One year ago today, the Colorado Yeti won their first Ultimus Title.
"But infinite," I can hear you say, "the S22 Ultimus aired on May 27th, not the 26th!"
Maybe for you. But for me, the game was on the 26th. As a member of Head Office, I watched every sim occur, checking for errors and generally shit talking with our commissioner @bex and our simmer @manicmav36. Since this was an Ultimus game, I technically wasn't supposed to watch - but in my role as forum banner creator at the time I always got to know who won before gametime. Because of these dual roles, I got to sim supervise the biggest game of my sim life.
I joined this league on a whim just before my last winter break as a student at Rutgers University. I was about to go outside to shovel some snow that had fallen on my parents' driveway when I stumbled on a post from @tbone415 on /r/patriots, advertising the league. I had previously been an immediate IA on a completely different sim league (some CFB coaching league that I never followed up on after signing up), so I was hesitant to sign up for this one. But it intrigued me for some reason - so I signed up.
I wasn't very active in my DSFL season. My player, kicker Micycle McCormick, was drafted to the Chicago Coyotes. In scouting, I noticed how @Jiggly_333's render at the time was Christen Press, and as a casual USWNT fan I told him that I too liked watching the team. Maybe that's why Chicago drafted me. The team Jiggly and @124715 put together also had legendary users like @bovovovo and @speculadora, yet our team did not perform very well. I don't know why, but I didn't engage much with the LR outside of making occasional graphics.
It was these graphics that caught the attention of @sapp2013, who had been a member of the Coyotes previously and thus had an alumni role in the server. As Co-GM of the Yeti, he took a chance on a low-earning kicker over the consensus best kicker of the class. It was a shock decision, but one that I was proud to be a part of. The Yeti were very bad at the time, but things were going to get legendary for the team. Riding a two game losing streak from the end of S5, the Yeti strung together two straight seasons with no wins, ending up with the longest losing streak in league history at 0-32. Despite this, the LR was popping more than ever. The users in the locker room were totally bought in to the plan, and even though we were incredibly bad at dot football, the locker room was full of enthusiastic, optimistic folks who were just all-around cool people. Users like @TheMemeMaestro, @ExemplaryChad, @Supersquare04, @dropbear, @mmfootball, @Daybe, and the GOAT hype man @ralz9 got me very active in the LR and eventually the league as a whole. The day we finally won a game (on a Micycle game-winning field goal nonetheless) was one of the greatest days in my sim-league career. All of that work, finally paying off!
But things started to hit the rails soon after. Not through anyone's fault - just that real life happens, and the big goal of getting a win had finally been achieved. Players started going IA to pursue big life goals, or just going IA because the league was no longer interested. Our QB of the future, Ryan Applehort, left the team, forcing me to switch Micycle to QB so that we wouldn't throw out a roster of good IAs to another rebuild so soon. As the Yeti finally got good, the team slowly fell apart. At one point, we literally only had 3 actives on the team - myself, dropbear, and @DonnoMania. We were able to slightly reload in the S12 draft by taking @Bwestfield, @PSanchez55, @Dangles13, and @mcgriddleluver - but things were not looking great.
Eventually, I ended up as the Co-GM of the team with dropbear as GM. Knowing our window was on the verge of closing, we engineered an all-in strategy where we traded for rentals of league legends like Bronko Mills, Verso L'Alto, and Blackford Oakes for one last chase for the trophy. The team underperformed incredibly despite being one of the best rosters in the league - finishing 8-6 and barely scraping out the #1 seed in the NSFC by literally four points scored. We took care of business against the Liberty in the NSFC Championship, set up to face the Orange County Otters who were also fairly mediocre. Despite a desperate attempt at a comeback, we fell 3 points short, and the all-in strategy had failed.
