It’s been a hell of a ride, even if I was gone for a lot of it.
The draft, season two, and the first taste of disappointment.
Unlike many prominent S2 draftees, I was not around for S1. As a result, Cushing was never going to be one of the top draft prospects. I was already over 100 TPE behind Dermot when I joined, and I joined at the peak of S2 recruiting. Still, I worked my ass off, mainly with media, and starting climbing the ranks of what proved to be a pretty legit draft class. I was considered to be on the edge of round 1 and 2, the highest of all the new prospects and ahead of some of the guys with head starts. While my media was propelling my draft stock skyward, my comments were almost countering it. While almost everything pre-draft was rumor, I had it on pretty good authority that I would be picked by the Liberty 7th overall (they’d traded up to do so), but a multi-thread argument with Ben tanked my draft stock pretty hard. I ended up being picked 13th by the Yellowknife Wraiths, which was my top destination. While I disagreed with Bzerkap’s approach to GMing, I talked to him every day. It was impossible to not like him. I came to Yellowknife as the only active LB (and a coverage LB with heavy emphasis on coverage at that) on a team with arguably the worst D line in the league. Needless to say, I didn’t have a great season two. Oh well. Yellowknife was both a fun team and a good one.
Minor success, major stakes
I improved considerably my second season, but having changed mid-season from LB to CB made it easy to understand not making the Pro Bowl again, though by this point I was around the TPE rank to start thinking it a possibility.
I chose the title for this section based on my selection as a DSFL GM. It was not a position the league would have considered me for 1 season prior. However, I dove into it with a passion I was known for. The San Antonio Marshals were a chance to prove that I wasn’t just talking out my ass with my analysis, and that test sims weren’t the be all and end all of strategy, and leading them to win the first Ultimini was amazingly satisfying, even if the Chicago Blues had the best season record despite an inactive and kinda incompetent GM (more on that later). In addition, I got to work with bovovovo, iamslm22, and roly as co-GMs, which were rewarding experiences even without the success. Seeing all of them move on to more important roles in the league has filled me with more pride than any sim success has. More will be written on the Marshals in the near future, as I am helping write their team history and trying to be pretty thorough (not game by game though).
The Bet That (Retroactively) Never Was changed a lot of things, for me, the Wraiths, the Liberty, and, indirectly, the Legion, despite the fact that it was supposed to be about them. While I am biased, I think this is one of the most ridiculous series of events in the league and ended up affecting several teams. Here’s how it went down.
The Legion sucked.
The only thing going for the Legion was their consistent pass rushing and run stopping, led by their star DT Mark Ramrio.
The Legion traded Ramrio away for future picks (one from the worst draft in NSFL history).
I made a bet with the Legion (in the offseason prior to S3) that because of this trade, the Legion wouldn’t win more than one game over the next two years, agreeing to come to the team as an FA if they did. In return, their GM (RavensFanFromOntario) would have to step down and come to Yellowknife as an FA if they failed. This bet quickly became well-known.
RFFO did his best to win the bet, calling up TE Connor Tanner from the DSFL mid-season as the Legion were still winless. Tanner was a stud on the field, putting up a Pro Bowl-worthy performance for the remainder of the season and helping gameplan as well. With this leadership, and the promise of a strong acquisition coming to the team, activity improved. The Legion won 2 games that year, winning the bet with a full season to spare. It was a very Bad News Bears kinda heart-warming tale. The moment they won their second game, fulfilling the conditions, I started talking to players from the Legion (Ben, Keygan, Zoone) about how I would fit in their scheme. I was actually looking forward to it. It never happened, though.
Shortly following their second win, RFFO retired his player. At the time, this was perceived as a douche move, but fairly insignificant. Then, at the end of the season, it was discovered that the Legion had been over the cap for both of their wins. Instantly, the legality of the bet was called into question. After all, Connor Tanner, whose acquisition had put them over, had been a key piece of their success, as a user and on-field player. Removing him from the team likely meant the disappearance of at least one win. I would have been willing to count the season as 1 win, despite both being illegal (also, me losing due to illegal rosters was a disturbingly frequent occurrence at this point). However, because RFFO had retired, it was no longer possible for him to honor his end of the bet.
In the end, none of that mattered. Head Office held a meeting and issued an announcement stating that the bet was void, not due to any of the reasons mentioned above, but simply because the bet would have been a form of tampering were it to be honored (note that no one was punished for tampering in this way, as it was not a violation of existing rules, just a new precedent). In addition, the Legion were given a cap penalty for exceeding the budget. After almost half a season of genuine hope and excitement, the Legion went from being on the verge of acquiring Kevin Cushing, an underperforming but supremely “talented” player, to losing their GM, no longer being promised my player, and with a cap penalty going into the first big offseason in league history.
