MBCIS - Interest Taking Time

[mbsports]

Good Afternoon,

I'm about a week or so from launching MBCIS, our Canadian Collegiate league and I wanted to see what kind, if any interest there would be in it. Here's the specs:

Field & Rules: Canadian with potentially a 45 second clock so that games turn up with realistic results. Other then that I don't want to mess with the Canadian rule set at all.

Rosters: 65 Man Roster - Randomly generated in Season 1
Injuries: Most likely will be turned off
Eligiblity: Players will have 4 seasons of eligiblity
Recruiting: Players will be randomly generated each season to provide a recruiting class
Each team will receive a list of enrolled players and will then get to select who makes the team
Factors that go into University selection are Academics, Football Prestige, and Location
Each player also has a factor of how important each one of those criteria are to them. So a player from Calgary would likely prefer to stay in that area then to go to Toronto, but if there is a better academic choice or he does not have a GPA that qualifies him to play in Province they would consider another option.

Players not selected for the roster of their preferred team would then be open to transferring after the season without losing a season of eligiblity

Players completing their eligiblity may move into the MBCFL. The top players likely will move on and have a career that can be tracked, much like fantasy players in MBCFA(NCAA) are able to do so today. I believe this is a nice little addition that allows a player to come in as an 18 year old kid and progress thru a college schedule and to advance to a professional league where their career can be tracked over time.

Schedule: We'll have 2 seasons per calendar year and it will coincide largely with the MBCFL Schedule
The first season will start in approximate 5 weeks, which is when the 3rd season of MBCFL begins
The schedule will be 10 weeks, the vast majority of which will be Inter-Division with a couple Non-Conference games
Playoffs will be a little different then normal as the West plays for the Hardy Trophy, the Yates Cup in Ontario, the Dunsmore cup in Quebec and the Jewett Trophy in the Atlantic conference. Then those winners will play for the Mitchell and Uteck Bowls with those winners facing off for the Vanier Cup.

GM Responsiblities: Set your roster up, make moves if you'd like to dismiss a player, accept a walk on from another school if you so choose.

Computer Control: Due to Max FB's issues with computer control of teams none of the teams will be a true computer controlled situation, where there is no human GM the league as a whole will handle their operations. This will be based on pure mathematics as I would prefer to take any emotion out of how a computer team is controlled. Transparency for these processes is important for the integrity of the league.

Website Layout: I will be bringing the CIS league into a similar setup as the CFL simulation available here www.mbsportsnet.com/mbfl/mbcfl.htm

Over time I believe that this allows for a solid level of detail and really makes things look as they should.

So far I've had some interest, but this isn't like my NFL/CFL/NCAA leagues where I'm fishing to get all teams human controlled. I fully expect the computer to contend for some titles while the humans try to knock em' off.

Whether we get GMs or not I think we'll find this to be a worthy addition to the MaxFB community and my hope is that we see GMs in this league participate in the other leagues in the MB world.

Thanks,

Mb

[Mykal]

Me for sure

I'll take Sherbrooke as I mentioned previously

5 weeks til season start.............man better get cracking on those stadiums
CIS fantasy uniforms are all but finished (4 to do)
so shouldnt be a problem to fix up the college fields
there aint a great deal you can customise on most anyway

[mbsports]

Well we have Mykal - always good to get someone on board.  Like I said, I just don't know how many guys are going to step up on this one, but I think it will be a hell of a good time for those that do from a standpoint of knowing your players have 4 seasons, knowing you can make a few changes, but your cards are chosen by you and you alone.  There's not trading but you can do some things and you get a pretty huge roster so you can play around with it quite a bit.
 
Anyways I tested my player randomizer tonight and my fallablity has been confirmed, but things worked pretty good.  The only areas of concern were that we had too many interceptions and the running backs were catching the ball way more often then the wide outs.  Part of this was the catch ratings on the DBs was pretty high, so that would be helped by a slight tweak there.  We then saw that the LBs coverage rates were basically dirt, hence they were getting fried by the RBs.
 
I'll be testing the changes tomorrow and then posting rosters this weekend.

[VCFL Commish]

4 seasons,

CIS eligilibility is 5 years

[Mykal]

Kewl MB, I cant wait to see how things pan out with the randomizer
and I cant wait for the league start either...........even if I appear to be alone

The Stadiums, I'm getting there slowly but as I stated before with very few photo's to work with it aint easy
most of what I'm coming up with is my best guess
I use the field capacities to guide me on the stadium model to use, then look at what photo's I have (if any)
then comes the guestimation........if thats a word?

So I'm certain these wont be anywhere near accurate
but at least each University will have its own playing field

Here's a sample of Foote Field, University of Alberta

[mbsports]

Yup - I know that CIS eligiblity is 5 seasons and that's a consideration that I'm taking into account. Might be something that I change up but it was something I was struggling to make a decision on... Might work out a little easier for the ole' MB on that one as 5 seasons means only 20% player turnover per season instead of 25%

[VCFL Commish]

mbsports not trying to anoying with this stuff just don`t know how much you know about CIS Football I am making the assumption you are American.I  have A friend in Alabama that I sent him some CIS games because he never gets CIS stuff one last thing CIS Football the kicks offs are from the 45.

[mbsports]

Heh not annoyed at all - I appreciate the help to make things work - I watch a bit of CIS football as I try to get over to Windsor to watch the Lancers at least once or twice a season, but I had totally forgotten about the 45 yard line deal. 
 
Thanks!
 
