Kingdom

I am going to get it out of the system, so that those who are not a part of sim leagues will never have to worry about blogs on sims ever again.

But most of you have or are a part of a league. If not, sim leagues are like complex fantasy leagues that are beyond fantasy since it's not based on real life production, instead, it's based on rating forumalas and a statistical generator. Geeky, yes, very. But as sports fans, aren't we all? Sim leagues bring out the best in a sabermetrician, they also bring out the dumb in every dumbass. And much like fantasy leagues, apparently they're becoming a serious business.

I've been doing these things since I was about 12, so that's 13 years and running. It started with NBA Live. It evolved into NBA simulators. It became baseball simulators. Ultimately, it's now OOTP.

I begin wondering if, like most everything, we as a people have begun taking it too seriously. To paraphrase DiamondDave, these silly little works of fiction serve as a brief escape from reality, work, redundancy in life, boredom, etc. It's meant to be fun. Fun is slowly be leaked all over the damn floor. Some of you are thinking this stems from what recently took place in MissionHockey21's league, and actually it's not. You know, that whole thing actually brought the league together for a fun debate. Yes, to me that was actually fun because how many times are you going to have DiamondDave and General agree on something? It was pretty cool and handled.

What bothers me is the serious nature that's floating above OOTP. The only person that has something invested in these sim leagues are the commissioners. We as the "General Managers" have no stake. Yet, we perceive making mistakes or being hesitant to do something because we are afraid it will be something we regret. But how do we regret something that's not real? Do you know how easy it is to delete a file and start a league all over again? I look at anything that I've done in the past, and leave it at that. I don't care, that in the end, a trade did not work out. Unlike a Jim Bowden, my shotty work as a "GM" does not cost me my job. It just causes the Sabers and the Kingdoms to pounce on bad trades with humor and criticism. But, we currently stand at a point where treating fiction like reality is casually sucking the life out of something meant to serve as a hobby. Some people milk cows, some play paintball, others collect bottle caps, and then there's those that do sim leagues.