The Yeti were back in the gutter, and Micycle was dying. So, dropbear retired his player and created our new QB of the future before stepping down as GM. Turns out, going all-in is a bad decision when the league plans to recruit in /r/NFL for the first time. We drafted Jay Longshaw in the draft (missing out on the well-regarded GOAT QB, Franklin Armstrong), stealing Mo Berry (@Frick_Nasty) in the second round, tackle king Tony Gabagool (@shipwreckrising) in the third, as well as getting an absolute steal of a pick in the fourth in Quentin Sinclair @MaxGnarland. While we were properly stinky, these players served as the bedrock for the new Yeti. Frick was an especially notable pick - I did not have him high on our big board because he had not been updated in a while, but he continuously annoyed messaged me about how he was going to be the best pick in the draft. We had a first round pick at the time, but after seeing the draft play out and thinking we could get him at 11, we traded back with Arizona from pick 7. It was the scariest few hours as a GM that I ever had, but we got our golden goose in the end. My next draft got us some more great users in @C9Van and @Starboy, and while it didn't end well with either, they still played an integral part in the rebuild and were great to be around.
Oh, and I recreated as a wide receiver for the S16 draft. That's right - Wolfie McDummy was supposed to be a WR. But, dropbear was about to have his first child and had so many things going on IRL - and suddenly he was gone from the league. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, I made the plan to switch the DSFL 1OA pick to QB early in the season - taking him out of an important playoff run for the Pythons. If I hadn't, the Pythons may have won that Ultimini... but sacrifices had to be made.
I spent most of S16 in the Philippines, visiting my girlfriend's family. I was still GM, but going through another nearly-winless season (thanks Austin) had drained my motivation. Westy had basically been the GM in that time, and Frick was second in command. So, I did the right thing for me and stepped down, stealing Frick from becoming the next league commissioner to be the team's Co-GM. It was then that we took @woelkers in the S17 draft - someone who Frick and Westy were both willing to take at 1OA had we lost the Toilet Bowl. I was convinced that we should take @run_CMC if we were, and while we did eventually get him (thanks Austin), I am more than happy to admit I was wrong.
A couple of middling seasons later, the Yeti finally made the jump back into the playoffs in S19 thanks to excellent drafting. We spent the next few seasons making the playoffs only to be smashed out of them, and there was no reason S22 should be any different. The Wraiths were the team to beat in the league that season, as they had been for a few years. After easily handling Sarasota in the divisional, we entered Yellowknife testing at maybe 20%. But sometimes that 20% actually happens - and this time it did, as we won 17-16. We were back in the Ultimus, and facing the Otters once again.
I joined the then-NSFL as a senior at Rutgers University. I never really knew where I was going in life, but I always knew I was interested in science - specifically astronomy. Not knowing any better (outside of knowing I despised engineering), I turned down a huge scholarship from the School of Engineering to pursue a major in Astrophysics.* This had culminated in me fairly successfully navigating the major and at this point, working on a senior thesis. As I was joining the league, I worked with my advisors in applying to graduate schools.
*Don't feel bad for me. I still got a very large scholarship for this and thanks to my Dad working at RU, I ended up getting paid to go to school. I'm very lucky.
Graduate school is the logical next step for someone majoring in astrophysics. If you're in the field, you really love what you're doing. I could have graduated and worked for some firm doing data analysis, but I told myself that this was what I needed to do. My plan B, I told myself, was to go and work in a firm, and my plan C was to become a high school teacher. But graduate school was where you went if you wanted astrophysics to be your life. I thought that was what I wanted, and despite not having a great experience doing research at the undergraduate level, I pursued a career in research thinking that maybe grad school would help me find what it is I wanted to learn about.
I was wrong - in a sense. Graduate school taught me so much - programming, physics, astronomy - but it was graduate school that really solidified me as a person. I moved from central New Jersey (it exists, damn it) exactly 1,000 miles to Minneapolis with my girlfriend, who dropped her dream job to support me. While I still cannot forgive myself for taking her away from it, it was a time of immense growth for our relationship and a time of growth for me as a person. We had never lived together before, and while it took a little bit more of getting used to each other (we had been dating for over 6 years at the time) we knew we were right for each other. I had already bought a ring for her, gotten her parents' blessing, and etc. by the time this time last year passed around. But I was not going to propose until I had finished school.
