Teams

Little history: when we started this game, we had to really carefully divide players up. What we did was pair them off and then divide the pairs between the teams. This was really necessary in the beginning when we were playing 5 on 5 mostly without a line (what Chenault calls "fast/skinny man ball") so if you had all the speed or hands or whatever on one side, it wouldn't work.

After the game evolved to our current game which has a good sized line, we didn't seem to need to pick teams. Part of this was because the line was a great equalizer (it didn't matter if one team had all the fast guys because they couldn't defend their QB) and part was because the level of talent got much better and there wasn't as great a disparity between the players. Plus, the line game allows for more specialized roles so faster guys can play corner and bigger guys can rush and everyone can really make a difference in the game.

Having said that, experience over the last month or two has shown that we need go back to taking more care in the way we divide teams up to make sure they are competitive. Speed and skill are obvious issues but there are two others we need to consider experience in our game and reasonably regular attendance.

This is a team game and being the a crazy athlete with experience in other games who has never played in this one doesn't mean that you can come in and do well here in your first game or possibly even for a couple weeks (unless you're Jeremy). It takes time to get used to the way we play and for your teammates to get used to playing with you. Even players who have played for years in our game can have a bit of trouble getting back into it the first game or two after a long absence because of rust or because of subtle shifts in the way we play.

In any case, one of the things about this game is that we're all supposed to be in it to have fun. Yes winning is more fun than losing but the best games are those that are close until the end. No one walked away from the game in Week 12 with a bad taste in their mouths because it was evenly matched and produced a high level of play right until the end. But weeks 11 and 10 had the teams were not terribly fair - week 10 only had one of our main QBs but it would have been possible to make reasonably competitive teams.

As Commissioner, it's my responsibility to try to keep this game fun and fair. I won't always succeed but I can do better than we have in the past month.

While I don't like picking teams, I can live with it if people think that's the best way to handle it. However, 2 of the 3 games mentioned that did not have particularly fair teams were games in which we picked teams. Picking may be a good starting place but in the end, we need to take a look and decide whether we need to swap a player or two out to make it work better.

We can pick teams, we can grab belts, or we can pair off players for balance and then divide them up but the last step needs to be to take a objective look and see if we need to make a last step swap.

Obviously some people like playing with certain other guys out there (I'm one of them). However, if we lock into two relatively steady teams (or one steady team and one made up of whoever else comes out), we're likely to fall into an us/them thing. Then the "gentleman's" aspect of the game will suffer and people will start to quit. If we really want set teams, why not play in a traditional flag league? At least there, at the end of the game, you really don't care if the team likes you.

I'd welcome your thoughts are welcome though I'd rather not rehash these games and how "well, we offered to change" or "well, they could have had the Sulak when he came late" or whatever.