Roel: Hey Jonny,

I am back from hols. Amazingly my team went 3-3 with me gone

Hope all is well over there. What shall be the topic of our next BS?

Jonny: Glad you're back Roel, I hope you enjoyed your holiday My team went about the same, but I was here for the most of it

How about... The next episode has already started! Not sure what I'd like it to be about, but I would like it to be different

I've had a rough idea about something I wanted to run past you, see what your thoughts are and how we could possibly turn it into something fun...
We start a BS "sponsored" tournament, of sorts. I'm thinking take inspiration from college football and have a committee s e l e c t the participants each season, subjective arguing can be all kinds of funny!

The committee could be made up of one manager from each and region we'll act as chairmen. The teams could be selected as the four (start off small) best teams outside of Elite, deciding on who those four teams are must come down solely to their results that season, including SC as a small team could get a big win against an Elite team and seriously raise their stock.
Each committee member picks their top four, sends them to us and we tally them up. Maybe one of us should be a voting committee member to keep dialogue going?

So, what do you think?

Roel: Hey Jonny, it's good to be back for sure. Especially after seeing the Devils score another narrow win. We seem to be edging close affairs this season. Must be the tenacious devil spirit that coach Muriki has instilled in the players with his voodoo training methods.

I am liking the on the fly stuff here! And your idea is crazy, wild and hard to pull off but I think it's a great idea and might well cause a bit of a stir in the dwindling RZA universe. We do need a big shiny real Blowing Smoke trophy I think we can send to the eventual winner.

I have always loved being subjective to force discussion and emotion to be injected into the forums so I am all for the voting committee. The competition itself will have enough material for a few BS episodes all by itself.

But am I understanding you correctly that you want the BS media empire to expand to a RZA wide audience?! Very scary but potentially hugely rewarding at the same time! I say we do it.

So having four teams in one competition means 6 games if you play both home and away. Can you play on neutral ground in competitions? and then one bowl game?

Jonny: Hmm, I don't think you can pick neutral grounds, I'll put it in suggestions as a venue option!

I wasn't even thinking in terms of fairness regarding home and away, oops. My thought has gone as far as 4 teams in one game knockouts, just like college? That way we can just pester them to arrange friendly games which would then be even better if neutral ground was an option otherwise it might be better if we make it eight teams then arrange a friendly cup? The B S Athletic Association Cup.

I also hadn't thought in terms of expanding the scope of BS, although we have spoken before about global domination, so I guess this would be a good start?

One big question though is can we get it done in time for this season?! My thought is that it should start as soon as the regular season ends so playoffs don't factor in to it, people might argue that's not the best way to do it, but this is the BSAA damn it, since when have we cared about the "best" way to do it?!

Roel: For a small version it should be possible. Maybe we can do four teams after all for the first edition and have the highest ELO team in a match up play away. We should totally think of arbitrary words related to blowing and smoke to describe events in the tournament. For example, to lose could be mean you were smoked while the start of a game is signified with the Blowing of a Horn in the stadium while MVP of a game would receive a massive Churchillian cigar to take home.

I am getting quite excited by this! Do you have members for the committee in your mind already?

Jonny: I'm whole heartedly on board with anything that can be described as arbitrary

Not really thought about members too much, figured we'd ask Rufio, he seems up for these type of things, I think he's also earned it with his contributions to BS.
One of us should probably be one then the other one be the chairman, would you prefer to be a voting committee member or chairman? I'm happy either way

Roel: I would prefer voting committee. It's better as well for you to be chairman as I have a new account and not quite the gravitas yet that the name Jonny Utah carries in the RZA-verse

So, I think there we have a barebone plan to implement this as soon as! Exciting times indeed! Regarding committee members per league, here are my suggestions:

Elite: if you want arbitrary decisions and some upheaval you cannot do worse then Kanar of The Choking Ducks

Admirals: Yashin of Bracciano Lakers

Claymore 1: Shadow of Sydney Rising Stars (the one with the excellent How to build a new franchise series in Noob forum)

Fire: I am not sure there are any forum active managers that could be expected to actively participate in a committee.

Galaxy: fumbl3 of the excellently named Torino Black Cursed Bulls

Monarchs: Captain Jack of the Torchwood Aliens

Sea Devils: JonnyP of the Leeds Celtics

Thunder: stizz of Kalapana Wild Thangs. Think of Kanar and then the exact opposite That is stizz.

Now most of these managers are in the top 10 of their respective leagues but that is just because forum active managers tend to be successful RZA managers. The reason for this is that I want active people to be on the committee so we do not get delays in votes etc.

Jonny, are you happy with the above or do you want to nominate any other managers?

Jonny: Looks good to me, as controversial as your Fire comments are... I do love controversy, and being the exception to the rule that there's no smoke without fire
So instead of a Fire representative I again nominate Rufio
But then the question is; do we message them before we post this episode, or do we post it then sit back and grin whilst waiting for them to realise their names have been mentioned?

Roel: I doubt they will read the episode without being prompted first but I am all for dumping it on them. I trust in these people and I trust them to bear this burden of responsibility with honour!

Regarding nominating teams, do we provide them with a shortlist? Risk otherwise is that everyone will nominate a different team and there will be no concensus.

We could make it into a live draft event where we will pull teams out of of the proverbial (digital) hat?! I really like that actually, we could draw four teams over four teams using NFL strategy to dominate the media landscape

Jonny: Live event sounds fun! I figured each committee member would submit their four top teams, in order, then we tally them all up and put them into a presentable power rankings type table.

At first I thought to assign points to position, so for every number one vote a team would get X points, number two vote Y points etc. But then we can get things where teams could potentially amass a large amount of points without any "number one" votes, so instead...

...The team with the most amount of "number one" votes is number one
When teams have the same amount of number one votes, second place votes act as tie breaker, then third then fourth. Just the right amount of "arbitrary" to cause a discussion

So how about, in live event terms, the committee members cast their votes, Eurovision style (I'm not explaining that to international managers who've not heard of it, way funnier to let them google what it is ), people can then see the power rankings build up in "real time"?

Roel:
Sounds like a fun idea, just wondering if we will get delays as some people might not respond in a few days? We could ask for all their nominations and then we reveal them in a staged live event? Less chance for mayhem.

Btw, with live event I guess we mean just posting stuff on forum?

Jonny: Less chance of mayhem? You're not selling it to me Roel!
Just kidding, yeah, that's a good call And yes, just posting on the forum.

I'd like to give some amount of time before posting each committee member's selections though, this way it might add some excitement seeing the rankings change as each vote comes in?

Roel: Yes I would agree with that. It allows for some speculative writing by us, sort of live blogging the vote

So I think that's it then right? We are all set for our very first BS themed competition. Exciting times! So what will the first step be? Publishing this disussion and then contacting the nominated committee members?

Jonny: Sounds like a plan

Thanks for reading y'all, especially if you made it this far

And watch this space for more exciting announcements from the BS Athletics Association

Oh, and apologies for not getting round to the draft episode, real life did it's thing again!

You guys have such fun ideas.


And I'm totally in.

Am I the one who overlooked it, or Dragons 1 is missing it's representative...?

It's a good question, we might have overlooked that one Jonny?

Also, can everyone upvote the article so it will show up in Forum Gold so rest of RZA can also read up on this pretty epic cup competition

Mission accomplished, thanks guys and gals!

I figured it was omitted since the 2 creators are Dragons guys.

True but it might be good to have a Dragons rep on the committee as we are not on the committee.

So, which Dragon would like to be on the Committee?

I asked ChoadW and I think he is keen to get involved