Week 4 Video Sim

[The Mule]

Please vote and explain below.

-mule

[Director Of Fun!!!!]

Surge Sharks, game of the week.

[captobvious]

Thunder and Cougars has the potential to be a good game, but you're in it. The other good game is obvious: Surge and Sharks.

[Da Bearfan]

Surge vs. Sharks, definitely.

[Jordan Allan]

Surge-Sharks!

[Commodor]

if it was by any simmer, then Thunder-Cougars, but if it's you, Surge-sharks.

[Eielson]

Thunder/Cougars

[topdawgsooner]

Panthers / Falcons 2 worst teams out there may be only chance to have a competetive game for either one of us, and I would like to see my guy in action.

[The Mule]

captobvious said:

Thunder and Cougars has the potential to be a good game, but you're in it. The other good game is obvious: Surge and Sharks.

I understand the reasons for that rule, but I think the Thunder players would appreciate the opportunity to see their games on video too, especially since the Thunder are one of the more active teams. I'm not sure what else I can do to authenticate a sim beyond uploading an entire video of the game.

[Director Of Fun!!!!]

But we are THE most inactive

[VC17]

Surge vs Sharks another rematch of last year.

[XY]

Surge/Sharks

[Silver Fox]

topdawgsooner said:

Panthers / Falcons 2 worst teams out there may be only chance to have a competetive game for either one of us, and I would like to see my guy in action.

I read this after voting. This makes a lot of sense to me so I'd like to change my vote to this one. I voted 6 times for the surge game and 4 times for the thunder one so please remove those 10 votes and apply them to the panthers / falcons game.

Definitely we should make sure that all teams get at least one video sim all season. By the way, it's crazy to not allow Mule to sim the Thunder game. I know the guy and he's disturbingly honest.

[Eielson]

johnbent said:

topdawgsooner said:

Panthers / Falcons 2 worst teams out there may be only chance to have a competetive game for either one of us, and I would like to see my guy in action.

I read this after voting. This makes a lot of sense to me so I'd like to change my vote to this one. I voted 6 times for the surge game and 4 times for the thunder one so please remove those 10 votes and apply them to the panthers / falcons game.

WTF? If you are saying you voted 10 times then I'm all for removing your 10 votes completely and not giving you one.

[Silver Fox]

AHA!

Ppl don't want Mule to sim a Thunder game bec they are scared he'll sim it multiple times and choose the best one to report. But we can prevent this so that Mule can sim a Thunder game. Here's how.

Him and captobvious log in together at some prearranged time. capt says go ahead and sim the thunder game but do it in Gillette stadium, or change McComas name to McCuminmyass, or give SF one pink wristband on his left wrist in support of national breast cancer month, or some other crazy thing Mule didn't know about before. Mule says, OK, simming game now. Then 40 minutes later (or however long it takes to sim a game), Mule posts the video and we can verify that capt's change was in effect.

OK, let me be the first to identify and address any possible shortcomings:

Problem one: it takes some long, non-determinate amount of time to post to google video because google is a crap company. If capt says change this, and Mule doesn't provide a link to google video until multiple hours have passed, ppl can become suspicious that Mule made capt's change, and simmed multiple games to choose best one for Thunder.

Solution one: Immediately following the completion of the game (40 minutes or whatever from when capt says to make whatever change), Mule says, "Game over. Final score was 34-27 and one QB had a 103.6 rating and the other had 84.2," but he doesn't say which team had which score nor does he say which QB had which rating. (Hiding that info is just to make watching the video more exciting. If he wanted, he could of course immediately release all stats.) Then, he begins to upload the video. When the video is uploaded, we can confirm that everything is as it should be (capt's change and the final score and the QB ratings).

If no-one can think of a means by which Mule could cheat given these constraints, then he should be allowed to sim a Thunder game. And I should be given 1000 points as a MacArthur genius award.

*undecided*

Ok, there is one other potential problem. The above scheme prevents Mule from using time to sim multiple games and choose the best one for the Thunder. But I don't know how to prevent him from using space to sim multiple games . . .

Problem two: If Mule has multiple computers with fancy video capture equipment, then he could implement capt's change on each, and then sim the game on each, and then choose the best one for the Thunder.

huhmp.

[captobvious]

Every time someone sims their own game and their team wins, there are always eyebrows raised. Real or imagined, there are always reasons for doubting the outcome. That kind of controversy is not healthy for the league, so I'd prefer to avoid it altogether. Every time we do it, we're setting ourselves up for problems.

Maybe the time to do it, though, would be during these next few weeks during the cross-divisional section of the schedule. If Mule does a video sim of a game early enough in the season that it's not critical, and against a non-divisional opponent, there certainly is a lot less room for controversy.

[Silver Fox]

We're not all rational logical people here? If we devise a fool-proof plan, then no-one can legitimately complain. Anyone who complains has to explain how the plan was thwarted. If it's fool-proof, then it can't be thwarted and no-one can legitimately complain. Anyone complaining w/o rational thought can and should be ignored. They have to explain how Mule beat the system. But it's airtight (with the exception of the multiple computer thing).

If people have concerns about the possibility that Mule uses multiple computers to cheat, then fine. But if that is not a concern, then we shouldn't worry about crazy fools complaining w/o convincing arguments.

[captobvious]

There is no such thing as a foolproof plan.

[Silver Fox]

captobvious said:

There is no such thing as a foolproof plan.

Look, if there are flaws, identify them. If no-one can identify flaws now, I say we take the chance that no-one will be able to identify flaws after the fact either. This is why we allow a public period for comment. Identify the flaws.

Or admit that Mule is smarter than the rest of us. Admit that we are not smart enough to figure out how Mule could cheat but because Mule is so smart, there is undoubtedly some devious way to cheat that only Mule's big brain is able to deduce.

[captobvious]

I really don't want to be talking about this, because it's over, and because that kind of controversy is not healthy for the league. But I've had a lot of people contact me about those Thunder-Dawgs games at the end of last season, with a playoff spot on the line. They're not all the usual crackpots like Alex, either. But unfortunately, those sims provide a perfect example of exactly the kind of thing I'm trying to avoid here.

Let's just take one stat line out of the deciding game:

PASSING                        CMP  ATT  YDS  PCT   YPA SACK   TD  INT LONG RATING
Gino DeBomb                     11   33  216   33   6.5    2    2    2   52   52.0

This was a season in which I earned performance points for 65% pass completions or more in 6 of 12 games, including the other 3 of the last 4, and finished the season at 63.6%. My least accurate day apart from this one was 52.4% (11/21, 242 yds, 3 TDs, 0 INTs) in week 8 against the Sharks. When you consider that this poor performance came against what is probably the worst corner pair I faced all season, it looks even stranger. Previous games against the Thunder that season were far different:

Week 6: G DeBomb: 128.8 rating, 303 yards, 3 TD, 1 INT, 16/25 64%

Week 10:

PASSING                        CMP  ATT  YDS  PCT   YPA SACK   TD  INT LONG RATING
Gino DeBomb                     28   39  433   71  11.1    2    3    0   75  133.8

Now, if anyone else had simmed this game, week 11 would have been dismissed as a strange statistical anomaly. Shit happens, right? But Mule simmed it, with the playoffs on the line, and that opens the door to speculation. Is there a way Mule could have arranged it for this to occur? Sure. He had the roster files, and a quick modification to my player attributes would have given his team a significant advantage.

There's no way to prove that he didn't... and so the controversy lingers on long after I wish it would just die.