one thing to get promoted from DSFL -> ISFL, or make a return to GMing after seasons of absence, but to go from one team to another in the same league is vastly different than either of those.
At least thats my take on it