LEATHERHEAD-LEAGUE SERIES 2

In Season 22/23 I did start a little self-organised friendly cup named LEATHERHEAD-LEAGUE SEASON I.
The original setup you find here with Discussion and the almost clean Standings/Schedule.

In a nutshell the idea was to play games with run-only likey back in the beginning of 20th century.
The orginal idea is from another sim were I had several series of this.

The series here was also fun, thanks to the participants and likely because I did this the best I could and not only setting something up and that's that.
But it was a lot of work and I know I wanted to change some stuff to make this less work. I decided to skip the stats part.
Since I had real-live-work to do, I did not try another series, but right now it feels right to give it another try and the current offered friendly cups did look to much the same.
I also had no motivation to open another one of those by my own and came to the conclusion that I can repeat my leatherhead format.

So lets get down to the framework:
Because of the special rules it needs to take place as Friday friendly.
Last time Peter did offer some special features to spice things up and he is so kind to do it again!

Rules:

Playbook / Game Settings
- Offense plays basically 100% run
(Game settings "mainly rush" or rushing plays in the playbook, since still passing plays can happen, it will be tolerated if a few passing plays DO happen, but from my past games I would say the amount of pass plays should easily be under 10%)
- Punts and FG are allowed, if you play the 4th down as a regular play, the rule above does count
- All Offense and Defense formations are allowed
- MOTY or Relaxed as intensity is not allowed

League Structure (roughly open, since it depends on the number of participants, right now strcuture of the last time is taken)
There will be 2 Conferences with each having 7 Teams (so 14 Teams in total)

Every Team plays
- Against every team of their own Conference (6 games)
- Against 2 Teams from the other Conference (2 games)
That makes 8 games, means at least 8 weeks.

The schedule will be generated based on the strength of the teams participating.
So strong teams will play strong teams and weaker will play weaker teams (at least with non-division-games)

I will play Commissioner/God and will do this on my own judgement.
Locations can be chose as needed or wanted, every bigger stadium with 45.000+ will do.
Every gameday will have normally 7 games, so every team will play.
As for all friendlies on Friday the games have to be setup by YOU.
I will post home teams as suggestion, that team is in lead to send an invitation, but of cause both teams can send invitations and clarify the home team on their own.
Please do the setup as soon as possible, before THURSDAY 00:00 (game clock!).
Otherwise the auto scheduler will give you a different friendly and you and your opponent can't play.
I will post the schedule up front when the 14 teams are known.
I hope all participator will play fair and will stay for at least the end of the competition.
If a participator drops out for whatever reason, I will try to find a substitution, but that team can only play the remaining games and the older games of the former team won't count towards playoff spots, so this is just for fun.
If I do a Series 3 or more, all participants of Series 2 do have spot guaranteed, if they want it at that time.
Please contact me, if anything is wrong or you need something to talk about.
Most issues can be solved by good communication.

Teams from Season I (which are still active) do have a guaranteed spot in THIS series, if they want it.
Those are
Red Grange Conference
BobBoy Magpies
AS Roma Wolves
Amersfoort Alligators
Pretty Guinness Consumers once Guinness Drinkers United

Ernie Nevers Conference
Maykop Misfits once Maykop Dynamos Winner of Series 1
Basterds
Leverkusen Leopards
OrangeCrush
Landru Athletics

Penalties for rule violations
Managers which do NOT setup their games according to the rules will get a 0-20 game result for that game.
The supposed or played opponent will get a 20-0 game result for that game.
TD passes with more than 35 yards will be subtracted from the final result.
TD passes with less or equal than 35 yards will be equated with a FG and only 3 to 4 points (depended on the XP try) will be substracted from the final result.

If I was informed early enough and every contact attempts to setup the game as scheduled did fail, the contacting team is free to setup a different friendly.
That is valid for the WEDNESDAY!
In the past this was no real issue.
At the end me, as Commissioner/God will decide.

