Offseason Point Task - 25th Anniversary Special

[zakkyjohns]

I joined the International Simulation Football League a couple months ago after spending the last 11 months in the Pro Baseball Experience. I decided that since the two leagues were relatively similar outside of the specific sports that are tied to each one that I'd give it a try after my brother TayJay convinced me to give it a shot. Admittedly I was apprehensive at looking at dots on the screen however I've come to love that aspect of it and seeing my player Tugg Speedman dominate on the field. I've met some truly awesome people since I've joined. Actually, before I joined Frick was the one who helped me build my wide receiver and get started and I really appreciate him for helping me do that. But since I joined, I have spent time in two Developmental Simulation Football League locker rooms. The first was the Portland Pythons when I was a waiver pickup. I received a lot of help and warm welcomes there and it really helped my transition early on. From Wiki help to some additional build questions, I couldn't have felt more at home to start the league in that locker room. From there I was drafted by the London Royals, where I felt even more at home. I was recruited by Katarn and I knew this is where I wanted to be. The London locker room is the most active locker room I have ever been in and probably one of the best, if not the best spanning the International Simulation Football League and Pro Baseball Experience. I love everyone in that locker room and can't say enough good things about ABH and Mag. Beyond locker rooms, the league does an exceptional job with the drafts. When I went through the Developmental Simulation Football League draft, it was cool to see all of the graphics and cards made for the rookies. It was such a welcoming experience and really draws you in with how immersive the league can be. As I prepare for the International Simulation Football League draft, that excitement is stirring up again and I'm looking forward to going through the same feeling during the draft. The league is full of really great branding that is between straight up awesome and super unique (not in a bad way). Lastly, one of my favorite parts of the league is the wiki pages. This is so cool to me and makes the league so immersive and fun. I look forward to being a part of the league as long as I am able.

428 words

[AW13]

Honestly, it has been a very fun ride so far and obviously I like the league enough to some level and will be heading towards my 3rd player's career and this time, and one that I am extremely excited about, being able to play as the son of my first player. I have been able to spend time in a few different DSFL locker rooms over the years with my players in places such as Portland and Myrtle Beach with my two players but only have been able to be in one ISFL locker room as both players went on to play for San Jose for their entire careers. One of my favorite achievements ever, at least to this point because I know it will likely change is that San Jose has never won a championship without me on their roster having won 1 with Joliet L. Christ and now 2 with Deondre Thomas-Fox with one year left to play to potentially grab a 3rd in a back to back to back scenario which would be a hell of a way to end off your career with the team.

I don't really have anything specific in mind to talk about so I am kind of just rambling about the good times though I will say that first playoff win and first Ultimus with the Sabercats was a great feeling. I was the quarterback and the co-GM in San Jose during that time so it was a tremendous feel of accomplishment and am grateful for the opportunity and to all the different people that I got to spend that moment with! I now enter the tough world of quarterbacking again with the son of my first player and it is going to be very interesting to see. I took a lot of time off and slacked a lot with my most recent player DTF because I did not particularly enjoy the wide receiver position and it was kind of easy at least to be semi-active and still be a good player for your team so I guess in that regards, wide receiver is a cool position. I now get to be a bigger part of the league again as I am determined to be a quarterback again and try to be even better than the senior version which will be hard. I have some build plans already in mind and bought equipment for the first time in a long time. I enjoy the league a lot and have a renewed sense of excitement in the league again and am very excited to see where the league heads towards.

[bjkman]

When I joined the International Simulation Football League, then the National Simulation Football League after seeing a random Reddit post before the 2020 super bowl, I did not know what to expect. I created my player based on the name I always used when I created a Madden NFL or NBA 2K player, I chose my favorite cool country outside of the United States, I used NJPW's Kota Ibushi as the look, and picked my favorite position in football and off I when. Soon enough came the "Kiwi Kicker" and the rest is history. I was frustrated and confused joining the ISFL, with all the upgrading and the tasks it was a lot to take in as a newbie, but soon enough I met the then GM of Tijuana who showed me the way and later went on to draft me in a very late round as a player who had yet to even try and level up as a player. About, 1 season in I learned all the necessary ropes and soon enough I thought I had it all figured out. A lot of this is thanks to the use of discord, without discord I doubt so many people would stay in ISFL, that is where the fun really is, we play games, we watch sims and we help each other get better at ISFL. But one thing that really would not have been possible would be the trading cards.

I was training, tasking, and chatting it up on discord, when someone had the idea of Trading Cards in the Tijuana Locker Room and the birth of Dotts Trading Cards came to be, this is the coolest thing I have done in ISFL without a doubt. I have gone on to create the majority of the cards available for people to buy, and I am just so proud of that. The group of people behind Dotts are all really talented and deserve all the credit in the world

ISFL even opened my eyes to other sim leagues, Over the summer I joined PBE and BFL, and just this last month I have found my way into SHL. And all of those have been a great experience as well. All of this is thanks to the community I found through the ISFL

In my 6-ish seasons in the league, I have yet to join a team head office or league head office, but I am almost certain that will be where my story in the ISFL will take me next. Here is to another 6 seasons, and long live the Kiwi Kicker!

