*NSFL Historical March Madness

[infinitempg]

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Welcome to the National Simulation Football League Historical March Madness!

There is a link to a bracket for you to fill out at the end of the article![/div]

Background

With the COVID-19 pandemic shutting down the annual NCAA March Madness tournaments, millions of people found a large, bracket-shaped itch that needed scratching. That's where simulation football comes in! Since dots cannot die in our sim (since we disabled injuries), our league can continue on unimpeded.

But infinite, how do we scratch that itch? Well, I present to you a tournament to determine the best team in NSFL History!*
*History being defined as S6-S20, because that's all I could get sim files for.

How it works

The 32 qualified teams will play through a 16 game regular season, NFL-style. At the conclusion of the seasons, teams will be ranked primarily by win percentage and secondarily by point differential. These teams will then be split into two brackets of 16, undergoing a single-elimination style tournament just like the real thing!

In order to do this, I imported the players, strategies, and depth charts from all 32 historical teams into a new sim file. Importing the players was actually the easy part - since I was able to grab sim files from all the way back to S6. However, strategies and depth charts had to be inputted manually, and this took a lot of time. Maybe like 8-10 hours, split over the last few days. Additionally, I made one tweak to teams: I set the maximum blitz rate for 4-3 and Nickel to 35. Otherwise, things such as RB at WR were allowed to remain.

Important note - I forgot to adjust the rushing slider, so it seems like rushing will be nerfed.

Qualified teams

There are three ways to qualify for the tournament: Win an Ultimus, Be one of the TWO best teams in your team's history, or Qualify as an At-Large. This was done to ensure that each team has at least 2 entrants into the tournament. At-large teams were selected by primarily win percentage and secondarily by point differential, and they were neither Ultimus winners nor one of the two best teams in their team's history.

Here are the teams:

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They were then split into divisions, roughly evenly distributed (only one difference has less than 2 Ultimus champions):

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A quick analysis:

• have by far the most entrants into the tournament, with eight. Six of those teams qualified by being Ultimus champions, while the other two qualified as the #1 and #4 at-large bids.
• Only four teams managed to land an at-large bid - , , , and . The S7 are actually #5 on the standings, the S18 are #7, and the S9 are #9. The other seven at-large bids are outside the top 10 all time.
• The S19 are the lowest ranked team to make the tournament, at #44 in the all-time standings.
• The S20 are the lowest ranked Ultimus winners, at #41.

Regular Season Results and Seeding

Here is an image of the final standings, you can view the league index HERE.

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At 13-3, the S9 earn the #1 overall seed! The manage to round out the top 5 on their own, followed by the S18 and (shockingly) the bottom ranked S19 ! To round out the top 10, we have S7 , S10 , and S7 .

The worst teams were the S16 , S6 , S16 Ultimus Champions , S8 , and S10 . Fortunately for them, everyone makes the tournament!

Bracket

Now for the moment you've been waiting for: the bracket!

[div align=\\\"center\\\"]You may need to click the image to get a full-res version.
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Who do you think will win? Who will be on upset alert early? Well guess what...

Submitting a bracket

Please see the announcement HERE!

[ADwyer87]

there arent any sim files from before S1-S5? when did we lose that history?

[infinitempg]

there arent any sim files from before S1-S5? when did we lose that history?

wasn't able to find any between lots of resources. if you can find them it would be really great to have for an arxiv!

[Duilio05]

Can you provide more on the methodology of ranking the at large bids?

[infinitempg]

Can you provide more on the methodology of ranking the at large bids?

My bad, I thought I had put that in there. Basically, you qualify as an at large by not winning an Ultimus or being one of the best 2 teams in franchise history, but still having a high win percentage and point differential. It's basically the top 7 of who's left after auto-bids are in.

[RainDelay]

there arent any sim files from before S1-S5? when did we lose that history?

indeed

[iseedoug]

This is exciting.

Go S15 Hawks baby!

Edit: crap, I have S14 Hawks vs S15 Hawks in the 2nd round... who do I pick!?

[Duilio05]

but still having a high win percentage and point differential.

Thanks, this is what i was missing to understand.

[KoltClassic]

This is an awesome idea!

[Unicorn]

This is exciting.

Go S15 Hawks baby!

Edit: crap, I have S14 Hawks vs S15 Hawks in the 2nd round... who do I pick!?

i picked S15, they got the hfa