We’re closing in on time periods know to us, since we entered this fine game on the backend of
Seasons 40–49 (although we, of course, did not mind what went on in the Elite at this point ):

The Chelt Nam Bobbers continued their second winning streak from S40 to S45, thus making it 10 seasons in a row that they won the NC West. And in that streak they had their single most successful season ever: In S41 they finished #3 in the conference and went on an astonishing postseason run which took them all the way to the big game. There it was, their best chance to break the curse and take home the trophy. But an AC East team that had just come to the Elite the season prior upset the established Dragon, and the Bobbers lost 10:41 (although: is it an upset when this particular AC East-team already won the Bowl Game in their very first season in the Elite?). They made it to #1 in the conference twice in a row after that, but lost each time in the Divisional round.

This dominance took a toll on the team and they had to slim down, as it seems, because they only won 9 and 8 games in the S44 and S45, even losing the crown to Guns&Roses in the latter. G&R did not make it to the second round of the playoffs that season, though, finished 3rd in the division the season after that and was only seen in the Elite once again in S48, when they finished 4th in the NC West.

The Bobbers won the division 3 times in the last 4 seasons of this time span, with the Pinellas Pikes stealing #1 place in the West in S47, without making much noise in the postseason, though. S48 saw the Bobbers making it to #2 in the conference and to the conference championship game again, in which they lost badly to a team from the NC North. Both teams from this particular game met again in the first round of the S49 postseason, but the result was the same.

Once again the amount of different teams that part of the NC West in this span of seasons is astonishing. Some of them were known from seasons prior: the LoneStar Armadillos, the Juggernaut Jackalopes, Erudite Linstock, the Werewolves, the Gardians, the Tampa Bay Bandits and the Panthers. But there also were some new teams that had not made it to the Elite before: Rio Stars, Ergodicity, Mülheim Seahawks, Moraira Moors, Zygal Coda, Cargese Dolphins, Long Term Capital Management, Alert Polar Bears, Mülheim Steelers and Sfniner08. And unlike in previous seasons there was not one team that rivaled the Bobbers for more than one season on the big stage. Every single season from S40 to S49 had a different team besides the Bobbers when roll-over happened.

What stands out, too, is the fact that no second placed team in this time span managed to get to the postseason. The best position of all the teams did have the Rio Stars in S42, finishing #7 in the conference after the regular season.

Meanwhile, these were the Bowl games played:

S40 - Willemstad Bridges (AC East) 28:17 DC Washingtonians (NC East)
S41 - Willemstad Bridges (AC East) 41:10 Chelt Nam Bobbers (NC West)
S42 - Home Malones (NC North) 38:6 Hell Hounds (AC South)
S43 - The Losing Ducks (NC East) 17:20 TigerCats(AC North)
S44 - San Diego Blitz (NC South) 36:14 Peoples Republic of Yorkshire (AC South)
S45 - Peoples Republic of Yorkshire (AC South) 38:10 Flaccid Malones (NC North)
S46 - San Diego Blitz (NC South) 30:9 PR Chaser (AC North)
S47 - CHEESE MODE Malones (NC North) 34:21 Willemstad Bridges (AC East)
S48 - Willemstad Bridges (AC East) 31:28 CHEESE MODE Malones (NC North)
S49 - Willemstad Bridges (AC East) 17:23 Space Kraken (NC North)

Overall record between the conferences: AC 21 – NC 15

Next up: the span of seasons leading up to the present

One final evaluation of the NC West history before I start to examine the possible reasons for the curse deeper, this time looking at the Seasons 50–58:

From the anniversary S50 to S57 the Chelt Nam Bobbers again reigned supreme in the division, making this, together with the two wins in S48 and S49, another stretch of 10 games in which they were the king of the West.

They only were better than the #4 seed once in the 50s seasons, though, which was S55 when they won 13 games in the regular season. Three times they made it past the Wildcard round in the postseason, winning 2 games in S51 and 1 game each in S56 and S57. They were defeated by opponents from all three NC divisions in those runs, so it was never one team especially they couldn’t get past.

Different than previous seasons was the fact that, from S53 onward, they had one team to battle for the crown in the division. The HAMBURG SEA LIONS managed to post the longest streak of consecutive Elite belonging, other than the Bobbers themselves, since the Fighters de Paris did it from S17 to S23 way back then. They even took the crown in the most recent season, beating out the Bobbers by one win. And S56 was the first season since S32, in fact even only the third season ever, that two teams from the division made it to the postseason.

