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+---- Thread: *It's Time to Accept a Four Team Expansion (/showthread.php?tid=19528)
*It's Time to Accept a Four Team Expansion - AdamS - 02-28-2020
Hello everyone, everywhere. Recently I've heard quite a bit of talk about how horrible the idea of a four team expansion is. I've heard quite a bit more graphic and detailed thoughts actually but let's stick to a general "I don't like it" vibe from people. Now, the truth is you haven't REALLY heard about it form anyone in power. In fact, odds are if you trace where you heard about it from it probably leads eventually back to me talking about how it might be possible. I've been ringing this bell for a bit and so what I'm going to do now, as is only fair, is to explain to you WHY I believe a four team expansion could be possible. But don't worry...I'm gonna make jokes and shit so that you don't get too bored along the way. Fair trade? Okay. Let's start by talking about the S16 expansion. There's gonna be some numbers here folks. Bear with me. There's going to be a lot of draft talk (enough for a bonus) as well as numbers and activity and whatnottery going on here.
March 4, 2019. That's the date to keep in mind. It's the day that the first r/NFL recruitment post launched. Over the course of the next week, 150+ new accounts were made leading to the DSFL S14 Draft of 109 new players. Expansion was decided on. We as a league would go from 8 to 10 teams. GMs were announced a month later on April 14th. One of them won an Ultimus. The other defends a state government who tried to steal a private business via passing illegal law giving it to themselves while also using state police to try to force the owners of said business to remain in the state before the blatantly illegible law was even passed. And his response will be that the team was able to get moving trucks there tog et them out really quickly and how shady that is.
Aside from the draft itself let's take a step back and look at the situation the league was in before the infamous 3/4 recruitment. The S13 DSFL Draft was 21 people. S12 was 15. S11 was 36. From January 1st-March 3rd (just before recruitment kicked in another 100 people) there were 10 Activity checks. The amount of responses ranged from 93-121, though only 3 of those 10 actually went over 110. That was the situation before the S15 expansion. This was our recruitment level and our activity level.
I know that's a lot of numbers to throw at you so here's a quick story. My right shoulder hurts. Likely from writing about the massive S21 DSFL draft class. Which oddly enough I'm still doing? So before work today I had my wife put offband roll-on icy hot (medium ballin') all over my upper back and right shoulder. As we hugged goodbye so I could go to work she softly whispered in my ear "you smell old". 38 is fun.
Anyway, fast forward to February 16th. Nearly 400 new accounts join the site over 3 days. It's a tidal wave if insane proportions. One that's still being felt as new folks continue to trickle in since then. 400 compared to 150. This draft class is so much bigger. Exponentially bigger. Louder. The S21 DSFL Draft has so many damned people in it that I've lost count. There were 255 that I counted for the article I wrote and as it turns out there were a number who weren't even in the prospect list I was working from and a few who've created since. This will be around 2.5 times the size of the S14 draft.
Okay so we have that, but what about the state of the NSFL before this class? Well, I'm glad that you asked. Well for starters there's the obvious. The S20 class was 103 draft picks. That's almost as many on its own as the draft that led to expansion. S19 was 33. S18 was 24. The 10 activity checks prior to the explosion bottom out at 151 but 7 of the ten were also over 175. The concept of expansion was already being considered a bit before this recruitment class turned out to be insane. Or at least the word was being whispered occasionally and there were plenty of people shaking their fist at it being talked about.
Sorry....more numbers. I promise you it's going somewhere, even if that place is scary. it's okay, I'll hold your hand. Who's excited about tomorrow's draft by the way? Ho boy is this one fun. I'm kind of kicking myself that I found stuff out. I was having a blast doing my investigating. Hell I even am planning to get back into Werewolf now. I'm pretty excited about the person or people we drafted in Austin too. I think some teams are gonna turn some heads with what they actually did, too. also there's a particular sub-group that fell HARD and it's going to be very interesting to see the response to that.
Okay..let's go into one last set of numbers here. We're getting close to the end of the setup here. The average NSFL team if fully active will have about 20 people. 11 on defense, 1 on special teams, and 6 on offense. Plus two more for random OLine players or if they stack too many weapons or just so people can't claim I'm undercutting the numbers of "over-exaggerating". Yes..I am quoting you again. You know who you are and you know what you said. Stick to proposals that actually fit the league you're actually currently in. So...the number 20 represents a complete fully active team with no real room for more. So a full NSFL league with ten teams is 200 people. Now that's ignoring any (of the 40+) viable IAs whatsoever. And yes I'm also counter-ignoring that some actives will be in DSFL. But I'll let you in on a secret. The point of being in DSFL...literally the only point....is to go to the NSFL. So those numbers matter. And the fact that we had 178 or more people doing activity checks for 7 straight weeks BEFORE the recruitment means that we were very nearly full up already.
All right. I know I'm still throwing a shit ton of numbers at you. But...there are a shit ton of numbers in this argument. And also a shit ton of numbers in the potential future casino (project in progress). I promise you we're now at the point where I'm gonna start putting those numbers together in a meaningful way. But if this is a lot to take in just look at it like this...the people actually making the decisions are putting in way more thought than I am. I'm just the person who sees things coming from far away and says "hey look at that thing".
The 10 activity checks before the original recruitment average out to 106.2 per week. That's 13.275 per NSFL team at the time. And no I'm not gonna make you look at week by week numbers now. Just the big ones. You're welcome to go look up the individual ones if you like. The first post recruitment AC was 171 or 21.375 per team. You'll note it was over that 20 average.
The 10 activity checks this time before the big recruitment average out to 178.5 per week and 17.85 per team. The first post recruitment AC was 359 or 35.9 per team. You'll note this is way the fuck over the 20 average and represents essentially double what it was averaging before.
