*Why Your Team Sucks: Volume 2

[Jiggly_333]

I did a lot of talking about the Blues, but you didn't really ask me about the Bex trade. The version you have here is a fairly "telephone" version of what happened.

So, I don't think we ever tried to trade for her in that draft. I made a joke when swapping 5ths with someone that I was trading up to get Bex. Then after the draft, I mentioned to the SJS GM that I might be interested in trading for her next season and if he could give me an estimate of what I'd need to come up with. He said he didn't know, they needed to keep all the young players they had. I agreed with him, we didn't really have much youth either, but I told him that I'd still come back next season because I thought that she'd be a great successor for me as GM since I really didn't plan to be in charge for too long since, as I said "I'm not really cut out for being a GM."

When you play a GM mode in some sports video game, you can usually get a player that you really want if you give a stupid offer. So I gave Toasty a plan: we trade a first round pick for her. He went into negotiations, didn't tell me much, but SJS wanted more than that. Toasty knew about my plan to step down after this was done, so he did most of the negotiating. When they rejected one draft pick, I suggested we get more first rounders and just stockpile them for this future trade.

I figured that if they wouldn't take just one first rounder, they'd probably jump at three. But, if we trade three, then we wouldn't have one for ourselves, so I told Toasty to look for a way to get us to four first rounders. He did. And when we made the offer of three, they didn't take it. I made a judgement call, looked at the draft class and said that it'd probably be better to punt on this draft and take the next one if we can land a high earning and charismatic user like Bex, who at this time I was still planning on asking to take my place as GM of the Butchers next to Toasty.

Then she declined her option and Toasty was left with four first rounders, not knowing what to do with them. I, already stepping down because I knew that I needed to leave for my own sake, told Toasty that I'll give him free reign to do whatever he wants with the team, just get Bex. And so whatever happened after that was him. I gave Bex a message laying out why I wanted her in Chicago and left it up to Toasty to figure out the details after that.

The main thing I'd say that drove our decision-making process was finding people with character more than users with TPE. When I first was given the job by fly, I spoke to Torensson and he told me he was going to go into free agency no matter what, making him dead-weight in my eyes. He even told me that he'd probably consider the Butchers the same way whether or not he was on the team or not on the team when it came to free agency. So, when someone who I'm good friends with came onto the trade block, I took a risk in betting on free agency next season. Unfortunately, that risk fell apart as TB had to retreat into some irl stuff and Torrensson didn't sign with us in that off-season. We would've lost him either way, but we decided to take that risk.

A lot of this has always just been horrible luck and circumstance. Maybe it's divine retribution for that first Chicago Blues season. But you do have it right, I guess. The story of the NSFL in Chicago pretty much begins and ends with me. Hell, I was even involved with choosing out the name and the person who made the logo even remembered what I'd told her about the Blues logo and added a Chicago star to the blade. If there is any failure in this team, it's probably somehow related to me. My inability, my inactivity, and my inconsistencies are all woven into the fabric of this sad, sad story.

There are probably a few other things that I took some slight issue with in the telling, but I'll chalk that up to your attempted satire and levity in between the duty of writing about such a depressing team. You didn't even mention how one of my only actives for the Chicago Blues was the first major Noble multi in the NSFL. Talk about the worst possible fucking luck.

Yeah, this reply went on for a while, but it's mostly because this is something that haunts me whenever I do anything in the NSFL. Whenever I move, I'm wrong and when I don't move, I'm wrong. The saddest thing about this entire story was the sheer hope and optimism that was held in every failed maneuver. A belief that this could be the moment something better could happen. And we're still waiting for that to happen.

As I've said so many times in the general discord at this point: I did what I fucking could. I did my best. But my best isn't very good I guess.