S23 NSFL Rules Summit Results

[Memento Mori]

Passing, receiving, sack, interception records were not being broken anyway because of the changes to the sim rules and the fact that the schedule was reduced from 14 games to 13. I’d get the records argument if we’d always played 13 games, or there hadn’t been multiple changes to the sim rules, but there has. The S22 sim is so different from the era that most records are set. For example, it would take Jay Cue, who led the NSFL in passing yards per game, about 21 games to match Mike Boss’ single season passing yard record. The 16 game era won’t suddenly result in every record being broken, because the other changes that have been made to the sim have more of an effect on how beatable each record is.

A 13 game season is inherently imbalanced. Teams play different numbers of home and away games, which can have a big impact when (like in S22) the difference between making the playoffs and missing the playoffs can often be tiebreakers rather than regular season victories. A 13 game season with 10 teams (like we had from S16 to S21) leads to Team A playing it’s conference twice (8 games), and the other conference once (5 games). A 13 game season with 12 teams (as we had in S22) leads to teams playing its conference twice (10 games) and half of the other conference (3 games). The part that made 13 games acceptable despite the home/away imbalance was that each team played the rest of it’s conference twice and then the same out-of-division opponents. With 12 teams, you play your conference twice (10 games) and the other conference once (6 games).

The competitive reason for playing 13 games is gone, and I don’t understand the appeal of trying to stop records from S1-S3 ever being broken.