Another deviation from previous states of the NC West was that the amount of different teams churning through the division behind the Bobbers was drastically reduced, due to less teams going up and down the escalator between Elite and Dragons region. Those teams behind the Bobbers, and from S53 on the SEA LIONS, were the Alert Polar Bears, the Pinellas Pikes, the Mülheim Seahawks, Pizti Beltzak, the Oldtown Rooks, the Paladins, the Budapest Janitors, the Alaskan Fur Trappers, the Brookfield Ukies, the Baltic Stars, the Olivos Borrachos, the Gilets Jaunés and the Girona Dragons 1714.

Maybe the lesser amount of teams coming and going in this span is due to the fact that the Dragons region saw a drastic decrease in human led teams in this time span. When the SEA LIONS joined the NC West they left a Dragons league with no bot participation, now only half the teams are still led by human managers. So it may be that the teams battling for Elite membership being fewer than before could be due to that.

However: The Bowl games played in this time span were the following:

S50 - Space Kraken (NC North) 30:28 Sydney Sea Eagles (AC South)
S51 - San Diego Blitz (NC South) 16:24 Peoples Republic of Yorkshire (AC South)
S52 - Peoples Republic of Yorkshire (AC South) 34:24 Space Kraken (NC North)
S53 - TigerCats (AC North) 34:17 KMN Mandalorians (NC East)
S54 - Sydney Sea Eagles (AC South) 45:24 The Last Duck Dance (NC East)
S55 - Space Kraken (NC North) 34:17 Sunrise City Prairie Dogs (AC East)
S56 - Sydney Sea Eagles (AC South) 19:38 Space Kraken (NC North)
S57 - Sunrise City Prairie Dogs (AC East) 38:27 KMN Mandalorians (NC East)
S58 - Peoples Republic of Yorkshire (AC South) 31:17 KMN Mandalorians (NC East)

Overall record between the conferences: AC 27 – NC 18



OK, now that we’ve looked at the history of the NC West there are already some inklings of what the curse might be rooted in. I’ll sum that up in the next posting before going into the numbers, because there are still some things to be examined here. And the digging showed some interesting coincidences already.

So stay tuned

To add a little more to this curse discussion, I think the "Curse of the Dragon" is most easily explained by the lack of dominating teams.

I went through each season and came up with the following Elite winners by seeds: 1 seed (16 wins), 2 seed (16 wins), 3 seed (6 wins), 4 seed (1 win), 5 seed (6 wins), 6 seed (0 wins).

So the top two seeds win more than 66% of the time, so a break down by region (there is one missing season, but I didn't feel like going back and recounting to see which one I missed):

1 seeds: Sea Devils (18), Thunder and Monarch (15), Fire (13), Admirals (10), Galaxy (9), Claymore (5) and Dragons (3)
2 seeds: Thunder (17), Galaxy (16), Sea Devils (15), Fire (12), Monarch (11), Claymore (9), Admiral (6) and Dragons (2)

The Sea Devil curse is for real, more top 2 seeds than any other region, and only two championships

Wow, many thanks for your input

So, to put a button on my first broad view at possible reasons for the „Curse of the Dragon“, which essentially was a look at the history of the Elite NC West, I have three things standing out immediately, and I finally provide some comparable numbers in this first summary:

1 – There was no real continuity in the division besides the Chelt Nam Bobber for the majority of the seasons played since the Elite league was installed. 29 different teams were a #1 or #2 in the West over the course of now 45 seasons, and the teams that did not make the cut at any roll-over in this time were not even counted. That is staggering compared to the other three divisions in the NC conferences, as it was only 20 teams in the East at #1 and #2, 15 teams in the North, and a measly 9 teams in the South. Since the South is leading the score of Bowl games won it could now be inferred in reverse that fewer teams churning through a division lead to a higher chance of winning it all. The fact that the North is second in the bowl winner category of the NC conference supports this assumption.

2 – Only three postseason appearances by second placed NC West teams over 45 seasons is by far the lowest compared to the other NC divisions, resulting in an average of 1.06 Dragons teams participating in the Elite playoffs. For the NC North it was an average of 1.4 teams, 1.73 teams for the South and the East sent 1.8 teams on average to the postseason tournament. This supports the information provided by ptdoc that the East had 33 top seeded teams in the NC conference overall, while the West had only 5.

