FCM has survived for over 5 years in real life. For any mogul league that's an eternity, but what has made that even more impressive is what we have survived to get here. So, with as much transparency as possible, here are some of those events:
The Scotty Problem
I think only erik, hokey, and myself have been here from day one so for many of you the very nature of this header is going to be confusing. FCM was started by DJ and a guy by the name of Scotty. DJ was the more mature, seasoned veteran of the pair while Scotty was a young, immature douchebag. How they paired together to start this I'm not sure, but they got the ball rolling along with Jordan, hokey, and a few others. In fact, it was Scotty who emailed me originally to join FCM. Apparently the strategy was to dig up dead leagues and recruit their trade mods, admins, and other leadership types and condense them all into an elitist mogul league. (That much has certainly stayed true of our league)
However, things didn't last long for him. He started with the San Francisco Giants and built them up quickly. When he was ready to contend in 2013 things got mysterious. When DJ or hokey simmed, San Francisco was alright, but when Scotty simmed they were virtually unbeatable. It was a blatant discrepancy that demanded immediate action. Following his WS win that year Scotty was stripped of his simming duties and made just an admin with no access to the sim password.
But things didn't stop there. He recruited a new GM for NYY and quickly hosed the guy in a trade before turning around and demanding the GM be fired. But when people agreed to fire the new GM on the condition that he reverse the trade, he got huffy.
In part of that exchange one admin said this:
As I told you privately last night I'm tired of your self-serving approach and I feel any objection is based purely in that just like your objection to expansion was, or your objection to agents when you couldn't keep lincey, or your resigning Kimbrel unrealistically then shopped him while he SHOULD'VE been enjoying the fruits of free agency, or...see the trend. When it helps scotty his tune changes.
Scotty was also obnoxiously insistent on expansion, inconsistent on agents, and all sorts of other things. At some point that only DJ could explain - Scotty, a league founder, was fired and asked to go elsewhere. I believe the impetus for that final decision was Craig Kimbrel. Scotty deliberately resigned Kimbrel through the agent system we had at the time (more to come on that) and then immediately tried to trade him away. Thus sparking the first of a long line of sign and trade dramas. After much whining and bitching it wore on all of the admins and the league enough to ask him to get lost.
hokey on the cheating
DJ Leaves
As many might have heard, DJ was an absolutely instrumental part of the beginning of this league. He was knowledgeable, decisive, patient, and very open to feedback. That approach allowed for a lot of early input in our file and with the combined might of the league and DJ guiding it, helped form the bedrock for the only stable mogul league file in existence. DJ could be stubborn and easy to bristle, but as I've found in this role...sometimes that just happens when you're trying to manage a lot of personalities. In any case, DJ was the original Czar - the guy that did most of the simming, ran the draft, did podcasts, and generally was the glue for the league. Then this.
Now, at the time the admin duties were being split between hokey, Sean, and DJ. But shortly before that post hokey was removed from his role over a series of manipulative trades/actions that had caused a tremendous amount of frustration in the league. So it was Sean and DJ and I was asked to join the group. Shortly after DJ's spotty activity became non-existent. That earlier post turned out to be the last he made and almost 3 seasons passed before actions had to be taken.
During that time Nokes was added as an admin and simming duties were split between Sean and myself. The bulk of the running of the league was split between Sean and I with matty suggesting many tweaks. But that reality didn't last long either.......
matty's thoughts
hokey's thoughts
Sean Disappears
Just like DJ, Sean would disappear as well. It would be later found out that he had a series of serious heart issues that he had to work through, but it again forced another admin shuffle. With his depature I became the only simmer. At this point hokey was asked back to the admin team along with jhc so that there would be a single sim for each of the three of us.
Agents
Agents were an idea at the beginning of the league meant to clean up the free agency system. The idea was that several members of the league would secretly operate as agents in PMs and as you approached FA there would be certain players that were agent players that had to be negotiated with in private in order to resign. Sometimes the agents would play hardball for various reasons (poor team performance, team had recently dealt resigned players, wanting to test market, etc) but largely it was just an elaborate system that allowed everyone to get resigned. The benefit, though, was that it set a realistic high end to the file's finances that did benefit us in the long run.
The system did not last forever. After much complaining, there was finally an incident sufficient enough to literally kill it. Hokey had tried to manipulate the agent (jps) into approving a trade even though a no trade clause was recently agreed on and the negotiated perk for one player made no god damn sense.
With that corruption exposed and the general framework of the process far more aggravating than it was worth, the agent system finally....mercifully...died.
Look for updates to this blog as some of the relevant parties share their personal thoughts on these situations!
And have no fear, despite all of these crazy shenanigans, FCM is as strong as ever with far less drama than any other league I've ever been in. Keep up the great stuff guys and keep FCM a part of your free time!
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