*NSFL/DSFL Proposal

[Aenir]

Take my opinion as a current DSFL GM how you want, but I wouldn’t really want to do an affiliate system. Part of the fun of the DSFL -> NSFL transition is the draft. It’s the draft that people put more effort into and try to do more with it. I understand the reasoning behind wanting to keep a constant flow between the DSFL and NSFL in combining them yet it would take away a bit of the fun of getting drafted twice.

It would leave little surprise or much fun to be a DSFL GM at that point when you become nothing more than a glorified war room member at that point when the job is about being the first experience to the league people have and helping them remain active. You want your DSFL team to be engaged and together as much as possible and, no offense to any NSFL GMs who are some great people, but their job is different than a DSFL GM. Sure they want activr players, but at that point it’s about winning and TPE. Combining the two at the same time might just take the fun away.

@`Jackets28`
I think you are underselling the cooperation that would be required, I don't think that many NSFL GMs would just ignore the heads of their affiliates like that, I honestly think the GMs would work together and not just treat their DSFL GM as a member of the war room. Of course this DOES assume people are in good communication together, but if there is poor communication, then it doesn't matter what the system is, poor communication kills activity and interest IMO. To your second point (and its a point mentioned elsewhere) Why is Activity strictly a DSFL GM job? Ive always felt that keeping activity up is a job shared not only across ALL GMs, but the HO, the Simmers, the Graders, Updaters and any other jobs as well because if any of those pillars fall... the league is in a much lesser place than it is today.

There's definite benefits, but I think your idea is too optimistic on how the league operates and ignores the cons that make this idea too dangerous for implementation. The DSFL draft is far different than the NSFL draft, where the point of the DSFL's is to encourage activity via an active and welcoming team, whereas the NSFL's is to create winning teams (while also maintaining that activity and welcomeness). Affiliate teams under this idea would turn the league into a game of chance for the NSFL teams. If one DSFL team drafts mostly inactives several seasons in a row, their NSFL affiliate will become a dumpster-fire. On the converse, if another DSFL team drafts mostly actives several years in a row, their NSFL affiliate will become an uncontested powerhouse. That would destroy league parity and trigger a sharp decline in active users. I think this topic that's being addressed here is a non-issue.

@BigKicks
Yes I am an optimist, because if we are pessimistic about our league, that saps excitement, and sapping excitement reduces activity. So it behooves me to be as optimistic as possible! As far as the draft comments go, I think we are misunderstanding each other. My thoughts were that the DSFL and NSFL organizations that are affiliated work together on the draft. So that a draft doesn't solely fall onto a NSFL OR DSFL GM but is instead a collaboration to maximize the chances of BOTH to become good teams. On a smaller note I disagree about powerhouses causing declines, when the Outlaws (and later the Otters) were powerhouses, people were clamoring to beat the giant and have a new team rule the roost

This does bring up some interesting points, but as Jackets said the NSFL Draft is highly anticipated every season, and I for one was a lot more hyped for that draft than the DSFL Draft because I had formed opinions on teams and had places I wanted to go. Entering the DSFL Draft I didn't really have much of a preference, so while it was definitely exciting, it just has a completely different feel to it. Also the risk of players feeling like they were assigned to an NSFL team more so then chosen by them would become a real risk too.

I do really like the idea of DSFL years not counting towards regression in this system though. Any ideas about increasing career length are important in my opinion because playing a 15 season career would be awesome, but it's literally impossible to do so right now.

@J0EB
As I noted above, its a collaborative effort, so you would be on paper Drafted by the Sabercats , but then assigned to the Seawolves to then play your games. I included the DSFL years not counting because if someone were to stay down, it seemed unfair to penalize them for being behind a deep NSFL roster.

Point 1
This would be valid I would say if overall team optimization was the ideal, but genuinely my experience is that the DSFL level will still help make sure a player is optimized enough to be able to contribute. If not that is something that needs to be fixed at the DSFL level, or ideally with build changes to make any archetype valuable. Perhaps at least a guide detailing meta would suffice. My experience with being asked to change at the NSFL level is usually a complete position swap to better fit people onto a roster.