About school... I was accepted into the University of Minnesota's Ph.D. program for astrophysics, and my plan was originally to finish the six years before moving on to my career as a researcher. That career path is not easy - it frequently takes two post-doctoral appointments at different schools around the country before even being considered as a possible faculty member of a school. As I taught, studied, and researched in graduate school, I realized I only really enjoyed one of those things - teaching. My tuition was paid for by my teaching an introductory astronomy course, and as time went on and I became the Head TA of the course I stopped lying to myself about one thing - a life of research wasn't for me. I bailed on the Ph.D. program that I studied so hard to get into, and decided to leave the U with a Master's degree. This required me to finish my research project that I started a year and a half prior, and so I stopped taking classes and put all my focus on finishing it. I eventually got far enough to schedule my thesis defense.
It was scheduled for May 26, 2020.
I was still fairly invested in sim-testing for the Yeti at the time, though us drafting @thevoicelesscreator, @Modern_Duke, and @nunccoepi meant that I was increasingly not needed for the task. Depth charts and strategies were due at 7PM central, and so I spent much of the days leading up to it focused on my defense. Because of COVID, it was going to be done virtually, and so I could do all my panicking inside my apartment, alone with my dogs. My girlfriend had forgotten that was the day of my defense and picked up someone's shift in an emergency (not her fault, someone had to pick it up lol), and since all my family was 1,000 miles away it was the most isolated thesis defense I think anyone in the department had.
The defense went well, and while I briefly forgot what a lightyear was somehow I passed the defense. Maybe they took pity on me because of the panorama pantomime pandemic, but the paper and presentation were fairly solid given the circumstances. My girlfriend, lovely as ever, came back from her shift with balloons and party-poppers. We went to pick up burgers in celebration, but before that was a frantic sim-testing session with the war room. We started getting our first hints that something was up when, with the same exact file, two of us tested at 20% and two of us tested at 35%, but at a certain point we said "YOLO" and submitted what we had. I went to get my burgers, and came back to manic and bex being ready to sim.
We first simulated the Ultimini, which I don't remember at all. JPach, the DSFL simmer at the time, was present for it, but we kicked him out before the Ultimus sim.
JPach had frequently teased sim watchers by forcing them to watch their players play the whole game before revealing the score, something that was both hilarious if you weren't the person but stressful if you were. But those were regular season games in the DSFL, so they didn't really matter that much.
manic had been part of these at some point, remembered the tactic. And, after we triple-checked that all the DCs and strats were correct, and after he had pressed "Simulate Game", hovered over the "Show Score" button for a few seconds before quickly moving to the "Watch Game" button and clicking it.
Those of you who remember the game know how it went. But, after a day of intense stress already, my emotions were amplified. Bex and manic obviously enjoyed themselves, but by the time we were down 21-3 I was very disappointed - and they were disappointed for me. Manic knows what it's like to lose Ultimus games, and so we were all a little down.
But then it started happening. Wolfie ran for a touchdown with 2:34 left in the third quarter to cut it to an 11 point Otters lead. Michael Vincent, sapp's second reincarnation as a Yeti player, ran in another touchdown with 10:43 left in the fourth quarter to cut it to a 3 point lead. Suddenly, I allowed myself to hope again. A whole career of cynicism in the league, expecting the Yeti to fuck things up as they always did, went away... until Alex D. hit a field goal to take them back up by 6 with just under 5 minutes to go.
It felt like time slowed down on the last drive - and that's partially because it literally did. Manic, in his evil eeevil ways, slowed down the sim speed to nearly its slowest speed. But, the Yeti, led by the dumb dog himself Wolfie McDummy, converted two huge third and longs to get to the Otters 10 yard line with 1:26 left in the game.
On that second and four play, Wolfie dropped back and hit James Bishop in the endzone to take the lead with 38 seconds left.
After spending much of the game lamenting that we were definitely losing, and being happy I had started on the Otters banner already and not the Yeti banner, I yelled in incredible joy. The Otters, with the last possession of the game, were only able to gain 12 yards before the clock ran out. The Yeti - the team I had spent over two years working my butt off on desperately trying to shed the image of the losingest franchise in league history, spending time with friends who worked just as hard if not harder but were no longer active to see this - were champions. I cried.
