(S20) - Ultimus Week

[Baron1898]

1) Playoff Predictions, Reviews

Have you ever heard the tragedy of the Yellowknife Wraiths? I thought not. It’s not a story the Austin Copperheads would tell you; it’s an NSFC legend.

The Yellowknife Wraiths were a playoff team, so powerful and so wise that they could handily defeat the Colorado Yeti 40-24 in the NSFC Championship game. Cooter Bigsby had such a knowledge of the passing game that he could throw for 3 scores and 2 picks and still get a 100.8 passer rating. The Comeback King style of quarterbacking is a pathway to many abilities the Yeti considered to be unnatural. After hanging 40 points on the Yeti, the only thing the Wraiths were worried about was losing the Ultimus to the Austin Copperheads, which eventually, of course, they did by an embarrassing margin of 37-20. Unfortunately, Bigsby forgot how to be a good quarterback in this game and threw only 1 touchdown to 2 interceptions with a 55.7 passer rating, then the defense couldn’t hold on against the prolific Copperheads offense enough to stop Alfredo Crisco from kicking the Wraiths around like a deflated soccer ball. Ironic. He could stop others in the NSFC from winning the Ultimus, but couldn’t win it himself.

2) League Milestone

To me, the most thrilling playoff matchup of all time is coincidentally the only playoff matchup I have ever come out of victorious, and that is the S18 NSFC Championship Game between the Yellowknife Wraiths and the Baltimore Hawks. The Wraiths emerged victorious from the quagmire, 29-14, in a drubbing that sent the Hawks home in bitter defeat and the Wraiths onward to an appearance in the Ultimus Game. In my unbiased opinion, this was the greatest game ever played. Cooter Bigsby had about as pedestrian a game as a quarterback can have, with 1 touchdown, 1 interception, 21 completions on 42 attempts for a perfect 50% completion rate, and 262 yards. So who picked up the slack for the Wraiths? Why, none other than retiring superstar Morgan Marshall, who in his second to last game ever put up 22 rushing yards on 13 attempts and a touchdown, as well as 44 receiving yards on 5 catches and another touchdown. Ok, so maybe it wasn’t the greatest performance ever, but they did their jobs - and more importantly, the Wraiths defense played their hearts out, with four team interceptions of Corvo Havran (one of which became a touchdown) keeping the Baltimore offense largely off the scoreboard.

4) Rivalry

The years may flutter on by, and the Marshals don’t even exist anymore, but I’ll never answer any team but Tijuana as my deepest and most passionate rival. These cheap Mexican wrestlers stole away my first real shot at gaining any form of success whatsoever, running Forrest Gump into the ground to whallop my beloved San Antonio Marshals at home in the S14 DSFL Playoffs. I blame them completely for the entirety of my awful postseason luck dating back to that game. Coming off a historic and invigorating 13-1 campaign, the Marshals were slated to play in the Ultimini against the Portland Pythons if only they could beat the Tijuana Luchadores, a feat they had managed to accomplish four times already that season. But even with home field advantage, my San Antonio Marshals were caught unprepared by those darn Luchadores. The shock and disappointment I felt in that moment would stick with me forever, the first (and not the last) time I realized that I was never ever going to win a title no matter how successful my regular season was. It was humiliating and it was devastating, and although Tijuana didn’t end up winning that year’s Ultimini, the amount of success they’ve had in the years since has kept this rivalry alive and well.

10) Reform

If I was suddenly in charge of running the league, I’d quit immediately.

If I wasn’t allowed to back out of this arrangement, the number one priority I would have would be to reform the awards selection process. We recently instituted an awards committee to nominate proper candidates for each award, and that’s great, except for the fact that they didn’t exactly do a bang up job this time around. Putting aside the fact that Venus Powers didn’t even get nominated for Punter of the Year despite being measurably better in literally every statistic than two of the three real nominees, the awards selection committee needs to focus on the actual purpose of awards - to reward hard work and dedication. What exactly is the point of handing out awards to inactive players who haven’t been online in months and will likely never know that they even got said award? I also think that there exists currently a decently sized bias against players on teams who didn’t make the playoffs, whose individual performances are oftentimes better than the actual nominees but didn’t get included because they play on a franchise like Philadelphia or Chicago. Also, weren’t we supposed to get that name change done a season or two ago? I’d get that done for sure, maybe.