S25 Expansion

[iStegosauruz]

I get the experience angle, I think my problem is current GM's getting the gig. You can't say "those jobs will need replacing" when 3/4 of them are already filled immediately. I also don't think its fair to say to someone "Just ask your GM", there are so many people that the path to becoming a GM is blocked and if someone doesn't like you, you won't get the job.

This is a fair and legitimate gripe (although it’s 2/3? Westy isn’t a current GM, and Baltimore’s is still open IIRC). The DSFL GM->ISFL GM pipeline is pretty common, but having two spots going to current ISFL CO’s can be concerning and I understand that. In my thought process, I saw woelkers already stepping down and pairing himself with an experienced former GM - and I thought it was a home run pick. Obviously I’m friends with them, but regardless of that fact I thought their experience taking what was the league laughingstock for 18 seasons into a title winner was a no brainer. I saw dewalt’s strengths and attitude from his time in Minnesota (with woelkers ironically) and Baltimore and thought he would also make an excellent expansion GM. One of the biggest weaknesses of his application though, and something we debated in HO, was your concern - we would be taking a current GM who had no real plans of leaving prior to expansion from a team. But in the end we thought that it was a strong enough bid and that Baltimore had many very good options to replace him with.

That being said, I am all for (a) encouraging more newer people to try and join war rooms at all levels and (b) expanding war rooms in the ISFL. This can help newer users get their toes in the water of GMing and all the fun responsibilities of it, though it doesn’t help with the liking or friends part. For the most part we are hands off with who teams select as their successor GMs, and so that’s a team side issue. The last thing this league needs is HO meddling too much in team management decisions unless absolutely necessary.

I like the way this conversation is trending because one of the things I've advocated for a lot recently - and there are multiple members of HO who can back me up on that fact - is that HO should be more transparent in their decision making. I absolutely believe Dewalt had a strong application and definitely believe that him and High will make an amazing pair, but I think that the points you make open up the question of whether or not there were any applications you felt were strong enough to dissuade that potential fear? It feels obvious that you're weighing pros and cons when deciding on who to put your support behind for expansion, and if that was such a hotly debated issue in HO there really are two lines of thinking that come out of it to me:
1. That no other application was anywhere close enough to Dewalt/High and y'all felt that it was more of an acceptable risk to take that you could be crippling Baltimore instead of entrusting a slot to another bid.
2. Dewalt/High (along with woelkers/Bwest too) were abnormally strong applications this cycle and although there were ones that would have been top quality in the past you couldn't overlook the strengths of theirs in comparison to the glaring issue that you referenced about Baltimore.

Now it definitely could be a combination of those two factors, but I think this is one of those things people are more curious about. I don't think anyone doubt's y'all picked strong candidates - all you have to do is talk to any of them for 5 minutes and you'll know they're great choices - but I do think there are a lot of people who are looking for a more finer parsing of what makes them such strong candidates in comparison to the rest of the pool of applicants. When we're having these discussions about experience and how it factors in I think its hard for some people to see past the initial perception that of course they had a strong application - they have experience - but how did that actually relate to the decision making. What were the actual strengths of their experience, how did that compare to other applications, etc? Joining a war room is a very generic ask of people who applied for expansion and I'm sure there are tons of people who did apply who are war room members currently - finer details can help guide them for next time in the process. Within the limits of what you're comfortable talking about of course.