I wasn't GM anymore. Most of the team at this point weren't my doing but the doing of the very capable war room. But yet, I still felt incredible pride at what we achieved. Was it a fluke? Probably. But anything can happen in a football game, and this time it finally, finally rolled our way.
One year ago today was one of the best days of not just my sim-league life, but my life as a whole. Not only did I graduate with a Master's degree, but this silly imaginary internet dot football league gave me so much joy and pride as well. I know this league can cause incredible stress and sometimes not be a great place to be, but the work you put in here will eventually be rewarded. All the suffering, the "contract the Yeti" jokes, the "0-32" jokes, they were over. The Yeti finally won a title. And no one could take that away from us.
The Yeti would go on to play in two more Ultimus games, both ending in heartbreak. I eventually retired Wolfie and recreated with an "absolutely-not-playing-QB" clause in my contract, and got drafted to Baltimore by Frick. The Yeti have shed the image of lovable but not loved losers to the team that is so successful and steals all your FAs.
I spent the summer telling myself I'd get a job in data analytics - but I never got into it. I worked for the astro department at the U ensuring that we would be prepared for a year of online instruction, which I enjoyed much more. I turned that into getting trained to teach high school physics, and will start teaching this fall. Free from school, I got engaged to my now-fiancée while traveling the country. And we moved back home, to New Jersey.
To the S22 Colorado Yeti - thank you for making a sim league vet's dream come true. There were times I thought it would never happen, but we did it.
To the Yeti of the long past - thank you for welcoming me to the league, and making it such a great place to be. You got me engaged with the community and the league and were a cool group of people to hang out with. I hope you are all doing well today.
To the Yeti now and in the future - thank you for keeping the team alive and well. The team may not have the best public image, but that's from being good and not being bad. Wear that badge with pride. The Yeti are no longer the punchline to the league's jokes, and it is up to you to keep it that way.
I may not be a Yeti in the present, but always and forever...
Also I'm not going anywhere. I just realized what today was and felt compelled to write this. Busch Goose will terrorize this league (and especially the Yeti) for a long time to come...
"But infinite," I can hear you say, "the S22 Ultimus aired on May 27th, not the 26th!"
Maybe for you. But for me, the game was on the 26th. As a member of Head Office, I watched every sim occur, checking for errors and generally shit talking with our commissioner @bex and our simmer @manicmav36. Since this was an Ultimus game, I technically wasn't supposed to watch - but in my role as forum banner creator at the time I always got to know who won before gametime. Because of these dual roles, I got to sim supervise the biggest game of my sim life.
I joined this league on a whim just before my last winter break as a student at Rutgers University. I was about to go outside to shovel some snow that had fallen on my parents' driveway when I stumbled on a post from @tbone415 on /r/patriots, advertising the league. I had previously been an immediate IA on a completely different sim league (some CFB coaching league that I never followed up on after signing up), so I was hesitant to sign up for this one. But it intrigued me for some reason - so I signed up.
I wasn't very active in my DSFL season. My player, kicker Micycle McCormick, was drafted to the Chicago Coyotes. In scouting, I noticed how @Jiggly_333's render at the time was Christen Press, and as a casual USWNT fan I told him that I too liked watching the team. Maybe that's why Chicago drafted me. The team Jiggly and @124715 put together also had legendary users like @bovovovo and @speculadora, yet our team did not perform very well. I don't know why, but I didn't engage much with the LR outside of making occasional graphics.
It was these graphics that caught the attention of @sapp2013, who had been a member of the Coyotes previously and thus had an alumni role in the server. As Co-GM of the Yeti, he took a chance on a low-earning kicker over the consensus best kicker of the class. It was a shock decision, but one that I was proud to be a part of. The Yeti were very bad at the time, but things were going to get legendary for the team. Riding a two game losing streak from the end of S5, the Yeti strung together two straight seasons with no wins, ending up with the longest losing streak in league history at 0-32. Despite this, the LR was popping more than ever. The users in the locker room were totally bought in to the plan, and even though we were incredibly bad at dot football, the locker room was full of enthusiastic, optimistic folks who were just all-around cool people. Users like @TheMemeMaestro, @ExemplaryChad, @Supersquare04, @dropbear, @mmfootball, @Daybe, and the GOAT hype man @ralz9 got me very active in the LR and eventually the league as a whole. The day we finally won a game (on a Micycle game-winning field goal nonetheless) was one of the greatest days in my sim-league career. All of that work, finally paying off!