Why that’s so is still a mystery, though, and will be subject to further examination in the next weeks.

3 – (and that’s not really a thing which is related to the curse… at least I think so at the moment) The distribution of Bowl wins was lopsided in favor of the AC conference right from the start. They jumped in front 5:1, and over the course of 45 seasons the spread grew constantly, with the last time that the conferences were tied being after the San Diego win in S23. What stands out, though, is the amount of teams that won the big game only being 17 overall. That shows that it takes a special drive to get to the bowl game and win one. A good base for this, though, and with that I come back to the first point made in this entry, seems to be being a regular over the course of many consecutive seasons in the Elite. Every Bowl game participant has been #1 or #2 in the own division in the seasons prior, and the competition does seem to have a positive effect on the play when it comes to postseason time, to be well equipped and ready for the challenges that await there.

But with the Bobbers being a regular in the Elite for so many seasons and thus being battle tested, even being the #1 or #2 seed in some seasons, why couldn’t at least they get over the hump and take one trophy home? Up until the 40s seasons in the Elite the NC North did not have more teams in the postseason than the West, still they managed to win the big one in S15 and S39.

This, too, will be examined further in the next weeks.

We’ll keep you updated

My Cincinnati Spartans have been found! Thank you.

Great read

I discovered the Sea Devils curse myself whilst diving into our history but hadnt noticed the extent of it.

The Most successful seeded 1/2 but just 2 Bowls wins

Wow

While summarizing the first half of season 59 in the NC West another angle of how to examine the Curse of the Dragon further came to me. But it may be a unique one, only applying to the HAMBURG SEA LIONS at the moment:

After 6 consecutive seasons that we’ve played in the Elite it is quite obvious: It does come down a lot to player material. We never had a squad even close to what the Bowl winners were fielding, and our ability to stay that many seasons may come down to some good ideas playbook-wise, and division opponents who were maybe a bit more unfortunate roster-wise than us.

Here now comes into play the general approach to all things financial. We’re maybe not that potent to pay a lot of money for really good players as other teams are. We did come to the league in S53 with not the biggest budget in the world, and in no season since then have we earned big money, many times just or slightly below bare minimum even.

Thinking of that I begin to wonder if that could be the general case for Dragons-teams in the Elite. That most of them spent a lot of money getting TO the Elite, just to not have the financial cushion to follow up with acquisitions to help out on the big stage.

There’s still this constant churning aspect. It’s hard to believe that NO team, not even those returning to the Elite at some time, had a team good enough to return for multiple season before we got there. Have they maybe just beaten each other up so much in past seasons that only one team made it to the playoffs due to divisional losses suffered? This should provide for a lot of hours looking at tables when we dive into that

The season was demanding and offered little time to examine the Curse of the Dragon further. And as we’re watching the postseason of S59 unfold it does seem more and more obvious that, even though the NC West is indeed having trouble to succeed in the playoffs, the real curse seems to be with the NC East. So to be fully transparent the drive to look into the Dragons side of the Curse more deeply has therefore somewhat suffered.

But these recent playoff games by a Dragons team did provide for some more data on a sheet that was begun during the initial investigation, and there were some interesting insights coming up with this. And since I gathered this data, it would not be right to let it all just sit and do nothing with it. So buckle up, here come some numbers

As I wrote in the first summary of the investigation, one glaring realization was that over the course of now 46 seasons there were, compared to all the other NC divisions, by far the fewest teams from the NC West participating in the Elite postseason: 1.06 teams got into the tournament on average, which translates to only 3 seasons in which 2 teams from the NC West qualified for a playoff birth.

For reference: Over the same time period there were in the playoffs averaging
1.8 teams from the East (27 seasons with 2 teams, 5 seasons with 3 teams),
1.4 teams from the North (14 seasons with 2 teams, 2 seasons with 3 teams) and
1.73 teams from the South (30 seasons with 2 teams, 2 seasons with 3 teams).

While from all the other divisions this season, by the way, teams went to the Elite playoffs that have been there before, the NC West sent the 30th team to participate in the postseason since the inception of the Elite. Here, too, for reference: East 20 teams, North 15 teams, South 7.

So on one side the Dragons region sent the most individual teams to the postseason, but on the other side the fewest teams in terms of representation on a seasonal basis.