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[Sabremike]

As Chiasa has only been in the league for a little while there isn't much he can say other than he is thankful to have this opportunity and that he is really looking forward to the draft.  Every single person he has met has been nothing but kind to him.  The games have been exciting to watch whether he was in them or not and he is in love with the atmosphere in the locker rooms of many teams.  He cannot wait to get back out on the field and start picking off some opposing QBs and to breakup countless passes!

[Jiggly_333]

I have been here for three and a half years. I was an S1 player. I didn’t find it on reddit, I was annoyed by a casual friend into joining. Out of all my time in this league, I’m still not sure what the point differential is on how I feel about the NSFL. I’m not going to stop calling it that unless I’m forced to for rules reasons. But I have had some of the worst experiences of my life in this league. I’ve also met most of the people I currently consider friends through this league. So my entire experience here is a bit of a wash. I spent the last three years just before quarantine going to community college, feeling constantly alone and isolated by my surroundings and lack of social skills. I said it a few times, but I don’t know how I would’ve survived those three years without the NSFL and other sim leagues as an outlet. So I can’t possibly throw the NSFL away from my life, especially when I’m not even out of the woods yet in terms of building a real social life irl. So this league really does mean something to me, possibly more than I make it out to be or treat it to be. Staying on a regular schedule of some sort keeps me grounded in the world and helps me to focus on just completing tasks in general, so having the NSFL there to be something that I work at EVERY WEEK has been that sort of repetitive task that keeps me moving forward. I do all my updates on Monday, try to do my PTs on Tuesdays, or if I don’t finish then I try to get them done by Friday. Maintaining a regular writing schedule keeps me sharp and if only I could get myself to do that sort of regular writing for something actually creative I might finally be making money. At this point, I am almost completely checked out emotionally in this league. I talk to the people I care about, I avoid gen chat because after March I cannot go into gen chat without physically shaking with anxiety, and I mostly just post music in my LRs. I remember back when Ballerstorm refused to make a Discord server for the league because he wanted all of the interaction to be done on the forums and he was worried that the forums would get boring if everyone moved to Discord. He was right. And now we’re here, 25 seasons later. So much has changed, so little has changed. All my friends are dead. I’m too old.

[The_Mediocre_Pigeon]

Even though S25 was only my first league in the DSFL, I've already come to enjoy the atmosphere surrounding the ISFL. It is fascinating to see what was once just an idea develop into the extravagant, and well-run league it is today. It is fascinating to sit down and just think about what all went in to making this league a success. 25 seasons is a really good milestone, but this league hasn't even come close to reaching it's ceiling. I'm very excited for the future of this league and am looking forward to growing alongside it. Hopefully I will be able to say more in a few seasons once I am hopefully producing at a high level in the ISFL with whichever team I end up with. However, that doesn't take away from the thrill i get when I see my player, Big Chungus, put up good numbers. It is fun to be able to interact with other users to create our own little "society" if you will. It is incredible to possess enough talent to be able to produce a completely independent league that is completely free and available to the public. Even though i've only been in the league for one season, I can already tell it is on its way to becoming a very enjoyable and, perhaps addicting, source of entertainment for me.

227 words

[Menace0528]

Im a prospect for the S25 draft, so I haven’t been here very long. However, I am ridiculously excited to be here! I’ve talked with a bunch of people already, including teams throughout the DSFL and scouts for teams that might need defensive tackles, and it’s really nice to make friends with everyone. I’ve already created a twitter account and I am planning on making a wiki and graphics. Things haven’t really been great in my life, especially socially, so being able to make so many friends so quickly is such a nice change from how life usually is. I’ve also always been a football fan, but where I live, there’s no chances to play football, so this seems like the next best thing. Honestly, I might even prefer this, as I’ve always been interested in the statistics portion of football, so a computer simulated version of it is a really interesting idea. I also find it hard sometimes to find interest in things, so the fact that this interests me so much is really nice, and I don’t expect my interest to waver at all. Even though this is the off-season, so there’s no football going on, I’m still enjoying myself because of how nice and friendly everyone has been going into this. When I first started, I was extremely overwhelmed by everything. But little by little, with the help of those more experienced, I got the hang of it, and now I really feel prepared heading into the draft. The league has also given me a way to spend my free time. That may sound small, but it was getting to the point where every day i’d either be doing homework or sleeping, and while I won’t go nearly as far as saying this has given me a “purpose in life” or anything like that, it’s definitely something to look forward to, which I haven’t really had for a while. I’ve been missing having something to be passionate about, as it’s always so hard to find. I find I sometimes tend to self-isolate as well, and this has and will be something to help bring me out of my shell, as well as getting to meet new people. I cannot wait for the prospect bowl, and I will 100% be rooting for my player and team the entire time. I’ve even started a small rivalry with a rookie OL, so i hope we get put on separate teams so we can go against each other. All in all, I’m extraordinarily excited to be here, and I can’t wait to be a big part of this league in the future.