But things started to hit the rails soon after. Not through anyone's fault - just that real life happens, and the big goal of getting a win had finally been achieved. Players started going IA to pursue big life goals, or just going IA because the league was no longer interested. Our QB of the future, Ryan Applehort, left the team, forcing me to switch Micycle to QB so that we wouldn't throw out a roster of good IAs to another rebuild so soon. As the Yeti finally got good, the team slowly fell apart. At one point, we literally only had 3 actives on the team - myself, dropbear, and @DonnoMania. We were able to slightly reload in the S12 draft by taking @Bwestfield, @PSanchez55, @Dangles13, and @mcgriddleluver - but things were not looking great.
Eventually, I ended up as the Co-GM of the team with dropbear as GM. Knowing our window was on the verge of closing, we engineered an all-in strategy where we traded for rentals of league legends like Bronko Mills, Verso L'Alto, and Blackford Oakes for one last chase for the trophy. The team underperformed incredibly despite being one of the best rosters in the league - finishing 8-6 and barely scraping out the #1 seed in the NSFC by literally four points scored. We took care of business against the Liberty in the NSFC Championship, set up to face the Orange County Otters who were also fairly mediocre. Despite a desperate attempt at a comeback, we fell 3 points short, and the all-in strategy had failed.
The Yeti were back in the gutter, and Micycle was dying. So, dropbear retired his player and created our new QB of the future before stepping down as GM. Turns out, going all-in is a bad decision when the league plans to recruit in /r/NFL for the first time. We drafted Jay Longshaw in the draft (missing out on the well-regarded GOAT QB, Franklin Armstrong), stealing Mo Berry (@Frick_Nasty) in the second round, tackle king Tony Gabagool (@shipwreckrising) in the third, as well as getting an absolute steal of a pick in the fourth in Quentin Sinclair @MaxGnarland. While we were properly stinky, these players served as the bedrock for the new Yeti. Frick was an especially notable pick - I did not have him high on our big board because he had not been updated in a while, but he continuously annoyed messaged me about how he was going to be the best pick in the draft. We had a first round pick at the time, but after seeing the draft play out and thinking we could get him at 11, we traded back with Arizona from pick 7. It was the scariest few hours as a GM that I ever had, but we got our golden goose in the end. My next draft got us some more great users in @C9Van and @Starboy, and while it didn't end well with either, they still played an integral part in the rebuild and were great to be around.
Oh, and I recreated as a wide receiver for the S16 draft. That's right - Wolfie McDummy was supposed to be a WR. But, dropbear was about to have his first child and had so many things going on IRL - and suddenly he was gone from the league. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, I made the plan to switch the DSFL 1OA pick to QB early in the season - taking him out of an important playoff run for the Pythons. If I hadn't, the Pythons may have won that Ultimini... but sacrifices had to be made.
I spent most of S16 in the Philippines, visiting my girlfriend's family. I was still GM, but going through another nearly-winless season (thanks Austin) had drained my motivation. Westy had basically been the GM in that time, and Frick was second in command. So, I did the right thing for me and stepped down, stealing Frick from becoming the next league commissioner to be the team's Co-GM. It was then that we took @woelkers in the S17 draft - someone who Frick and Westy were both willing to take at 1OA had we lost the Toilet Bowl. I was convinced that we should take @run_CMC if we were, and while we did eventually get him (thanks Austin), I am more than happy to admit I was wrong.
A couple of middling seasons later, the Yeti finally made the jump back into the playoffs in S19 thanks to excellent drafting. We spent the next few seasons making the playoffs only to be smashed out of them, and there was no reason S22 should be any different. The Wraiths were the team to beat in the league that season, as they had been for a few years. After easily handling Sarasota in the divisional, we entered Yellowknife testing at maybe 20%. But sometimes that 20% actually happens - and this time it did, as we won 17-16. We were back in the Ultimus, and facing the Otters once again.