Okay..we're almost there. I promise you. If you take that 359 and you assume some of it doesn't stick, that's fine. But here's the skinny. To have fully completely filled to the brim NSFL teams in an expansion....you'd need 240 if we expanded by 2 teams and 280 if we expanded by 4. There we go. The real numbers here. Those are the top of the line "we should actually be considering even more teams" numbers. This is the real meat of this whole situation gang.
Now here's where I finally put all that math you've been forced to read about together.
280 would be that number for 24 teams.
The current number is 359.
The draft is over 260 prospects. The original draft we expanded on was 109.
The draft and recruitment trends before this expansion are notably higher than those before the previous expansion. That's 160vs72 in the 3 seasons leading up to each. And if I went back another year and included that S17 and S10 DSFL drafts the gap would widen much further. The same applies for the S16 and the S9 drafts.
Those are all hard number based factual statements. Now....let me re-break this down for you, but not in numbers per se. I'm gonna speak to you as the single most successful expansion GM in league history. As the current GM of the Year. As the reigning Ultimus Champion. As League Dad. Everything I'm doing here assumes absolutely maxed out NSFL teams. Zero IAs. Zero room to add anyone. Essentially....a nightmare scenario in actual operation. What I've been leading you with is a world wherein we purposely pack every single team with too many people. Where no one has any room to go. No free agents. No callups. No high level IAs still riding out useful positions. And we're still way way over the cap. Four teams isn't the crazy answer. It's the one where we're still assuming we lose 50% of these people and we're still gonna be possibly a little full. Ok. Here it comes kids. The big finish. We came a long way on this journey and some of you are not gonna like this at all.
I fully and completely believe that between the numbers and my experience, I can very confidentially say that we can expand to 14 teams, lost 60% of those new recruits, and still be in a similar or fuller roster position on average compared to where we are now. I fully endorse a 4 team expansion starting with the S22 NSFL Draft that follows the same timeline as the S15 expansion. This would mean the expansion teams participate in the S22 draft, then their player sit for a season before the team participates in the S23 NSFL Draft, an expansion draft, and free agency, and ends with the four new teams taking the field in S23.
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.
*It's Time to Accept a Four Team Expansion - RotticusScott - 02-28-2020
The Maine Blue Moose are coming closer and closer to fruition #moosegang #bluemooserising
*It's Time to Accept a Four Team Expansion - J0EB - 02-28-2020
What an incredible read. I absolutely loved every part of it, even the numbers. I'm proud to be a S22 rookie and part of the BIGGEST class ever. My vote goes towards expansion!
*It's Time to Accept a Four Team Expansion - Thiath - 02-28-2020
Well, I’m glad I’ve been working on a series about potential expansion cities, St. Louis is first and will be out Saturday
*It's Time to Accept a Four Team Expansion - Isidore94 - 02-28-2020
This is the way
*It's Time to Accept a Four Team Expansion - FleshBagSoup - 02-28-2020
(02-28-2020, 02:34 AM)AdamS Wrote:My right shoulder hurts. Likely from writing about the massive S21 DSFL draft class. Which oddly enough I'm still doing? So before work today I had my wife put offband roll-on icy hot (medium ballin') all over my upper back and right shoulder. As we hugged goodbye so I could go to work she softly whispered in my ear "you smell old". 38 is fun.
This is the content I am here for. Good stuff adam
*It's Time to Accept a Four Team Expansion - 2Burkeulosis - 02-28-2020
and this isn't even factoring in future draft classes. What do you do if S23 and s24 bring in numbers that are comparable or even larger than this years class. If anything 4 teams is a conservative estimate.
*It's Time to Accept a Four Team Expansion - YoungTB - 02-28-2020
Good stuff, I personally want to see this league expand as much as possible... IDK why people have always been so against it.
*It's Time to Accept a Four Team Expansion - Memento Mori - 02-28-2020
Enjoyed the read. One of the S22 rookies myself so I don't know all the ins-and-outs of how the sim works, forgive me if I say something dumb.
Is it possible that 20 per team is too little, and the NSFL should be trying to shift to a reality where it's not the case that you have roughly 6/11/1 players on offense, defense and special teams? Could some of the problems be solved by making the bot OL worse players, meaning that if you create an offensive lineman you have a clear pathway to starting in the NSFL sooner than any other position to a) encourage people to create OL b) compensate for it being less 'fun' and c) encourage teams to roster more players?
I'm also surprised to learn that more teams aren't carrying more skill position players, as this would increase the number of defenders that teams need. Why aren't teams rostering 5 WRs so that they can play empty, 5 WR sets and force the defense to play a dime package with 4 CBs? And some extra blocking TEs to play heavy sets and force the defense to stock up on LBs/run-stuffing strong safeties to counter this?
I get that in a sim league people are always going to want to aim higher than a situational role as a third down back etc. but I think there's ways to make the sim more interesting while accommodating more players, which seems like killing two birds with stone.
*It's Time to Accept a Four Team Expansion - 37thchamber - 02-28-2020
(02-28-2020, 03:04 PM)Memento Mori Wrote:Why aren't teams rostering 5 WRs so that they can play empty, 5 WR sets and force the defense to play a dime package with 4 CBs?
The short answer to that question is a combination of salary cap space and user engagement
More players = less money per player
More players = Fewer snaps per player
Neither of those are conducive to high levels of user engagement, or retention, generally speaking.
I believe you are right though, and that there are ways to make the sim more interesting while accomodating more users. If you have ideas, talk to Adam about them. He's generally pretty receptive to these things, and will probably help you identify any obvious flaws in any ideas you have.