Having been looking forward to being part of growing a weaker team, and having been at odds in terms of vision for the Yellowknife Wraiths, I requested a trade, with the condition that if I was NOT traded to the Legion, that the team that acquired me would have to pay a compensatory 3rd round pick to the Legion. The Legion made a generous offer, but the Wraiths chose to deal with the Liberty instead, who gave up picks and a high-upside linebacker. I became part of the first team to actively snub me. It was a weird experience.
Season four, everything’s “fine”
The Liberty were not the team they had formed as in Season Two. The passion to build and win was waning, their original GM had stepped down, and the team as a whole was far more interested in attacking Er Murazor than gameplanning. For the first half of the season, I noticed bots in special teams formations, which I’d told them about in the offseason, but they hadn’t fixed. That was fucking with my return yards, and since being a cornerback meant nothing, that was all I had to feel proud of with my player. I considered retiring in protest of the team’s misplaced priorities, even though I publicly and privately agreed with the accusations.
I had two things I did feel pride from, though, since my San Antonio Marshals were continuing to kick ass. They lost the championship that year, but it was to a team that had sold the future to compete, and that was on top of having the talent rigged against them (though not on purpose). In addition, I was becoming a celebrity in a good way. Sweetwater did these podcasts that took fucking forever to get released, but were consistently fire, and I was his most frequent guest. We also started doing play by play together, which was a lot of fun, and did a lot for my reputation. Some bridges were burned, but there were more and more who were starting to see me as a likable fixture within the league.
Then Er happened. Twice. The first time was less important to the league, but a big deal to me. Er had been caught deleting posts and moderator logs. The rulebook had set penalties for such actions. Er did not receive some of them. As an act of protest, I wrote an article explaining why this set a VERY bad precedent and, to illustrate, deleted a thread by HO. Er’s violations resulted in unrecoverable information used to cover up a 4-season long chain of violations in the biggest scandal of the league. Mine was a single transparent act of civil disobedience. I was fined $2 million. Er was not fined at all and was still scheduled to take over as site owner (this he would finally lose once the multi investigation finished).
Also, and I doubt this will surprise anyone, but Cushing did not make the Pro Bowl. At this point, despite not joining until after the first season, Cushing was top ten league-wide in TPE.
The downward spiral
The San Antonio Marshals started off the season on fire. They were easily the best team in the league for the second time in three seasons. Prior to the draft, I’d pointed out that more people had created as QBs than there were DSFL teams (I believe there were 6 QB creates, only 4 teams with players). I convinced HO to announce a free position switch for those QBs, which some accepted then and others accepted after being drafted, which was not supposed to be part of the offer. Oh well. If the offseason rule proposals taught me anything, it was that making the Marshals weaker was more important to the rest of the DSFL GMs than anything about fairness or retention.
Then Mike Vick joined. I hate the player in real life, and I wasn’t crazy about another selfish moron playing QB when there were more than the NSFL would be needing by a large gap. However, I was the only team without an active player at QB, so the other teams started pressuring me to take him. I shouldn’t have. It was a 100% martyr move, and I should have known I would get 0 appreciation or sympathy for it. I didn’t do it because I had to, or because I thought it was the right thing to do. I did it because for about a full season now I’d been railing about how useless HO was (see previous issues) and how nothing got done without my help (while irrational, it was far from invalid, as HO was recovering from a lot of inactivity among their membership, and more than a bit of corruption). So here’s where I was at:
I liked being good. Cushing was not better than any other CB.
I liked analyzing things. I had NO idea why Cushing sucked.
I liked fixing problems. The DSFL GMs fought me on every proposal just on the off chance it would make SA better. HO (with the exception of slm) refused my suggestions because I’d fought them publicly on so many occasions.
I loved doing PBP. After Sweetwater disappeared and several simmers did as well, that capability was lost.
I was damn proud of the Marshals. They’d just been made weaker, and I was partly responsible for it.
There was no longer anything about the league I enjoyed. The next fight I got into (which didn’t take long; they’d become a daily occurrence) was gonna be the big one, one that took me away "for good". I am not sure how conscious this decision was.
Part Two will be released later.
The draft, season two, and the first taste of disappointment.
