New thread.

http://goallineblitz.com/game/signup.pl?ref=8362980

I like the fancy new digs, sports is a better home for this anyhow.

Good, a new thread in Sports, because I was going to start a thread about this, but thought it would get more readers in the GLB thread...the A11 offense. A high school team in NorCal that were outsized by other teams started using this. It's like a spread offense on meth. It's gotten some notice on Deadspin and other blogs.

How does that formation work, exactly. Aren't the people designated as R, U, Y and E ineligible to move down field before the ball is thrown? I had always thought that the rules said that 7 men had to be on the line, and only the 2 on the end were eligible to be downfield.

Y'know, in another universe, I'd have loved to have joined in with you chaps on this. But now I'm too busy and also too obssessed with 'FIFA Manager 06' to consider playing another game that's equally involving.

Back in the 80's, I was totally obssessed with American Football, though (despite being a Jets fan). I used to play Statis Pro Football with a few of my mates, but even devised two separate game systems of my own. One was based on dice rolls (since we were also into D&D) and took into account all the real-life stats and propensities of each team, which I would pore over in the NFL yearbooks, to ensure accuracy. The other was more 'self-determining' and was merely dependent on the turning of playing cards. Thinking about it now, I can't believe the effort I put into doing it all! However, I can barely remember a thing about them now, sadly.

Thus, all this talk of developing your players and watching games sounds remarkably tempting to a management-obssessive like me. (I also used to play Eastside Hockey Manager alot, too.) But I'm just going to have to carry on watching from the sidelines as I have been, I'm afraid, and gain my pleasure vicariously from your antics. :-)

That A-11 offense - it looks (from the video footage) like you have to have at least one extremely mobile quarterback (since there is almost no 'pocket') and technically near-perfect blocking from (what little there is of) the offensive line. It's interesting, certainly, but without those two prerequisites, it could be a disaster, I feel.

evilC,

If you wanted, you could just dip your toe on the water by clicking on Matej's link and creating a player. It's free (at least if you only create one or two players, damn MMORPG pushers), and you could spend as much or as little time as you had.

I'm intrigued by your self-created American football game. I had done something similar with baseball as a kid (when Strat-o-Matic didn't seem realistic enough).

Oh, and apologies for the whole Jets fan thing. It must be tough (though as an Eagles fan, I can sympathize).

Clive, the coaches submitted their ideas to the National Federation of High Schools and the California Interscholastic Federation, and were told that it was legal.

According to the sidebar here, San Jose State ran some A11 plays against Stanford last season. I imagine in some college games a small team going up against a powerhouse might throw one or two plays in there to confuse them, maybe even you might see multiple teams in the same conference using it--I'm thinking of the WCC, since so many of the teams in there use some wild spread formations already. I imagine that it ever made its way into the NFL, the league would come up with a reason to make it illegal.

Ah, I see. Reading a little further, they use the "scrimmage kick" rule to allow the lineup and 5 guys can't go downfield.

I had Statis-Pro football, evilC, but I could rarely find an opponent who could stick with a whole game. Instead, I became addicted to Paydirt (before my modern addiction to Fantasy NFL). In my version of Statis-Pro Walter Payton appeared to be literally unstoppable - an every down back with a guaranteed three yards per down.

Gyuri wrote:

QUOTE:
Ah, I see. Reading a little further, they use the "scrimmage kick" rule to allow the lineup and 5 guys can't go downfield.

I was wondering why it looked so 'messy'.

Do you play fantasy football, evilC?

statto99 wrote:

QUOTE:
I had Statis-Pro football, evilC, but I could rarely find an opponent who could stick with a whole game. Instead, I became addicted to Paydirt (before my modern addiction to Fantasy NFL). In my version of Statis-Pro Walter Payton appeared to be literally unstoppable - an every down back with a guaranteed three yards per down.

Yeah, absolutely. My mate's little brother (a small-time QB himself) was a Niner's fan, so had them all the time and this was in the Montana/Rice era. It wasn't pleasant to play him/them most of the time.

As the Jets (O'Brien/Toon/Walker) I once crafted a 90+yd drive using only running plays! Then, on the first *throw* of the drive (into the endzone) that bastard kid intercepted me and ran it back for a TD. I was crushed!

(Inca: see my first post, below. I'm keeping out of this for the moment, as I'm concentrating on FIFA manager 06 on my PC. Sorry!)

I meant fantasy football, using real players. Doesn't take up a lot of time, but I understand not wanted to get sucked into another thing.