DFL Moving forward

Well, I've been staring at a blank blog entry going on a week now, and I'm not really sure how to start this.  As I generally blog best when I just start writing AND they always say don't bury the lead, so I'll just say it:

I've decided to retire the DFL this year.

Well, shit.  That wasn't so bad, now was it?  And before any of you bastards start in on me about how this is sour grapes for me pulling in the playoff bitch position this year, you can back right off.  I decided back in November that it was probably time to hang up the spurs, as it were.  

You know, cuz I ran out of pudding and all.

Remember the October / November time frame?  Remember when my team was still kicking ass and taking names?  Yeah, *that* was when I made the decision.  At that point, I was worried about walking into the Championship and being accused of going out on top.  So, yeah, cursed for hubris, right?

So, what's going on?  Well, before we get there, let's go back to the beginning...

So, Skoot started this league way back in 2002, as a way for some of us old Penn Staters to keep in touch.  Gotta remember, this was before Facebook was opened to everyone, when we still had land lines and paid for long distance, when Time Warner Cable scoffed and said "Who would EVER need more than a 10 Mbps connection?", when dinosaurs roamed the Earth...  I'm saying that it was hard to keep in touch back in those days.  I mean, you ever try to hold a conversation on a wired phone while dodging ankylosauruses?

Jesus doesn't count.. that dude is good at everything!

Anyway, over the years, we all started to figure out how to play fantasy football and got better.  Well,  except Skoot and Whitey - they already knew how to play and just kicked our asses up and down those first few years.  And before you ask , yes, we had a guy in the league who we called Whitey.

No, it wasn't this guy....

As the years went by, we started expanding the league out to other people to fill out the ranks.  I took over as commissioner when Skoot stepped down.  Lots of things changed.  In fact, there's a fairly good history of the league that I wrote up a few years ago here:  https://diamondshaft.blogspot.com/2013/09/dfl-hall-of-fame.html

The only problem is that I haven't been bothered to update that post in 5 years.  And that's kind of the heart of the decision to end the league now.  I'm burned out at this point.  Back when I started the write ups, there was excitement and drama.  I'd pour over each game and the through lines to write the weekly narrative would flow so easily.  (I would suggest that you go back and look at them, but I can't since Skoot killed them when he changed web hosts back in 2009 and we lost all of the league data - duuuuuuude.)  I'd go out and look for extra games (like Pick 'ems and Elimination League) to see what we could do to add a little spice here and there.  Each week would be exciting and fun for me.  Also, I got the impression that everyone was stoked when August rolled around.  What changes would we be implementing?  How's the draft going to work this year?  How will Ben suck the fun out of things?  The possibilities were infinite!!!

via GIPHY

But, over the years, things kinda changed as they are wont to do.  Marriages, houses, kids, work changes... just a lot of reprioritizations went down.  There wasn't anything specifically that happened, but things happened, and the passion kind of slipped away year by year.  Now, August rolled around and I was worried about what changed were absolutely necessary.  Do people still want to do the Pick 'Ems league?  (Though Patrick was good enough to point out that you can't actually do it on the phone.  I mean, really, Yahoo!?  WTF?)  Each week, it was getting just a little bit harder to find good write up material.  (I mean, how many ways can I say that a player shit the bed and screwed a team, really?)  Some weeks, I definitely had to phone it in.  When that was happening more and more, I figured that it was probably time to call it a day.  

I did talk with a few people through the season to get a pulse for where everyone's heads where at.  Granted, I didn't talk to everyone and I didn't get complete consensus, but I got enough of a feeling that I wasn't the only one feeling malaise.

Big shout outs to everyone in the league:

Skoot:  Founder, and first commissioner.  Thank you so much for thinking to pull this together and for getting it off the ground.  Also, I hate you.

D:  Founding Member, and guy who has had probably the most varied level of success in the league.  Thanks for sticking with it all these years.

McClennnen:  Another founding member.  I'm kinda glad that you never got enough time to fully commit because I'm pretty sure that you would have destroyed us year in, year out, if you had.

Ben:  And the last active founding member.  Your team names were always on point, and I always enjoyed debating rules changes with you.  But seriously, why was your email address always hidden?

Mike:  My nemesis.  Damn, I loved playing against you.  I always appreciated the extra emails that you'd send on the side.

Terri:  Special shout out to the last lady left in the league!  I always got a kick out of when couples would play each other, and yours were hands down the best wifely smack talk.

Patrick:  When you came into the league, you elevated the whole league.  Your insight on how other fantasy leagues worked made our league better and I thank you for it.

Crutch:  You know what one of the biggest things that I'm going to miss next year?  Playing D&D on Monday nights where you and I are glancing down at our phones because the games are coming down to the last game and the D&D nerds sneer at us for being FF nerds. 

Kyle:  Damn, you know I always dug watching you weigh just how many Pats you could put on your team before you'd be unbalanced.  And next year, with Brady "probably" coming back, I would have loved to see which direction your team actually went.

Josh:  I was actually thinking about extending the league another year just because of the smack talks that we had pretty much every day during the season.  But then you had to go and win the whole thing and you are just going to be insufferable as champion.  So, you know, easy choice...

Stephen:  Man, I'm sorry about this.  I mean, I pulled you into a new league and you had one of the most surprising teams in the league.  Same line up would score 45 points one week and then 95 the next.  And now, I'm killing the league, just as you missed the playoffs by a hair.  :(

So... where do we go from here?  Hell if I know.  I know that I'm going to be taking back a bunch of time (write ups and waiver bids on Tuesdays, fill in pick ups setting the line up and Pick 'em picks on Tuesdays, and Elimination League picks on Thursdays), but I might get rammy.  Who knows?  Maybe after a few seasons, something can come back in a greatly reduced form.  For now, the DFL is going to be put to bed.  Thank you all for everything that you've done for the league.  It has been wonderful being part of this.