Conferences will be decided by
- # wins
- direct compare
- # wins against all teams in Conference
- # point difference
- # points scored
- coin toss

Playoffs
The first two teams of each Conference will play in the Half-Final-Bowls (BLOCKS OF GRANITE BOWL and RED ELEPHANTS BOWL) to determine the Conference Champion.
The winners of those will play on the Championship-Bowl (FOUR HORSEMEN BOWL).
The rest of the teams will have their season final with their last regular season match.

The two Conferences are:
Red Grange Conference
Ernie Nevers Conference

Special Features and Prices
Peter does support the idea and did offer a nice package for the participants, which comes for a price.
Each Participant will have to pay 30 Credits up front
Each BLOCKS OF GRANITE BOWL and RED ELEPHANTS BOWL participant will get 60 Credits as price
Each participant of FOUR HORSEMEN BOWL will get 60 Credits as price
In the past we had also a best rusher and defender stat price, but that did turn out to be a lot of work to cover, so I skip this, instead I will only mention each games MVP inside the match review, but no extra price on that.
Winner of FOUR HORSEMEN BOWL gets 3 month Supporter-Account as price plus a special Trophy for the trophy case.
Last time did Peter also add a PARTICIPANT-trophy to all other 13 teams. I hope he will do this again.
Peter will do this manually.

Who can participate?
Since this a Friday game, no Champs of Champs Cup-Participants can play if the schedule does not allow it, sorry.
But since we play a bit different regarding the timing (last time we started somewhat midseason, now it is end of season coming) we might have enough time to play until the first CoC-game is played next season.
I have to check this, once we know the amount of weeks we need.
Beside that basically everyone is fine to play.
Since this will be a real played game, team strength will be an issue.
Every team is free to play any roster they want to play with, starters or backups.

When does it start?
Open, likely end of this season of start of next season.
Schedule will be available, once I know whether we play and with how many.

Anything else?
So far I hope I did cover all.
Whatever questions might come up in addition will be posted here, including the answers.

Here the stuff from season I (adjusted a bit to make it better readable and understandable)







It was suggested to treat eventually happening pass-TDs, especially big-plays like FG or even as void them after the game at all.
We did adjust the rules accordingly.
Another suggestion was to have the rush-focused defenses 5-3, 5-2 and goalline banned.

Both suggestion were open for dicussion, the second suggestion was not used.

NEW QUESTIONS:


To all new teams and all surviving teams from TOG.
Welcome!

Whoever is wondering regarding conference naming and Bowl naming:
Conference names:
Red Grange
Ernie Nevers

Bowl names:
Seven Blocks Of Granite
Red Elephants
The Four Horsemen

PS: Peter, if I did put something wrong into this, please let me know.

List of Teams

1 Leverkusen Leopards
2 BobBoy Magpies
3 AS Roma Wolves
4 Pretty Guinness Consumers
5 Amersfoort Alligators
6 Maykop Misfits Winner of Series 1
7 Basterds
8 OrangeCrush
9 Landru Athletics
10 Wilmersdorf Wadenbeisser
11 Chesterton Cheese
12 Bretzfeld Bandits
13 Torchwood Aliens
14 Chelt Nam Bobbers

FULL!

Standings/Schedule for Series 2

Great! I am in, jack

I would love to get one of those open spots

Spooky, I was thinking about suggesting this again last week and forgot.

I'M DEFO IN!

oh yes. In

Prices confirmed, just as 3 years ago. @All: keep in mind I need to do all the Credits things and so on without any automatic features in the background, so bare with me if it takes a day or two.

Great, thanks!

I updated the text a bit and di put in the names.

I realized it will be close with COC next season and in this season, eventually we have to be creative at some point.
The faster we get the field together the better.

Starting at season start seems to be too late with last seasons schedule, since it seems 1st CoC game is on 6th or 7th week, but we need 8 for regular season + 2 for playoffs.

But there is at least 1 Tuesday available and if we start before rollover, also 1 saturday at least.

More to come.

Is it necessary to create a new playbook here? Or is simply the setting "mainly rush" in Settings?

Put me down too, if there is a slot available.

It's about time I entered a tournament that my QB can't ruin!!!

If you do not like to establish a real new playbook containing all the rush rules, just make sure nothing is overwriting all your "rush only" matchsettings from inside your used playbook.