(S26) Ultimus Week

[ReverendOReily]

2) Tell us about your draft class. Is there anything that makes it special in comparison to other classes? Where did your fellow draftees land, how are they doing? Did anyone turn out to be an unexpected steal of that draft based on what you know today? Do you think anyone in your draft class will become a hall of famer? If you’re new to the league, how do you think your class will do? Where do you think people will get drafted to?

Throughout the history of the league, there have been a few draft classes that have been proclaimed as the league's greatest draft class. Whether proclaimed by people drafted outside of that class, or proclaimed only by the people drafted in that class (looking at you, season 18), people never seem to agree on which class is the best one. I am here to settle that dispute once and for all by telling you that my draft class, Season 25, is the greatest draft class to ever come out of the ISFL. It isn't just any one thing that makes our class the greatest, which makes this a nice topic to write an 800 word ultimus week prompt on; rather, there is a multitude of things that makes Season 25 the greatest draft class this league has ever seen.

Let's start first with the size of the draft class - the Season 25 class had 115 prospects in it, down from the 141 prospects we had in our DSFL draft (confusingly named the S24 DSFL draft because god forbid things match up.) By my count, that's the second largest draft class in the league's history. The only draft classes that even really compare to Season 25 are Season 15 (the league's first /r/NFL recruitment class if I remember correctly), Season 18, and Season 22. Season 22 holds the record for largest draft class, Season 15 is the class where so many users who are still influential to the league today were first introduced, and Season 18, although the smallest class of the four, also introduced a lot of incredibly influential users to our league, including our current commissioner, our league's head updater, everyone's favorite Arizona quarterback, and two of the winningest GMs in Ultimus history (shoutout to Rev and Laser)

Lets look at how these four draft classes stack up against each other. How many people from each of these draft classes are (or have been) in positions of power? For the sake of this post, let's say a "position of power" means ISFL general manager, DSFL general manager, or a member of HO. Also for the sake of this post let's recognize that the record keeping in the league is maybe a little less than ideal, but there is a good amount of preserved league history that can be gathered between the wiki, league youtube page, TPE tracker, and by bothering some of the league's local boomers.

Season 15 - Flyeaglesfly (GM), Rradum (GM), Frick_Nasty (GM), Valor (GM), Huskies (GM), Teyon (HO), Gucci (GM), SDCore (HO), Air Crou (GM), ScorpXCracker (GM I think? If not, Scorp was a GM in UNO league so he still gets counted), Tom Hanks (DSFL commissioner, HO, GM), and Terriblehippo (HO), for a total of 12 Powerful Players (trademarked)

Season 18 - IsaStarcrossed (GM), Hallmonitor (GM), DeadlyPlayer (GM chat legend), Laser (GM/head updater), bex (ISFL commissioner), Revolution5 (GM), CLG Rampage (GM), Dewalt27 (GM), for a total of 8 Powerful Players

Season 22 - Flyeaglesfly29 again! (GM), BenDover (GM), Thor (GM), Memento Mori (GM), Highhaschdi (GM), sakrosankt (GM), qWest (GM), yonggarius (GM), mithrandir (GM), Matty7478 (GM), Rradum (GM), Blasoon (GM), J0EB (GM), iStegosauruz (GM/HO), NicholasTheGreat (GM), Exilizer (HO), gucci (GM), furiousPanda (GM), Oles (GM), Bayley (GM), TheCC (GM), thevoicelesscreator (GM), Colabear (HO), siddhus (GM) for a total of 24 Powerful Players

Season 25 - JuOSu (GM), timeconsumer (Head simmer forever/all-around league legend), Jimi64 (GM), Frick_Nasty (GM), ShnarlyDude (GM), Crunk (GM), Punter715 (GM), Bwestfield (GM), charlit (GM), Raven (GM/maybe HO at one point), slate (GM), r0tzbua (HO/GM), katarn22 (GM), Swanty (HO), GuitarMaster116 (HO), speculadora (GM), Mooty99 (GM/HO), zaynzk (GM), SDCore (HO), Air Crou (GM), AdamS (GM), GlimsTC (GM), frazzle14 (GM), WhatAmUs (GM), zEagle (GM) for a total of 25 Powerful Players

So, by this one infallible metric that I kind of made up on the fly, you can see that Season 22 and Season 25 blow the other two seasons out of the water. "But wait!" you say to me, "Season 22 and Season 25 had more people, so it's natural that they'd also have more GMs and members of HO in their ranks." To you, dear commenter, I say stop trying to apply logic and reason to my UW post. Anyway, since Season 25 has one more Powerful Player then Season 22, I declare Season 25 to be the best draft class in league history.
Comparing players by their TPE or stats on the field is obviously pretty unfair since the older players have a lead on the younger players (unless they're in regression), so while I'm not saying my "compare the draft classes based on what league jobs they've held" method is infallible, I do think it's better than that.

One last thing on the topic - while I know some absolutely wonderful users who were drafted in all four of the classes that I've compared in this point task, Season 25 has without a doubt some of the best people in the league. Users in my draft class like Zayn, r0tzbua, Asked Madden, Katarn, slate, zeagle, Swanty, platanocat, Pat, and Cody are what make this draft class truly special. They're wonderful people, and I truly believe you can't do an UW prompt about Season 25 without shouting those guys out. I'm sure I missed a few people, but thems the breaks.

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