(441 words)

[Crodyman]

I didn’t really know what to expect when I saw the post on r/NFL about the ISFL. I was bored, and thought I’d check it out. Fast forward a few months and now I’m running a team twitter, a member of the War Room (which I could be participating more in, and probably should), a team captain, and more. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how much I’ve enjoyed watching these tiny little dots fly around the football field, and imagining Wasrabi Gleel’s career as a rebel to the meta, marching to the beat of his own drum. It’s exciting, and I’m thankful for everyone who welcomed me and made this experience so worthwhile.

One of my favorite parts of the league has been the Discord servers. I never really used Discord much before joining the league, and now I use it every day. I love counting, seeing people's pets, and having conversations at 4am with aussies on the other side of the globe. Being in the war room and seeing the inner workings of a franchise has been a lot of fun as well. I wish I had more time to devote to the league because I think GMing would be a great experience.

Moving forward, the league is moving to a new sim! This is very exciting and exactly what many people have been asking for. It is sort of a reshuffling of the deck--the old meta is replaced with an unknown one, and part of the fun is learning how to optimize a player archetype under this new system. I’m hoping that Power LB’s can play a bigger role in the new sim, but something tells me speed will always win the day.

25 seasons from now, we could see a much larger league than today. I imagine there will be at least 4 new expansion teams for the DSFL, and potentially 4 more for the ISFL as well in order to accommodate a larger pool of players. It remains to be seen how the new sim is going to work for this league, but in another 25 seasons there is a chance people will be clamouring for a new sim.

Finally, I imagine that more than one team will undergo a rebranding/relocating. This has already happened numerous times in the ISFL and DSFL, with the San Antonio Marshals becoming my Minnesota Grey Ducks. It remains to be seen which teams/brands have enough staying power to endure in the years ahead.

(416 words)

[lespoils]

Of these twenty-five seasons, I have only been around for two, much less than a lot of the experienced users around here. It is obvious that I don't have as many memories or friends than these people, and the quality of those I have might not be the same. That does not mean, however, that I discredit my time here, or the relations I have forged with some of the people I have met through the Portland Pythons locker room.

This league did not mean much to me when I first joined. I have always been very transparent about it being my second league, the SHL being much more important to me. This is still the case, but what started as a sideline league, a time-waster where I just coasted through activity checks, cheap training and PT affiliation now takes more and more of my time and attention. The fact that I am completing this special PT right now proves it.

As in every other sim league, or any similar online endeavor for that matter, the community plays a big part in keeping me interested. I am not a huge fan of football and don't know much about it aside from the basic position and general rules. Therefore, I do not participate much in the tactics or player related discussions in the locker rooms I'm in. This has an impact on my overall activity on Discord, where I only poke my head from time to time. Despite all that, I'm still very well received, people are kind and dumb things down for me when there's something I don't understand. As someone who's never really been part of any sports team in my life, it's nice to be part of that kind of group that just hopes the dots on the computer will go in the right direction and to feel like the work I've done actively helped when they do.

Being part of the ISFL also means meeting very nice people. I would like to take this opportunity to send some shoutouts to two of them : SouthPaw and zEagle. The former, as my GM with the Pythons and knowing I didn't know much about football, made sure to always check up on me every once in a while, to make sure I was still around and that everything was alright. I really appreciated it, this kind of small gestures is exactly what the league should be about. As for zEagle, we bonded as offensive line linemates and now I have a pal I can keep pestering about his bad decision to switch to DT forever, which is very nice.

(451 words)

[Pat]

It's an interesting question: what does the ISFL mean to me? Honestly, this place has become like a second home to me.

Story time: Years ago, I was part of an online community centered around Call of Duty. I joined it back in 2011 after being directed there through a Google search on Call of Duty: Black Ops. The community was great. I would hang out there daily chatting with people and writing posts. I've made friends there that I still talk to to this day - in fact, two were even guests at my wedding! Over time the community became less active due to people just not have an interest in Call of Duty anymore, and eventually the entire forums site went away when no one wanted to step up and pay for hosting fees. We had moved to a Discord community but it just wasn't the same.

When I saw the recruitment post in the NFL subreddit, my first thought was to tell my friend Cody about it. As I was writing him a message I received one from him with a link to the recruitment post. As we talked about it the general theme seemed to be, "It sounds fun, let's give it a shot. Who knows maybe we'll like it."

Neither of us had ever done a sim league like this before, but we've been playing sports games together for over a decade, exclusively playing modes that let us run franchises.

After joining the league, I was honestly a little overwhelmed at first. It felt like there was just so much to do and I didn't know how to do it. At first I wondered if I would really stick around or if this was a place for me.

Now, roughly four months later, I'm absolutely hooked. The ISFL has provided me with a whole new group of people to meet and to be friends with. One of the first things I do every day is check into Discord to see what's going on and see how everyone is doing. I've enjoyed being in the league and have become so invested that it didn't take long for me to get into sim testing, which then led me to being invited to Tijuana's and Arizona's War Rooms, and now eventually being named the General Manager of the Philadelphia Liberty.

I've absolutely loved my time here. I've had nothing but fun and I want to make sure that this league continues to be what it should be: a place where people can go to get away from real life for a little while. Having an escape is important, especially in 2020 when so much of the world looks like a disaster film.