Mb
 

[Mykal]

just uploaded Manitoba University Stadium
think thats 9 done now, 3rd of the way 18 to go
doing my best to be accurate but its not always possible to be exact
so think we'll end up with 27 stadiums/fields that are the best fit with the models available
there is a little room for editing but not a lot.

as you can tell, I'm not totally happy with how these are ending up
but I have to face it............its a mouse in my hand........not a magic wand. [:'(]

[mbsports]

No rush and wo worries, its extremely challenging to customize the fields - I personally suck at it...
 
On the good side I was able to make a lot of improvements to the overall game play I was seeing from the created players.  The biggest thing now is that I see WR1 getting a ton of catches, but the other WRs not getting many at all.  I think this may require a boost in the COV ratings of all the CBs.  My theory being that since the 1st CB isn't as good at coverage as he should be he is therefore giving up that initial read too often and the QB is able to key specifically on his #1 target.
 
The good thing about all of this testing is that it's also improving the MBCFL game play as I modify the plays/playbooks/and ratings

[Mykal]

kewl, so things are beginning to take shape, excellent
and if the knock on helps your MBCFL league too, then thats even better still.

sounds like we sit doing the same kinda thing, I'm always testing too
but where your examining plays etc. to see what happens,
I'm ignoring the game being played at looking at the stadium and its surroundings,
in and out the game constantly like a nervous Meerkat.

[mbsports]

Yup I'm always testing something - I have a Compaq old 14" laptop LCD monitor in front of me now that I'm rigging to run as a standard VGA somehow - that's fun
 
my other lap top - which my wife fried with virii and nonsensical stupid stuff, is currently undergoing a transplant to Ubuntu...
 
I need more sleep
 

[mbsports]

Rosters
I have generated 65 Man Rosters for Each Team.  They're a blend of players from year 1 thru year 5 so no one has all upperclassmen or anything like.  They're also a mix of positions so some teams may have a slew of QBs, others may have more DBs etc. etc.  I did make sure that there were no really bad situations like a team with 2 LBs.
Schedule
The Schedule is done man!  Unlikely the real deal we're rolling on a 10 game schedule instead of 8.  Eventually I got to the point on the schedule that I needed to make a small inter-conference matchup between the CWFC and OUA so there are a total of 2 games that involve some mixing there but that's it.  Otherwise the only inter-divisional games are between the AUFC and QUFL
Website
I've started building the SQL and php outline for the site.  For instance all of the templates and logos are now uploaded.  Tomorrow I'll start putting the data into the right format and uploading.  Should have it all up shortly, was delayed by basic life over the last few days but we're on track for a start date in about 4-5 weeks.  I'm thinking last weekend in September or so as this takes my wedding anniversary out of the equation and guarantees my survival.
 
 

[Mykal]

Kewl, sounds like its all coming together nice.
Stadiums too are coming together, well over half way on them (10 or 11 to do)
will have them all done well in time for the league start.

I'm thinking last weekend in September or so as this takes my wedding anniversary out of the equation and guarantees my survival.

I know where your coming from there man,
Although today is actually my birthday and here I am, working on mods just like a normal day[8|]

[mbsports]

Heh I've noticed the stadiums - I've been picking them up as you've been uploading them.
 
I've been running some test games to get a sense for where things are at with regard to statistics - trying to equalize the sims and the live play.
 
We just ran a nice little Concordia/Montreal tilt and while the running game was able to make nice games we saw a little weakness in the passing game.  One team was 5 for 19 the other 8 for 25 and the yards were nothing special.  Only 3 sacks apieces though which was good to see.  The final was 19-11 the touchdowns coming on a long run, a short run, and one punt return.  I'm fairly comfortable with those but the passing game needs a boost so I've tweaked the accuracy a bit and hopefully the next run will see those numbers improve.  The run/pass ratio was about 45/55 in favor of the run but that's highly situational, given that the teams were gaining about 30% more on a completed pass then a run I'm comfortable with that as well.  Total offense needs to come up though and I think that largely ties into tweaks to the passing game.

[Mykal]

Hmmmm...... Im having the same trouble with one of my leagues
12 0f 51 pass attempts complete......now thats real bad, so I need to look at that.

The run/pass ratio was about 45/55 in favor of the run

In my opinion (humble of course) that ratio should be swung the other way
the canadian game has (from what I've seen) a higher pass percentage on the whole.

[mbsports]

Agree, and in the 2nd simulation today we saw 19 rushes, 25-30 passes per side which is probably about right.  One team just was able to totally control the run game though and had a lot more yards rushing, most on a long score though.  The big thing that I'm seeing is that the kick returners are just way too capable so I'm going to try some adjustments to the blocking numbers and re-run again here.  The scoring was up and the passing was 11 for 24 and 10 for 28 so 21 of 52 - which is better, but not quite there. It should be about 50-55% minimum and upwards of 60% at times.
 
We'll keep tweaking though and I'm sure we'll find a happy medium, those KR numbers though are just disturbing, one change I'm making is trying to get a gunner in on those but the way the formations are set you just can't get your fastest good tackling player in due to the way it's setup.  You almost need to be able to put guys into the formation subs that it doesn't want to allow which is problematic.
 

[Mykal]

Kicks Returned for TD

Yep I agree it happens a bit more than in reality
but I was just assuming it was the larger field size (cos Ive never tried amreican rules yet)

[Mykal]

Laval & Montreal Carabins uniforms will need re-downloading if you've already taken them MB
I added Endzone and center field logo's to Laval & Center field logo to Montreal (endzone was already done)
in order to make the stadiums correct.

[mbsports]

Good Evening - I'm happy to report the MBCIS website is posted at
www.mbsportsnet.com/mbcis/mbcis.htm
 
We've got 3 guys who have volunteered to be victims so far - obviously I'd like to get a few more guys involved so if you'd like to participate in this new and quite frankly different league, just let me know.