Unlike many prominent S2 draftees, I was not around for S1. As a result, Cushing was never going to be one of the top draft prospects. I was already over 100 TPE behind Dermot when I joined, and I joined at the peak of S2 recruiting. Still, I worked my ass off, mainly with media, and starting climbing the ranks of what proved to be a pretty legit draft class. I was considered to be on the edge of round 1 and 2, the highest of all the new prospects and ahead of some of the guys with head starts. While my media was propelling my draft stock skyward, my comments were almost countering it. While almost everything pre-draft was rumor, I had it on pretty good authority that I would be picked by the Liberty 7th overall (they’d traded up to do so), but a multi-thread argument with Ben tanked my draft stock pretty hard. I ended up being picked 13th by the Yellowknife Wraiths, which was my top destination. While I disagreed with Bzerkap’s approach to GMing, I talked to him every day. It was impossible to not like him. I came to Yellowknife as the only active LB (and a coverage LB with heavy emphasis on coverage at that) on a team with arguably the worst D line in the league. Needless to say, I didn’t have a great season two. Oh well. Yellowknife was both a fun team and a good one.
Minor success, major stakes
I improved considerably my second season, but having changed mid-season from LB to CB made it easy to understand not making the Pro Bowl again, though by this point I was around the TPE rank to start thinking it a possibility.
I chose the title for this section based on my selection as a DSFL GM. It was not a position the league would have considered me for 1 season prior. However, I dove into it with a passion I was known for. The San Antonio Marshals were a chance to prove that I wasn’t just talking out my ass with my analysis, and that test sims weren’t the be all and end all of strategy, and leading them to win the first Ultimini was amazingly satisfying, even if the Chicago Blues had the best season record despite an inactive and kinda incompetent GM (more on that later). In addition, I got to work with bovovovo, iamslm22, and roly as co-GMs, which were rewarding experiences even without the success. Seeing all of them move on to more important roles in the league has filled me with more pride than any sim success has. More will be written on the Marshals in the near future, as I am helping write their team history and trying to be pretty thorough (not game by game though).
The Bet That (Retroactively) Never Was changed a lot of things, for me, the Wraiths, the Liberty, and, indirectly, the Legion, despite the fact that it was supposed to be about them. While I am biased, I think this is one of the most ridiculous series of events in the league and ended up affecting several teams. Here’s how it went down.
The Legion sucked.
The only thing going for the Legion was their consistent pass rushing and run stopping, led by their star DT Mark Ramrio.
The Legion traded Ramrio away for future picks (one from the worst draft in NSFL history).
I made a bet with the Legion (in the offseason prior to S3) that because of this trade, the Legion wouldn’t win more than one game over the next two years, agreeing to come to the team as an FA if they did. In return, their GM (RavensFanFromOntario) would have to step down and come to Yellowknife as an FA if they failed. This bet quickly became well-known.
RFFO did his best to win the bet, calling up TE Connor Tanner from the DSFL mid-season as the Legion were still winless. Tanner was a stud on the field, putting up a Pro Bowl-worthy performance for the remainder of the season and helping gameplan as well. With this leadership, and the promise of a strong acquisition coming to the team, activity improved. The Legion won 2 games that year, winning the bet with a full season to spare. It was a very Bad News Bears kinda heart-warming tale. The moment they won their second game, fulfilling the conditions, I started talking to players from the Legion (Ben, Keygan, Zoone) about how I would fit in their scheme. I was actually looking forward to it. It never happened, though.
Shortly following their second win, RFFO retired his player. At the time, this was perceived as a douche move, but fairly insignificant. Then, at the end of the season, it was discovered that the Legion had been over the cap for both of their wins. Instantly, the legality of the bet was called into question. After all, Connor Tanner, whose acquisition had put them over, had been a key piece of their success, as a user and on-field player. Removing him from the team likely meant the disappearance of at least one win. I would have been willing to count the season as 1 win, despite both being illegal (also, me losing due to illegal rosters was a disturbingly frequent occurrence at this point). However, because RFFO had retired, it was no longer possible for him to honor his end of the bet.
In the end, none of that mattered. Head Office held a meeting and issued an announcement stating that the bet was void, not due to any of the reasons mentioned above, but simply because the bet would have been a form of tampering were it to be honored (note that no one was punished for tampering in this way, as it was not a violation of existing rules, just a new precedent). In addition, the Legion were given a cap penalty for exceeding the budget. After almost half a season of genuine hope and excitement, the Legion went from being on the verge of acquiring Kevin Cushing, an underperforming but supremely “talented” player, to losing their GM, no longer being promised my player, and with a cap penalty going into the first big offseason in league history.
