NOFL: Pick Teams Now or Wait?
 

As documented in the other thread, we now have our 4 conferences: The ACC, Big 12, Pac 10, and SEC are our conferences.

Now like the East Coast League, I thought I'd leave it up to everyone if we should pick teams now or wait until after the game is out, realizing that teams may not play like you would expect them to in real life. If we choose the 2nd option, I imagine that each person who wants to switch will be able to switch to any vacant team that meets the initial selection criteria that they want unless two people want to switch to the same team. In that case, we'll either do a supplemental draft for everyone who want to switch or if the conflict can be solved by the parties that want the same team, we'll bypass the draft.

With the results of the team selection poll, all teams selected must have an overall rating of 80 or lower. Here is a list of all of the teams in those conferences:

ACC:

Florida State - 94
Clemson - 89
Miami - 86
Virginia Tech - 84
Georgia Tech - 81
Maryland - 81
---------------------
Virginia - 79
North Carolina - 79
Boston College - 77
Wake Forest - 77
NC State - 77
Duke - 77

Big 12:

Oklahoma - 96
Missourri - 94
Texas - 89
Texas Tech - 86
Kansas State - 81
Nebraska - 81
---------------------
Oklahoma State - 79
Colorado - 79
Texas A&M - 77
Kansas - 77
Iowa State - 72
Baylor - 67


Pac 10:

USC - 94
ASU - 86
UofA - 84
UCLA - 81
Oregon - 81
Cal - 81
---------------------
Washington - 79
Washington State - 77
Oregon State - 77
Stanford - 74


SEC:

Georgia - 99
Florida - 94
LSU - 91
Tennessee - 89
South Carolina - 89
Auburn - 84
Ole Miss - 84
Alabama - 84
---------------------
Arkansas - 79
Kentucky - 77
Mississippi State - 74
Vanderbilt - 72

I voted yes...to pick now, and have that be your team. There are ways to find out the ratings for players on every team (or at least the top 6-7 guys) via operation sports. You can also visit that teams schools site to read up on that team and get an idea of what kind of ball they play, what kind of high school recruits they landed, etc. My idea is that we do the random number generator to determine the draft order, then we give each person 48 hours to pick their team. That should give anybody enough time to read up on who they want and come to a decision. Some people will take 5 minutes, some people will take all 48 hours.

I'm not so hot on the idea of switching teams. The whole idea is to build your team into a powerhouse. You should be able to find out who runs what, and what kind of players they have without having to actually have the game in front of you.

These are just my opinions though :)

I say yes, no switching. As Sun Tzu touched on, the initial rosters aren't too big of a deal to me. After two seasons or so, you should start to have your type of players and system coming in. The initial teams are the worst any ways.

Yes, no switching.

Here is the link if you want to see the top 6-7 guys on each team.

http://www.operationsports.com/media...id=417&page=99

It runs from page 99 thru 115 or something along those lines.

Wow...um, I voted to pick teams after the game is out. It's like, are we really going to start the league on July 15? No. We are going to wait a few days for the rosters to come out and for us to get comfortable with a set of sliders.

A good time of our league will be with our original roster. Two seasons may not be long in an offline league...but even if we play two games each week, we're still talking around 2 months to play out 1 season. That's 4 months for 2 seasons. That means Turkey Day will be here when we're ready to start season #3. We may sim faster than that, but that seems like a long time to me.

I want to get the feel for my team by actually playing them. I'm not just talking offensively, but also on defense. Maybe I want a stud LB, or stud CB, or stud DL. Until I actually get to see how he plays within his defense, I won't know.

I'm surprised that I'm all alone (4-1 on voting so far).

I voted no as well. I'd rather wait to have the game for a few days to look over the cellar-dwellars and see how the way I normally play fits with the various teams.

Slightly off-topic, but when will the draft order be determined?

We can set the draft order whenever we want to, I just need to let DeToxRox know. I'm also voting to wait on picking teams. While the screenshots on OS are nice, I think it would be nice to give each team I'm considering a hands-on trial while working on slider sets.

Good point on the slider sets. I forgot about them.

How about...

The people who want to pick now can go ahead. I'll take my pick of any of the leftover teams.

i really would like to avoid a draft altogether. hopefully if there's a conflict it can just be worked out. the whole point behind a draft is that someone gets to pick before you and you may risk not getting the team you want.

at the end of the day, it all comes down to your skill at playing a video game version of college football. we're all starting off on the same foot here - no team will be rated better than 80. no one is gonna have the upper hand. i can see if some were gonna be powerhouses, others were gonna get stuck with average teams, then yeah, i can see wanting to eek out as much of an advantage as possible. i can play any style offense i want no matter the team. in the end it call comes down to playcalling and how fast you can mash buttons. no roster will help you if you don't have the skill.

I think the draft is going to be unavoidable. With so few teams to select from, there are going to be conflicts. The fairest way to resolve those conflicts is just to have everyone get assigned a draft position randomly. Most people are going to get the team they want (assuming that team is eligible), but for those who don't, at least the selection process was fair. I can almost guarantee at least a few conflicts.

Interesting solution. With 7 yes votes, I'll have DeToxRox sets up a draft order within the next day or so. Anyone who wants to can pass and pick their team after the game comes out from the remaining teams that are left. At that time, the order of selection will remain the same as this initial draft.

I say pick now with no switching. I'd also be good with default sliders, FWIW.

We'll have to vote on sliders and difficulty (including default levels), but from everything I've heard as well as my experiences with the demo, I think at the very least interceptions and QB accuracy should be tuned downward.