Point 2
Activity being rewarded is always a good thing, but outside of a few positions if you are highly active you are likely to be called up quickly at this point. That said the DSFL goal is to encourage activity and my meetings with the general managers at that level suggest they are pretty good about that.

Point 3
This is where I think the big issue I have with the idea is if I am honest. You consider it a season of  purgatory and I consider it a season to show your talents for the big draft. Making it so the DSFL links to the NSFL puts us in the same situation as the PBE where recreates will always be taken at the top of the draft because you know you can trust them.

The draft at the DSFL is a huge gamble as you can see by how much some players jumped between the two drafts. Using S22 as an example the DSFL level had five of the first rounders as recreates including all of the top four selections because of the need for security. Meanwhile at the NSFL level iStegosauruz jumped from 147 to 1, and the first recreate did not come off the board until the sixth selection. All because those players made such an impact during their DSFL season.

Point 4 (Counterpoint 1)
Right now we are not entirely sure we have enough of a consistent recruiting player base to support eight DSFL teams. There is saturation as there are some DSFL teams with multiple quarterbacks for example and spreading that out could be worthwhile. However that means the overall activity level of the DSFL drops considerably and as someone who really enjoyed their experience in the DSFL I do not think that would be a good thing. It could be helpful to connect rookies to veterans faster, however I believe Woelker already has a change in place that should help with that.

Point 5 (Counterpoint 2)
I strongly disagree with this point as the blending of DSFL players at the NSFL level can be seen by the S22 draft. There is a fact of general managers drafting who they know, but you can get to know a lot of new people during the scouting process. Meanwhile having a linked team means you interact with approximately 1/12th of the league comfortably and increases the risk of us vs them mentality cropping up. Something that should especially be avoided at the DSFL level as it should be used as an audition more than anything else in my opinion.

Point 6 (Counterpoint 3)
Speaking as someone with no experience as a general manager I do not feel confident commenting on this argument.

Comments
I strongly agree BigKicks that poor drafts become much more devastating and good drafts become much more rewarding. My honest stance here is that if anything more should be done to make free agency more appealing to players rather than making the draft even more important for teams.

Also partially agree with J0EB in that I was more hyped for the NSFL draft, but I jumped in enough by the time of the DSFL draft that I was also super hyped for that. Although the point of feeling more assigned than selected is a real one. With a new player the team might only have a couple of weeks to scout how good a fit they will be for potentially ten plus seasons compared to now where they get at least a season of data to work with for the big leagues.

Overall I find the idea interesting if nothing else. Will be the first to admit I am sad to no longer be teammates with some of my friends from the DSFL level, but I will also readily admit that I am thrilled to be making new friends with some players from other DSFL teams who are now my teammates. Also have worked to maintain those friendships with my old teammates so more friends the merrier with the current system is my stance. (Although I am also friends with people who were never my teammate so I may not be the best example there. I love a lot of people.)

@Tesla
I think with an affiliate system position switching would decline, as why lose a good player at one position to cover up a weakness at another, when you could call a rookie up and keep both positions active.

P2: As I noted earlier, I don't understand why everyone says A NSFL GM doesn't care about keeping activity up, I think that ALL jobs in the league should have a responsibility of keeping activity up.

P3: How is that different from now? It seems to me that recreates tend to get taken higher anyway and as your example notes, if someone is active it doesn't really matter as they can increase their TPE no matter where they are drafted.

P4: How can we be worried about the amount of players especially as we have just expanded the NSFL? I think it just streamlines the system and creates a clear opportunity for players to earn their places in the league. As for Woelker's plan, I have not heard anything about that so I can leave that to you (although if you know what is being worked on, I would love to hear about it)

P5: I believe you are slightly off, you say a player only interacts with 1/12 of the league, I disagree. Even discounting trades and FA movement, you would interact with your DSFL teammates, then your NSFL teammates (so 2/12... or 1/6 [Gotta simplify those fractions] of the league) which is on par with the system as it is now, DSFL -> NSFL then retire without leaving a team (for a large portion of players)

P6: As a Non GM, I do agree with your level of confidence and will also refrain from commenting.

