9. Through a random lottery drawing, you have been named the league's new commisioner for a day. Congrats! What improvements would you make to the league if you had the power to do whatever you wanted?
I'm fairly inexperienced to the league, so the only thing I feel I have a good proposal for at the moment is changing how the salary cap works for bots. I really dislike how almost every player just takes "veteran minimum" so that their team can spend the remaining cap space money on bots. I am aware that bots are essentially to filling a team's rosters, but it is weird that any given player will take minimum salary, ever.
My proposal is simply that every team's salary cap can only be spent on players, and a seperate "Bot salary pool" is given to each team instead, based on where they placed the previous season. Something like:
14th: $36m
13th: $34m
12th: $32m
11th: $30m
10th: $28m
9th: $26m
8th: $24m
7th: $22m
6th: $20m
5th: $18m
4th: $16m
3rd: $14m
2nd: $12m
1st: $10m
So basically, if you win the Ultimus, you'll only have $10m to spend on bots next season, and if you finish last in the ISFL, you'll have $36m to spend on bots. The numbers can be tweaked obviously, this is just conceptual. This "bot cap space" should also be tradeable in denominations of $1m, whether for draft picks, players, etc. Now, the "player salary cap" of $80m (which I think is kinda low) can be spent completely on players, which brings me to my next point: raising the player salary cap.
At a quick glance, there is about 24 players per team, based on the tracker. The DSFL pays $4m per season. There's roughly 8 weeks inbetween each Ultimus, with 2 (?) of those being offseason weeks. If anything, the average pay of the ISFL should cover weekly training. So the higher bound of salary cap should be $192m (24 x 8), and the lower bound, if only paying for active season trainings, should be $144m (24 x 6). Let's use the lower bound, because we all know HO won't be that generous (amirite).
Now, a salary increase from $4m to $6 to go up from the DSFL is very reasonable, because if it wasn't for wanting a hall of fame career for Juno, I would've asked to stay down this past season. Why the hell would one ever want to earn less money by going up with a shitty TPE player? Makes no sense. Anyways, I imagine that some players might negotiate higher salaries for themselves, which might lead to an interesting cap space game for GMs.
And that brings me onto my last point: Player Agencies should be a thing. It should be a job that pays based on the contracts that you are able to get for your players. I don't know what conflict of interest role bans there would need to be, as I haven't thought this one through too heavily. Maybe one day I'll expand on player agencies more.
============================================
13. Expansion Expansion Expansion! The league seems to love talking about it, but it has still not happened. Tell us why it should happen / should not happen soon?
Well, I've only spent one year in the ISFL, so I may still be a bit inexperienced, especially on the GMing side of things. I think most people want expansion to happen so that we can have a nice round number of 4 divisions of 4 teams. 2 divisions of 7 is just super ugly. There are concerns about there not being enough people to support 16 teams, and they can be valid. For example, I, myself, will likely not be recreating after Juno Hu retires, at least I won't be max earning for quite a while. Main reason being the quality of the sim, which I've touched on before.
But 16 teams is simply way superior than 14 for aesthetics, symmetry, playoff seeding, divisional rivalries, and so much more. I'm not sure if the sim allows schedule editing but I figure someone probably hacked a way. I would propose the following schedule rotation:
- 2 games against each of your division rivals (6 games)
- 1 game against each of your conference rivals (4 games)
- 1 game against each of the teams in one of the divisions in the opposing conference in rotating fashion (4 games)
- 1 game against the team that finished in the same place as you did within their division in the same conference but other division (1 game)
- 1 game against the team that finished in the same place as you did within their division in the opposite conference but not the division you play against (1 game)
That last part might be a bit confusing but works similarly to how scheduling works in the NFL. We can seed the new teams as last in their respective divisions. Let's say that expansion happened this offseason and that teams are split into the following:
NSFC West
Yellowknife Wraiths (11-5)
Colorado Yeti (8-8)
Chicago Butchers (6-10)
Kentucky Spirits (example expansion team #1)
NSFC East
Berlin Fire Salamanders (12-4)
Sarasota Sailfish (10-6)
Philadelphia Liberty (6-10)
Baltimore Hawks (2-14)
ASFC West
Arizona Outlaws (12-4)
Honolulu Hahalua (9-7)
Orange County Otters (7-9)
San Jose Sabercats (5-11)
ASFC East
New York Silverbacks (10-6)
Austin Copperheads (9-7)
New Orleans Second Line (5-11)
Rotterdam Flying Dutchmen (example expansion team #2)
Let's use the Kentucky Spirits as an example. We would then play:
2 games against each divisional rival (Chicago Butchers / Colorado Yeti / Yellowknife Wraiths). This never changes.
1 game against each "conference rival" (Baltimore Hawks / Berlin Fire Salamanders / Philadelphia Liberty / Sarasota Sailfish). This also never changes.
1 game against each team in the ASFC West (Arizona Outlaws / Honolulu Hahalua / Orange County Otters / San Jose Sabercats)
1 additional game against the Baltimore Hawks (because they are last in their division, and we are also last)
1 game against the Rotterdam Flying Dutchmen (because they are last in their division, and we are also last)
Then, next season, we would play the ASFC East instead of the ASFC West, switching every season.
And thus, 14 of the 16 games would be set, and the last 2 games are simply dependent on where every team ends up at the end of any given season.
