2023 Commissioner's Cup

 

Blog Title: Announcing the Inaugural Commissioner’s Cup!

What’s up degens, your favorite tyrant is back with another preseason write up to quickly give my 2 cents on the latest round of rule changes, then get into some of the details on the latest gimmick I’m testing out to keep this League more unique and exciting than the one you’re in with your 45-year-old cousin that drafts 6 QBs (and still starts Dak Prescott).

As always, appreciate the Blogger Boiz for the airtime.

This was a pretty controversial year of rule changes.

I was surprised to see a lot of 6/4 splits and what I think was the first time I had to break a voting tie. Which tells me that I’m doing my job of giving all ideas their fair shot, though we’re apparently on the verge of a civil war like the rest of America.

Full transparency, my original suggestions were swapping the TE for FLEX, the PAT MISS, Fumble & Defense Scoring Changes, Expansion, and the Commissioner’s Cup. I’m pretty satisfied with how it all shook out.

• The TE swap was 100% shits and gigs, so I’ve got no problem with them staying.. But keep an open mind; expect QB FLEX to come up next year
• In my frat league, we had a rule that PAT misses were -5, absolutely stupid but also totally deserved if your kicker shanks one from the free throw line. That being said, I’m waving the white flag in my long-standing war on kickers, Brett Maher be my witness
• I’ve wanted to nerf fumbles and buff defense scoring for a minute. Think -3 total points for a fumble was a bit too harsh, glad I was juust able to balance that stat out. In the same vein, thought defenses were being overly punished for giving up big yardage, this drop-off is much more gentle
• While the expansion vote was disappointing, I can understand why most of you wanted to keep it to 10 given the keeper question and having had some turnover the last couple of seasons (we love having the (b)Ryans here! ❤️) . Really was looking forward to divisional-style scheduling and a bigger prize pool, but it is what it is
• It’ll be a cold day in Rialto when I let this league turn Full Dynasty

Onto the Commissioner’s Cup!

I am STOKED to see this pass by a hefty margin, thought raising dues would make this a tougher sell. While a lot of you associated it with the NBA announcing their own in-season tournament last month, it wasn’t the only source of inspiration. The NHL’s President’s Trophy and MLS Supporter’s Shield have existed for decades, and the points system borrows heavily from Formula 1.

The Commissioner’s Cup rewards consistent good weekly performances, giving PF much more weight than wins any given week, but doesn’t always go to the best regular season team in your traditional standings. How this shakes out varies depending on the season (more on that below), but the Cup definitely has the potential to be exciting up until the final week during highly chaotic/competitive seasons.

As a quick refresher and a place I can link you to if you have questions later, here’s how the Commissioner’s Cup is gonna work:

At the end of every week, points are awarded to each team as follows:

Win	+1
Weekly PF Ranking:
1st	+24
2nd	+18
3rd	+15
4th	+12
5th	+10
6th	+8
7th	+6
8th	+4
9th	+2
10th	+1

At the end of the season, whoever has the most points awarded wins $100 and will be immortalized as the inaugural winner. Rumors are swirling that there may be a second trophy to go with it too…

In the case of a PF tie (I didn’t originally plan for this cause it’s rare, but has happened twice in the Sleeper era– Week 12 and Week 14 2021), both teams will be assigned the higher placement and points.

Example: In week 12 2021, Joe and Ryan tied for P3 at 172.30, so they’d both receive 15 points; Joe would also get the +1 as he won his matchup (but Ryan did not). I was the next top scorer at 156.6, but would be credited P5 and earn 10,+1 for winning my matchup

To fully cover my tracks, In case of a tie in the standings at the end of the regular season, the tiebreaker order will be total PF, followed by regular season W-L record, followed by a damn coin flip if it gets there.

Cause I had better things to do this week than work, sleep, or spend quality time with my wife, I went back to see who the previous seasons’ winners would have been.

The full results of the sleeper era can be found here, but below are some quick summaries:

2022

RESULTS	Points	Differential
Chuck	182
Ryan	177	-5
Gio	173	-4
Rob	162	-11
Wings	159	-3
Bryan	154	-5
Ant	131	-23
Erik	81	-50
Joe	76	-5
Nauch	70	-6

By far the most exciting of the four seasons thanks to what was a chaotic closing 4 weeks. Ryan was mostly in control at the top of the order for the majority of the season. Some catastrophic P10 finishes in weeks 11 and 13 left the door open for any of the surging midfield to take it, with Chuck shockingly taking the win in the final week of the season, not bad from one of the play-in seeds.

2021

RESULTS	Points	Differential
Gio	219
Ant	201	-18
Hurtado	195	-6
Erik	145	-50
Chuck	132	-13
Wings	130	-2
Rob	123	-7
Nauch	115	-8
Joe	112	-3
Ryan	106	-6

On the surface, this looked like a pretty top-heavy campaign, but it was actually a fairly tight race through the midseason with 4 teams juggling the lead. The final week was especially insane, with the top 3 finishing within .7 PF of each other. Gio and Hurtado tied for P1 at 211.05, putting Ant at P3 despite scoring 210.35. Any small shift in these points would have had the potential to give Ant a tiebreaker win thanks to having a higher total PF.

2020

RESULTS	Points	Differential
Gio	209
Wings	154	-55
Joe	153	-1
Nauch	153	0
Rob	148	-5
Erik	145	-3
Hurtado	137	-8
Chuck	103	-34
Alex	95	-8
Ant	68	-27

Things admittedly get a little less exciting from here on out. 2020 was a pretty tame 3-horse race between Gio, Me and Nauch for most of the season. Things turned quickly south in the final frame, with both of us putting up multiple stinkers and Gio remaining consistently in the top 3 to run away with it and win the Double (Commissioner’s Cup + LOD Trophy) by a massive margin.

2019

RESULTS	Points	Differential
Erik	221
Chuck	172	-49
Gio	171	-1
Wings	147	-24
Nauch	141	-6
Ant	138	-3
Rob	128	-10
Alex	94	-34
Joe	83	-11
Hurtado	70	-13

An even less exciting 2 horse race between Erik and Gio, till he started absolutely shitting his pants after week 9. Let this serve as a reminder of just how fucking good Prime CMC was. That prime caucasian specimen of a juggernaut would have carried Erik to a Double and homie has not sniffed relevance since then.

Just a reminder, these are all totally hypothetical. Still more real than Chuck’s Championships, though.

Appreciate y’all for reading till the end! Hope this helps hype you up for what should be an even more exciting and dramatic LOD season from start to finish.