Having been looking forward to being part of growing a weaker team, and having been at odds in terms of vision for the Yellowknife Wraiths, I requested a trade, with the condition that if I was NOT traded to the Legion, that the team that acquired me would have to pay a compensatory 3rd round pick to the Legion. The Legion made a generous offer, but the Wraiths chose to deal with the Liberty instead, who gave up picks and a high-upside linebacker. I became part of the first team to actively snub me. It was a weird experience.
Season four, everything’s “fine”
The Liberty were not the team they had formed as in Season Two. The passion to build and win was waning, their original GM had stepped down, and the team as a whole was far more interested in attacking Er Murazor than gameplanning. For the first half of the season, I noticed bots in special teams formations, which I’d told them about in the offseason, but they hadn’t fixed. That was fucking with my return yards, and since being a cornerback meant nothing, that was all I had to feel proud of with my player. I considered retiring in protest of the team’s misplaced priorities, even though I publicly and privately agreed with the accusations.
I had two things I did feel pride from, though, since my San Antonio Marshals were continuing to kick ass. They lost the championship that year, but it was to a team that had sold the future to compete, and that was on top of having the talent rigged against them (though not on purpose). In addition, I was becoming a celebrity in a good way. Sweetwater did these podcasts that took fucking forever to get released, but were consistently fire, and I was his most frequent guest. We also started doing play by play together, which was a lot of fun, and did a lot for my reputation. Some bridges were burned, but there were more and more who were starting to see me as a likable fixture within the league.
Then Er happened. Twice. The first time was less important to the league, but a big deal to me. Er had been caught deleting posts and moderator logs. The rulebook had set penalties for such actions. Er did not receive some of them. As an act of protest, I wrote an article explaining why this set a VERY bad precedent and, to illustrate, deleted a thread by HO. Er’s violations resulted in unrecoverable information used to cover up a 4-season long chain of violations in the biggest scandal of the league. Mine was a single transparent act of civil disobedience. I was fined $2 million. Er was not fined at all and was still scheduled to take over as site owner (this he would finally lose once the multi investigation finished).
Also, and I doubt this will surprise anyone, but Cushing did not make the Pro Bowl. At this point, despite not joining until after the first season, Cushing was top ten league-wide in TPE.
The downward spiral
The San Antonio Marshals started off the season on fire. They were easily the best team in the league for the second time in three seasons. Prior to the draft, I’d pointed out that more people had created as QBs than there were DSFL teams (I believe there were 6 QB creates, only 4 teams with players). I convinced HO to announce a free position switch for those QBs, which some accepted then and others accepted after being drafted, which was not supposed to be part of the offer. Oh well. If the offseason rule proposals taught me anything, it was that making the Marshals weaker was more important to the rest of the DSFL GMs than anything about fairness or retention.
Then Mike Vick joined. I hate the player in real life, and I wasn’t crazy about another selfish moron playing QB when there were more than the NSFL would be needing by a large gap. However, I was the only team without an active player at QB, so the other teams started pressuring me to take him. I shouldn’t have. It was a 100% martyr move, and I should have known I would get 0 appreciation or sympathy for it. I didn’t do it because I had to, or because I thought it was the right thing to do. I did it because for about a full season now I’d been railing about how useless HO was (see previous issues) and how nothing got done without my help (while irrational, it was far from invalid, as HO was recovering from a lot of inactivity among their membership, and more than a bit of corruption). So here’s where I was at:
I liked being good. Cushing was not better than any other CB.
I liked analyzing things. I had NO idea why Cushing sucked.
I liked fixing problems. The DSFL GMs fought me on every proposal just on the off chance it would make SA better. HO (with the exception of slm) refused my suggestions because I’d fought them publicly on so many occasions.
I loved doing PBP. After Sweetwater disappeared and several simmers did as well, that capability was lost.
I was damn proud of the Marshals. They’d just been made weaker, and I was partly responsible for it.
There was no longer anything about the league I enjoyed. The next fight I got into (which didn’t take long; they’d become a daily occurrence) was gonna be the big one, one that took me away "for good". I am not sure how conscious this decision was.
Part Two will be released later.
![[Image: BVsashy.png]](https://i.imgur.com/BVsashy.png)
![[Image: TBFYuND.png]](https://i.imgur.com/TBFYuND.png)
![[Image: TSKa9dQ.png]](https://i.imgur.com/TSKa9dQ.png)