Anyways, that is my proposal for the expansion.
I'm fairly inexperienced to the league, so the only thing I feel I have a good proposal for at the moment is changing how the salary cap works for bots. I really dislike how almost every player just takes "veteran minimum" so that their team can spend the remaining cap space money on bots. I am aware that bots are essentially to filling a team's rosters, but it is weird that any given player will take minimum salary, ever.
My proposal is simply that every team's salary cap can only be spent on players, and a seperate "Bot salary pool" is given to each team instead, based on where they placed the previous season. Something like:
14th: $36m
13th: $34m
12th: $32m
11th: $30m
10th: $28m
9th: $26m
8th: $24m
7th: $22m
6th: $20m
5th: $18m
4th: $16m
3rd: $14m
2nd: $12m
1st: $10m
So basically, if you win the Ultimus, you'll only have $10m to spend on bots next season, and if you finish last in the ISFL, you'll have $36m to spend on bots. The numbers can be tweaked obviously, this is just conceptual. This "bot cap space" should also be tradeable in denominations of $1m, whether for draft picks, players, etc. Now, the "player salary cap" of $80m (which I think is kinda low) can be spent completely on players, which brings me to my next point: raising the player salary cap.
At a quick glance, there is about 24 players per team, based on the tracker. The DSFL pays $4m per season. There's roughly 8 weeks inbetween each Ultimus, with 2 (?) of those being offseason weeks. If anything, the average pay of the ISFL should cover weekly training. So the higher bound of salary cap should be $192m (24 x 8), and the lower bound, if only paying for active season trainings, should be $144m (24 x 6). Let's use the lower bound, because we all know HO won't be that generous (amirite).
Now, a salary increase from $4m to $6 to go up from the DSFL is very reasonable, because if it wasn't for wanting a hall of fame career for Juno, I would've asked to stay down this past season. Why the hell would one ever want to earn less money by going up with a shitty TPE player? Makes no sense. Anyways, I imagine that some players might negotiate higher salaries for themselves, which might lead to an interesting cap space game for GMs.
And that brings me onto my last point: Player Agencies should be a thing. It should be a job that pays based on the contracts that you are able to get for your players. I don't know what conflict of interest role bans there would need to be, as I haven't thought this one through too heavily. Maybe one day I'll expand on player agencies more.
============================================
13. Expansion Expansion Expansion! The league seems to love talking about it, but it has still not happened. Tell us why it should happen / should not happen soon?
Well, I've only spent one year in the ISFL, so I may still be a bit inexperienced, especially on the GMing side of things. I think most people want expansion to happen so that we can have a nice round number of 4 divisions of 4 teams. 2 divisions of 7 is just super ugly. There are concerns about there not being enough people to support 16 teams, and they can be valid. For example, I, myself, will likely not be recreating after Juno Hu retires, at least I won't be max earning for quite a while. Main reason being the quality of the sim, which I've touched on before.
But 16 teams is simply way superior than 14 for aesthetics, symmetry, playoff seeding, divisional rivalries, and so much more. I'm not sure if the sim allows schedule editing but I figure someone probably hacked a way. I would propose the following schedule rotation:
- 2 games against each of your division rivals (6 games)
- 1 game against each of your conference rivals (4 games)
- 1 game against each of the teams in one of the divisions in the opposing conference in rotating fashion (4 games)
- 1 game against the team that finished in the same place as you did within their division in the same conference but other division (1 game)
- 1 game against the team that finished in the same place as you did within their division in the opposite conference but not the division you play against (1 game)
That last part might be a bit confusing but works similarly to how scheduling works in the NFL. We can seed the new teams as last in their respective divisions. Let's say that expansion happened this offseason and that teams are split into the following:
NSFC West
Yellowknife Wraiths (11-5)
Colorado Yeti (8-8)
Chicago Butchers (6-10)
Kentucky Spirits (example expansion team #1)
NSFC East
Berlin Fire Salamanders (12-4)
Sarasota Sailfish (10-6)
Philadelphia Liberty (6-10)
Baltimore Hawks (2-14)
ASFC West
Arizona Outlaws (12-4)
Honolulu Hahalua (9-7)
Orange County Otters (7-9)
San Jose Sabercats (5-11)
ASFC East
New York Silverbacks (10-6)
Austin Copperheads (9-7)
New Orleans Second Line (5-11)
Rotterdam Flying Dutchmen (example expansion team #2)
Let's use the Kentucky Spirits as an example. We would then play:
2 games against each divisional rival (Chicago Butchers / Colorado Yeti / Yellowknife Wraiths). This never changes.
1 game against each "conference rival" (Baltimore Hawks / Berlin Fire Salamanders / Philadelphia Liberty / Sarasota Sailfish). This also never changes.
1 game against each team in the ASFC West (Arizona Outlaws / Honolulu Hahalua / Orange County Otters / San Jose Sabercats)
1 additional game against the Baltimore Hawks (because they are last in their division, and we are also last)
1 game against the Rotterdam Flying Dutchmen (because they are last in their division, and we are also last)
Then, next season, we would play the ASFC East instead of the ASFC West, switching every season.
And thus, 14 of the 16 games would be set, and the last 2 games are simply dependent on where every team ends up at the end of any given season.
Anyways, that is my proposal for the expansion.
![[Image: 63840_s.gif]](https://signavatar.com/63840_s.gif)