TL;DR: I really dislike this idea. I wrote this on my phone just after waking up so apologies for any typos or bad formatting.

We’ve just had GMs from three different teams involved in punishments where the GMs were taking the DSFL too seriously and being overly competitive. An advisory board has been established to help tackle this. So... no.

Only recreates feel this way, in my experience. The only person I’ve seen say this was a recreate, and their comment was met with surprise from newer users. The DSFL is designed to introduce people to the league and promote activity, which I think it does really well.


Have they? The league expands when this becomes a problem, or even before. I don’t really like the idea of expanding the DSFL instead of the NSFL when we have enough players. That would make players, on the whole, stay in the DSFL longer. I’d much rather the DSFL remain smaller and the NSFL expand to 14 or 16 teams. Two conferences, each with two divisions of 4 teams would be really cool imo. I don’t care how many DSFL trams we have.


Please no. As you said, people are already cliquey. Tying people to their first organisation even more and even earlier seems intuitively like it’d discourage player movement even more.

We already do have a DSFL Commissioner, but creating a DSFL HO is something I’m on board with and something myself and others have suggested recently. The advisory board that’s just been established seems like a step in that direction. I think we should have a DSFL HO, but it should exist to help fix any current problems with the DSFL rather than radically overhauling it imo.

EDIT: the DSFL commissioner has yet to be replaced after manic recently stepped down, so the position is currently empty.

@Memento Mori
I was mistaken about that, I can admit that maybe more people take it seriously now, but perhaps there are still some that do not. I was only working with what it was like when I was last active.
Why cant it be both? an opportunity for recreates to move upwards and for new players to get their feet underneath them as people who are new to the league?
I want to keep the numbers even so that we don't have a runaway situation (like you mentioned) of something like 16 NSFL teams but only 8 DSFL teams. I think that might be stretching the DSFL player pool too thin. If we keep the numbers on an equal level then talent should be more evenly distributed across all levels of players.
The issue of player movement is something that is beyond the reach of this proposal, I can hope that the clock freeze of 2 years would encourage trades, but I cannot guarantee that.
I do believe we are in agreement about the DSFL HO, I was just adding a responsibility, as I still see them curating the DSFL itself.

Mori beat me to the punch here and said pretty much everything I wanted to, so I just want to echo what he said and add a little. I think this exacerbates the clique culture in the league as people don’t really have the opportunity to fully explore the rest of the league after their DSFL draft. For a lot of people, that means that they are stuck in because of something that happened after they were here for like a week. The NSFL draft process gives everyone the chance to be scouted and meet all the teams, and see more of what the league has to offer, rather than the initial bubble they got put in on day 1.

On the note of the NSFL draft being early in your time in the league, teams don’t really have a chance to get to know prospects before the DSFL draft. It’s always been a lot of guesswork and luck. The NSFL draft is a vastly more scouted out process where teams and players can get to know each other. Without that season, you’re building teams based on users you may not have even had a chance to talk to yet.

I also think this kills the DSFL GMing experience. I’m in the Tijuana war room, and I definitely share opinions but it is Jay and Bagel’s team. Nothing I can say or do will change that and I have complete faith in their ability to lead the team. And they’re damn good at it. If Tijuana became an affiliate team, it wouldn’t be that anymore. It would be someone else’s minor league team to do what they want with. We already have a huge queue for GM jobs, removing 16 of them in practice would be awful for a large part of this league.

As for DSFL HO, hell ya, all for it. We had it back in the day but it went away during some tough times in the league. May be time to bring it back but we do have the advisory board now doing some of that sort of work.

