Fantasy Football

From: The Commish
To: Every Tom, Dick & Harry
Subj: [EZEFFL] The Butterfly Effect

In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state.

All,

Due to unknown conditions one owner was not paying attention to his roster and back in week 9 around 12:30 on Sunday I noticed his team had 5 of the 9 starters on bye, so thinking in the spirit of competition (and if this was the actual NFL, sanctity of the League itself) I made myself a second owner and adjusted the roster by moving the bench players to starters and vice versa. Turned out it wouldn’t mattered anyway as his opponent scored a beastly 144.2 points.

In Week 10 I reassembled the team back to the way it was and this time they won. I continued to make substitutions as needed through out the rest of the season so Team Gregory went 2-2 over the last 4 weeks and is now in the playoffs.

But I’d irrevocably altered our nonlinear system. A quick look back and the two losses would have obviously occurred, and probably one of the victories as well, but this week’s win would have not.

The way I see it is I have four options:
1) Let Team Gregory in the playoffs and keep adjusting the line up as I think best, thereby setting up a possible hoisting on my own petard scenario when they knock me out of the playoffs. Or
B) Go back and reset Team Gregory’s roster to to its Week 8 lineup to see how those last 5 games would have played out differently and adjust accordingly. Or
3) Just have the top two teams from each division play in the playoffs using the last 4 weeks of the season and each game, the semis and the final, last 2 weeks each. Or
IV) Toss out the whole playoff system and declare myself the winner of the Trophy and all acclaim it entails.

Let me know what you think.
—

Brian Bogardus
Commissioner
End Zone Entourage FFL
Owner/Director of Player & Personnel
Purple Whales

I received a few replies:

• My suggestion: Tar and feather the league president… revolt I say! Since my team is out of the playoffs it doesn’t matter to me. – Jeff
• My suggestion is to allow Team Gregory in the play-offs and give me control of his team. This will ensure that there will be no chance of success for Team Gregory and effectively the top four teams will have a fair chance of winning. Team Gregory’s players will suffer career ending injuries, indictments, suspensions and other forms of disgrace that typically occur among the ranks of my 1-12 team’s players. This may not be a fair or ethically sound solution, but it would be fun to see what happens. – Bob R.
• I agree with Bob!! Give Bob a shot!! – Kevin
• I think first we need to name this travesty…my vote is: Inflate-gate since Team Gregory’s score was artificially inflated the last 5 weeks of the season. – David

So tonight I booked .0276 milliseconds of computing team on IBM’s Watson and did the math on how things would have gone had I not interfered, then composed this email:

From: The Office of the Commissioner
To: All Concerned & Ships at Sea
Subj: [EZEFFL] Countering the Butterfly Effect

Lets hope my attempt here to nullify my original meddling doesn’t have even greater dire consequences somewhere further along.

All,

I chose Option B. While I couldn’t actually go back and change players playing in past weeks, I could look at how each of Team Gregory’s starting 9 players did for the past 5 weeks and add their scores up to get just what would been the team total for those games.

Turns out that two victories,Week 10 to Team Hofmann and last week against Aiken Ball Busters, would have been losses. So Team Gregory’s record moves down to 4-9 from 6-7. Team Hofmann goes up from 6-7 to 7-6 and the Ball Busters move from 5-8 to 6-7.

My original intent for the playoffs still stands, the top 3 teams get a bye and Teams 4 & 5 play a “Wild Card” game to see who gets to play in the Semi-finals. So even though Team Hofmann moves above .500 at 7-6 his lower points scored during the season drop him to 7th in the Power Rankings. Frank Hanna’s 6-7 record ties him with Mike Lenio, but the Ball Busters scored 23 more points than the Bone Crushers so Frank is the #5 seed in the playoffs and the defending League Champion will not have a chance to repeat.

So, pay no attention to ESPN’s Final Standings and Playoff Seeding Numbers. Because of the way it worked out both Wild Card teams are from the same Division I have set up the playoffs so that the two divisions will not meet until the Championship Game as in the past.

—

Brian Bogardus
Commissioner
End Zone Entourage FFL
Owner/Director of Player & Personnel
Purple Whales

For reference I’ve attached a zip file that includes two spreadsheets League Standings (with pre and post wing flap data) and The Gregory Variations (which sounds like a Big Bang Theory episode title.)

Because I’ve somehow really been sucked down into the rabbit hole that is televised NFL football. Thursday night from 8 until 11:30, then Sunday from noon until 11:00PM and then again Monday night from 8:00 until whenever. All the time the tube is on football the laptop is open on the coffee table with ESPN’s FantasyCast in front of the league’s scoreboard on the internet.

Consequentially I see a lot of TV commercials and the award for the Rookie of the Year in NFL advertising goes to Fan Duel. Seems like every time you turn around there are those Joe Schmoes who have won thousands, and in some cases millions, by clicking on a couple things on their web page. Well, it turns out it averages about once an hour. I know because I wrote down every promo code they threw at me on Sunday:

Punt, Wind, Clip, Uniform, Watch, Agile, Yards, Triumph & Dual

Their disclaimers say they comply with some acronym and is therefore not gambling, but the gambling world centered in Nevada think they are. So much so that they have made them illegal. Along with several other states. I’m betting (see what I did there)that by next season, even if those types of sites are still in business, they won’t be advertising on NFL broadcasts.

The first round of the EZEFFL draft went like this:

I had third pick and when the first two guys selected QBs that left the #1 running back ripe for the picking. So I did.

When I got home and uploaded the results, I checked my line up. Much to my surprise I noticed a big SSPD next to my main horse’s name. Yikes! Suspended? Guess I should have done a modicum of research before hand, well, better late than never.

Turns out the suspension is just two games, but that is like 15% of our 13 game season. According to the Pittsburgh Steelers’ depth chart Mr. Bell’s primary back up will be ex-Panther DeAngelo Williams, and look, DeAngelo was undrafted and available on the Friday waiver wire. I’m number 5 in line, so I’m hoping that someone else doesn’t realize he will probably be playing the first two games and grab him before me.

Turns out I didn’t have to worry, nobody else thought of it and Mr. Williams returns to a Purple Whale uniform. I had him a couple of years ago and he was madly inconsistent then, and he must still carry that reputation, as ESPN has him ranked as the 91st best running back in the NFL. I have two other RBs besides Le’Veon Bell and they are ranked at 18 & 20, so who of the three eligible to play next Thursday will start for me will probably be a game time decision.