I joined the then-NSFL as a senior at Rutgers University. I never really knew where I was going in life, but I always knew I was interested in science - specifically astronomy. Not knowing any better (outside of knowing I despised engineering), I turned down a huge scholarship from the School of Engineering to pursue a major in Astrophysics.* This had culminated in me fairly successfully navigating the major and at this point, working on a senior thesis. As I was joining the league, I worked with my advisors in applying to graduate schools.
*Don't feel bad for me. I still got a very large scholarship for this and thanks to my Dad working at RU, I ended up getting paid to go to school. I'm very lucky.
Graduate school is the logical next step for someone majoring in astrophysics. If you're in the field, you really love what you're doing. I could have graduated and worked for some firm doing data analysis, but I told myself that this was what I needed to do. My plan B, I told myself, was to go and work in a firm, and my plan C was to become a high school teacher. But graduate school was where you went if you wanted astrophysics to be your life. I thought that was what I wanted, and despite not having a great experience doing research at the undergraduate level, I pursued a career in research thinking that maybe grad school would help me find what it is I wanted to learn about.
I was wrong - in a sense. Graduate school taught me so much - programming, physics, astronomy - but it was graduate school that really solidified me as a person. I moved from central New Jersey (it exists, damn it) exactly 1,000 miles to Minneapolis with my girlfriend, who dropped her dream job to support me. While I still cannot forgive myself for taking her away from it, it was a time of immense growth for our relationship and a time of growth for me as a person. We had never lived together before, and while it took a little bit more of getting used to each other (we had been dating for over 6 years at the time) we knew we were right for each other. I had already bought a ring for her, gotten her parents' blessing, and etc. by the time this time last year passed around. But I was not going to propose until I had finished school.
About school... I was accepted into the University of Minnesota's Ph.D. program for astrophysics, and my plan was originally to finish the six years before moving on to my career as a researcher. That career path is not easy - it frequently takes two post-doctoral appointments at different schools around the country before even being considered as a possible faculty member of a school. As I taught, studied, and researched in graduate school, I realized I only really enjoyed one of those things - teaching. My tuition was paid for by my teaching an introductory astronomy course, and as time went on and I became the Head TA of the course I stopped lying to myself about one thing - a life of research wasn't for me. I bailed on the Ph.D. program that I studied so hard to get into, and decided to leave the U with a Master's degree. This required me to finish my research project that I started a year and a half prior, and so I stopped taking classes and put all my focus on finishing it. I eventually got far enough to schedule my thesis defense.
It was scheduled for May 26, 2020.
I was still fairly invested in sim-testing for the Yeti at the time, though us drafting @thevoicelesscreator, @Modern_Duke, and @nunccoepi meant that I was increasingly not needed for the task. Depth charts and strategies were due at 7PM central, and so I spent much of the days leading up to it focused on my defense. Because of COVID, it was going to be done virtually, and so I could do all my panicking inside my apartment, alone with my dogs. My girlfriend had forgotten that was the day of my defense and picked up someone's shift in an emergency (not her fault, someone had to pick it up lol), and since all my family was 1,000 miles away it was the most isolated thesis defense I think anyone in the department had.
The defense went well, and while I briefly forgot what a lightyear was somehow I passed the defense. Maybe they took pity on me because of the panorama pantomime pandemic, but the paper and presentation were fairly solid given the circumstances. My girlfriend, lovely as ever, came back from her shift with balloons and party-poppers. We went to pick up burgers in celebration, but before that was a frantic sim-testing session with the war room. We started getting our first hints that something was up when, with the same exact file, two of us tested at 20% and two of us tested at 35%, but at a certain point we said "YOLO" and submitted what we had. I went to get my burgers, and came back to manic and bex being ready to sim.
We first simulated the Ultimini, which I don't remember at all. JPach, the DSFL simmer at the time, was present for it, but we kicked him out before the Ultimus sim.