Also I believe with Manic stepping down, Bex is the current DSFL commissioner

@TomHanks
As I noted with Mori, Player movement is outside the scope of this proposal, but as with any other proposals, I would love to hear ideas that people have to promote movement.
As far as building teams, just like the draft currently, its all based on scouting. If teams are drafting without their due diligence, how is that something a rule change can address?
I disagree about it killing GM jobs though, not only does it create a GM pipeline (in addition to the player pipeline) I think it frees up DSFL GMs to create new teams, identities and a player development path that doesn't currently exist.
I am also psyched to see such support for the DSFL HO!

I am not a fan at all of direct affiliation. I've shown some stuff already, I think it would overall be an absolute negative. I dont think its about the cliques, NSFL teams are already very clique-y in general and already many have DSFL "feeder" teams so to speak. My main worry is positions. My team has 4 active offensive send downs (2 QBs) and if i remember correctly 6 active defensive send downs. I am one of the more send down heavy teams. We would just have a lot of slack there

That being said, I do think there are some good things to be looked at here.

First off, I think GMs should be able to have a higher interaction rate with players. of course there is rookie discord but that is hard to regulate. We have a prospect zone where we invite all rookies (if you are S23 and are not in there, dont worry you will be added soon :eyes so we can try and interact with them and get them involved with our LR because we just dont have the same general range DSFL GMs do. This can (and has) negatively affect us in a few ways. Mainly I think of the incident with Tesla. She had made up her mind to go to NOLA before we were even a team yet. After enjoying our locker room, she said that we were a close second. While it didn't affect us in the end thanks to the great linemen we acquired, If we would have had the ability to give her the same experience that the norfolk top brass did from day one, which is all influential new orleans players, maybe we wouldnt have lost out on a player before the draft even started. Another person is kalakar, the kicker we drafted that retired. Apparently he talked many times about retiring, but only in Myrtle Beach discord and off league. If we had known this, we would not have drafted him, but because it was an unknown, we ended up having a very valuable wasted pick. If we were able to have this more unified, consistent string of contact with the DSFL, I think it would help many things, and thats a good thing this article i think is trying to say.

Ironically, even though I'm not huge on the proposal, I think the sub proposals are all very good. A two way contract is similar to what we have already with the "DSFL covers 4 million of a send down contract." I think a two way contract would encourage movement from the pros to the minors. Would have to really be fleshed out, but this way we wouldnt be afraid to make moves, because we could call someone up and replace that player just fine without a personal cap crisis.

a separate DSFL HO has always be goal for both me and dermot. I think the formation of the DSFL Advisory board shows without a doubt that its needed. Before we tried it but it was too much in its infancy stages, and lack of people to take up the mantle ended it's short reign. We have actual people who want to apply now, lets make it happen!

I also think the thought of send down years not counting to regression is a little interesting. I think it shouldnt be counted as purely a cop out, but think something about that could be done and make it a good proposal

@ADwyer87
I think that some NSFL teams having a "Feeder" team and others not having that option is a big problem. Positionally I think levelling the playing field will only raise all organizations and players to a standard level, after which organizational differences would then differentiate the teams.

I think affiliating creates that streamlined consistent line of contact and would make it much easier to talk with your players to figure out what is bothering them.
I created the sub proposals to help address weaknesses in the proposal itself, just little bits to help smooth over some of the hurdles in this process. A two way contract would definitely help player movement, but I am worried, if you send down a player... where does he go? does he go to a separate team than someone you called up? I think affiliates streamline this whole process, you can call up/send down anyone in your organization, and if by chance your organization is weak at say WR, you can STILL trade for a NSFL or DSFL WR, and make the appropriate roster moves.
I am really excited about the potential of the DSFL HO, I think the advisory board could become it with some work, but that's another idea entirely.
I added the clock stopper rule because I didn't want someone who is stuck behind an all time great (A QB behind Prime Mike Boss is like Jim Sorgi behind Prime Peyton Manning) losing out on their career by virtue of basically luck. So I figured that (2?) Years of time not running would help him get better, without having to worry about losing time, I mean otherwise its possible that when (as in the example) Mike Boss retires, then this new QB only gets a year or two until he starts regressing, and that really sucks!

@Frostbite




I tried to reply to all the points made and I hope everyone keeps bringing up interesting counter proposals and discussion!