Season 1 Wrap-Up

After the Norse win he was obviously, entirely out of reach and would take the title hands down.  The unfortunate Orcs were destined to bring up the rear, or taking seventh by the slimmest half-point with a final week win.  The rest, including me with a lackluster 2-1-2 record (all non-wins being vs the Norse) were left battling it out for the middle.

With a close race like this and lots of rounds to consider the Kaiser calculations get pretty complex.  I’m not afraid of spreadsheets but after about 4 weeks the calculations are long enough that mistakes started turning up; double-checking and double-checking the corrections starts becoming important.  I think I straightened everything out for Week 5 but a full season without a program for this would be unrealistic.  

At any rate, assuming my calculations are correct, every game had major implications.  The tension of this is largely lost on everyone else who didn’t have numbers in front of them, keeping coaches in the dark being the major drawback of a complex rating system.  Best case is a big table of Win-or-Lose point totals, and this isn’t satisfying enough.  We went to a playoff structure for Season 2, partly because of this and partly because of unsatisfying ties, and I’m looking forward to comparing notes.

Partly because of the relatively obscure ratings, and partly because Week5 was largely a repeat of Week4, there wasn't a lot for coaches to play for.  The top coach for Table 2 conceded due to his personal schedule; a draw would have kept him runner-up (Golden Spoon) but a loss dropped him all the way to 5th.  Table 3 was won by the overdog Dwarf team, vaulting a coach who played bottom table Week2 AND Week3 ("The Longest Game") to third overall and the Silver Spoon while justifying his Coach of the Season nomination.  So after all those boring draws things finished with plenty of shake-ups and upsets and drama, but I'm not sure it wasn't lost on most of the players.  The final awards were going to floor anyone who wasn't diligently following along!

As a sidenote, the League Champion won Coach of the Season (which was intended to recognize someone's efforts who didn't otherwise GET recognized!) and his killer Yeti got Fan Favorite to cap an absolutely dominating season.  CotS gives a TRR on every Brilliant Coaching kickoff event.  Sportsmanship went to our Wooden Spoon earner for sticking with very disappointing results.  It allows a single casualty the next season to automatically become a Badly Hurt.  He was probably going to need it.