JPach had frequently teased sim watchers by forcing them to watch their players play the whole game before revealing the score, something that was both hilarious if you weren't the person but stressful if you were. But those were regular season games in the DSFL, so they didn't really matter that much.
manic had been part of these at some point, remembered the tactic. And, after we triple-checked that all the DCs and strats were correct, and after he had pressed "Simulate Game", hovered over the "Show Score" button for a few seconds before quickly moving to the "Watch Game" button and clicking it.
Those of you who remember the game know how it went. But, after a day of intense stress already, my emotions were amplified. Bex and manic obviously enjoyed themselves, but by the time we were down 21-3 I was very disappointed - and they were disappointed for me. Manic knows what it's like to lose Ultimus games, and so we were all a little down.
But then it started happening. Wolfie ran for a touchdown with 2:34 left in the third quarter to cut it to an 11 point Otters lead. Michael Vincent, sapp's second reincarnation as a Yeti player, ran in another touchdown with 10:43 left in the fourth quarter to cut it to a 3 point lead. Suddenly, I allowed myself to hope again. A whole career of cynicism in the league, expecting the Yeti to fuck things up as they always did, went away... until Alex D. hit a field goal to take them back up by 6 with just under 5 minutes to go.
It felt like time slowed down on the last drive - and that's partially because it literally did. Manic, in his evil eeevil ways, slowed down the sim speed to nearly its slowest speed. But, the Yeti, led by the dumb dog himself Wolfie McDummy, converted two huge third and longs to get to the Otters 10 yard line with 1:26 left in the game.
On that second and four play, Wolfie dropped back and hit James Bishop in the endzone to take the lead with 38 seconds left.
After spending much of the game lamenting that we were definitely losing, and being happy I had started on the Otters banner already and not the Yeti banner, I yelled in incredible joy. The Otters, with the last possession of the game, were only able to gain 12 yards before the clock ran out. The Yeti - the team I had spent over two years working my butt off on desperately trying to shed the image of the losingest franchise in league history, spending time with friends who worked just as hard if not harder but were no longer active to see this - were champions. I cried.
I wasn't GM anymore. Most of the team at this point weren't my doing but the doing of the very capable war room. But yet, I still felt incredible pride at what we achieved. Was it a fluke? Probably. But anything can happen in a football game, and this time it finally, finally rolled our way.
One year ago today was one of the best days of not just my sim-league life, but my life as a whole. Not only did I graduate with a Master's degree, but this silly imaginary internet dot football league gave me so much joy and pride as well. I know this league can cause incredible stress and sometimes not be a great place to be, but the work you put in here will eventually be rewarded. All the suffering, the "contract the Yeti" jokes, the "0-32" jokes, they were over. The Yeti finally won a title. And no one could take that away from us.
The Yeti would go on to play in two more Ultimus games, both ending in heartbreak. I eventually retired Wolfie and recreated with an "absolutely-not-playing-QB" clause in my contract, and got drafted to Baltimore by Frick. The Yeti have shed the image of lovable but not loved losers to the team that is so successful and steals all your FAs.
I spent the summer telling myself I'd get a job in data analytics - but I never got into it. I worked for the astro department at the U ensuring that we would be prepared for a year of online instruction, which I enjoyed much more. I turned that into getting trained to teach high school physics, and will start teaching this fall. Free from school, I got engaged to my now-fiancée while traveling the country. And we moved back home, to New Jersey.
To the S22 Colorado Yeti - thank you for making a sim league vet's dream come true. There were times I thought it would never happen, but we did it.
To the Yeti of the long past - thank you for welcoming me to the league, and making it such a great place to be. You got me engaged with the community and the league and were a cool group of people to hang out with. I hope you are all doing well today.
To the Yeti now and in the future - thank you for keeping the team alive and well. The team may not have the best public image, but that's from being good and not being bad. Wear that badge with pride. The Yeti are no longer the punchline to the league's jokes, and it is up to you to keep it that way.
I may not be a Yeti in the present, but always and forever...
#YetiNoises
Also I'm not going anywhere. I just realized what today was and felt compelled to write this. Busch Goose will terrorize this league (and especially the Yeti) for a long time to come...
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Jurisprudence Jones, OL ![[Image: cYhSwFY.png]](https://i.imgur.com/cYhSwFY.png)
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