Socreges said:
That site is fantastic, guys. Who is arranging it? Just sefskillz? Thanks to everyone setting this up. Should be a lot of fun.
Division C is easily the roughest in terms of clubs, but B may have the best players. D seems to have mostly those new to proper football (wink), while A, like C, is stacked with top clubs (poor Irish). Interesting.
Looking at the schedule, I have a couple questions. Where is Conference I? You guys still working on it, I guess? And I suppose Rounds 1-3 comprise one week -- can those three games be played in any order, at any time, just so long as they are all completed by the end of that week?
All of the site design, programming etc. (i.e. all the hard work) has been done by sef. It's really an incredible job. I've chipped in w/ some ideas and fifty and I are both working on inputing players and pictures probably tomorrow (though we started tonight, see Newcastle for an example).
I'm working on a comprehensive set of rules but basically Conference I is composed of divisions A & B- you can see here
http://sefskillz.com/gaf-we9/standings.php. The significance is that two the top two teams in each division qualify and the next two in the conference are wild cards (so, e.g., four teams from Division C could make it). The plan as far as rounds go is to release three rounds of schedule every week that can be played in any order at any time like you mentioned. This was fifty's idea and I think it's a great one as it maximizes both games played and convenience. We'll hopefully have everything clearly outlined in the next few days; we still have a few minor issues to make decisions on and just a few other things to finish and we should be ready to go for a league that has
already exceeded my expectations in every way. It seriously should be great.
As far as team differential I really don't think it's prohibitively difficult to beat someone w/ the 3rd best team if you have the 15th best team (or at least to tie them). The top team does have the advantage but it's not usually just a cakewalk. One thing I have noticed though is that great vs. great team games have an excellent pace compared to great vs. decent, but basically I think everyone has a decent shot w/ the current playoff and division structure, especially since 60% of teams will be making the playoffs. And at the very worst they can always go for the top Red Card recipient. ;P imo the stat-tracking will be very fun and sef also put in a field where you can write match recaps so there should be a nice community going. It will just be incumbent on everyone to (of course) play their games, play their best, and enter stats correctly (once we have finalized that section of course).
League Predictions!
League discussion is of course encouraged, and I loved even the little prognostication we had/have in the Cup thread. Indeed there are loads of high-powered teams in divisions A & C, but I wouldn't count Irish or kpop (Barca is pretty good, but C is even more loaded) out at all. I've never played kpop but I've heard he's good and I played Irish w/ Germany and he did a great job against my statistically superior Italian team, holding me to one goal and threatening the entire game. With 15 games to play this season and tons of great players, playoff positioning really come down to a few lucky bounces and well-placed shots (and the refs too occasionally of course
). Divisions B & D are even more up in the air, especially D I have no idea who will rise to the top but I'll definitely be curious to see it. Bionic is a good player I've played against and he's getting his WE wind now so Stuttgart could be dangerous and though Mig is just starting WE he certainly did a very respectable job with a weak US team in the World Cup. I'm also really interested to see how Rors, sef, and FMT do.