All of this, of course, wouldn’t matter if the NC West teams won, so what’s up with that?

Well, the sad part is that in almost 70 % of those 46 seasons the top dog of the Dragons division entered the postseason tournament as the #4 seed, aka the worst team of the division winners. Nearly 20 % of all Elite seasons the winner of the NC West was #3 in the conference after the regular season, which leaves only 10 % of the time that the NC West champion had the wildcard bye week (2 times #2, 3 times #1 in the conference).

In other words: In 90 % of all Elite playoffs, which are 41 games, the winner of the Dragons division had to go through the Wildcard Round. In 32 of these seasons they had to go against the 5th best team in the conference, losing 25 of them (13 against the South, 7 against the North, 5 against the East). 9 games were played against the 6th best team in the conference, and of these 5 were lost (3 against the East, 2 against the South).

So only 11 times in 46 seasons a team from the NC West won more than one postseason game, when they started in the Wildcard round. Not that great. 6 times they had to follow up these first round wins against the #1 seed of the NC, losing 4 of these (3 to the East, 1 to the North). 5 times they played the #2 seed, and lost three (2 to the South, 1 to the North).

Which culminates in 4 times a team from the NC West managing to go to the NC championship game after entering the postseason as #3 or #4 in the conference. Interestingly enough the one time a team from the Dragons region made it to the bowl game was one of those. In S41 the Bobbers startet as the #3 seed into the postseason, won twice against the East and the championship game against the North, only to come up very short in the Bowl game against the Willemstad Bridges.

Overall, though, the balance sheet of games played by NC West team when starting in the Wildcard round does not look particularly good. In 58 games played in the Elite playoffs over the course of 46 seasons Dragons teams were only able to gather 17 wins. That’s a winning percentage of 29.3 %. Quite surprisingly half of the losses were to teams with lower OVR, while almost all the wins were (with the exception of only one) because of better OVR than the opponent.

But what happened in the other 10 % of the postseasons, when a Dragons team made it to the tournament as #1 or #2 of the conference?

This can be cut quite short: all 3 times when the NC West had the #1 seed the first game of the tournament played was lost right away, and the other 2 times when the NC West had the #2 seed the journey was over in the championship game.

And again the same phenomenon: both wins against teams with lesser OVR, and only 2 of the 5 losses against teams with better OVR.

So what do we make of all of this?

Well, first and foremost being the worst division winner in the NC conference most of the time does make it hard to begin with. It shows that being the top seed translates pretty easily to succeeding in the postseason, as this comparison clearly shows:

NC Conference #1 Seed East: 18 – 13 Bowl-Game-Appearances
NC Conference #1 Seed North: 16 – 16 Bowl-Game-Appearances
NC Conference #1 Seed South: 9 – 15 Bowl-Game-Appearances
NC Conference #1 Seed West: 3 – 1 Bowl-Game-Appearance

What seems strange in the first place is this thing about half of the losses being to teams with lower OVR, as this seems to contradict the assumption I made halfway through the season about team strength being a deciding factor to succeed in the Elite. But looking at these losses more closely it becomes noticeable that all of them happened against teams with higher ELO. While this value may not have a direct influence on the outcome of a game, it does show to some extent the effort a manager is putting into this game. And most times this effort translates to playbook finesse and understanding of how to attack and defend. It should not come to big surprise that the teams that got the better of any Dragons team where usually the same ones over and over again, and it were those of which we all speak and think in high regard because of their accomplishments.

So in the end it may be, I guess, as Jack6 put it earlier in this thread, just a matter of the wrong team at the wrong time. But as he wrote, too, you have to beat them all to be a champ. And this seems to be lacking with a lot of teams in the Dragons region.

I can’t shake off the thought that it may have something to do with the amount of teams coming to the Elite from the Dragons region, as e. g. the South only has had only 9 teams overall in the Elite, but 15 bowl-game appearances. On the other hand the Bobbers have been in the Elite now for a very long time in one stretch, had some really strong squads along the way… and still didn’t make it to the bowl game a second time.

It is a mystery, but it is with every curse, no? It is, if nothing else, a feature that makes this experience in RZA quite unique. And it is a challenge, as fellow manager nextsheva so aptly formulated recently, to be the one who breaks this string of mishaps. We’ll see who that may one day be…

Thank you for reading

Awesome write up, I think the curse might come to an end soon though.