SLIDERS, SLIDERS, (NO) SLIDERS? - OBinKC's Dynasty

OBinKC's Dynasty Blog

SLIDERS, SLIDERS, (NO) SLIDERS?

Posted on August 24, 2017 at 04:13 PM.

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Well, another regular season down, another failed attempt at a challenge. After the SDSU game, I started to question everything yet again. The underlying theme has been 'Why build a team when the one you've got can win it all anyway?' And after going all in on the OS community sliders, I was in the MWC championship game and cracked the top 25 yet again with a 70-something rated team. I asked myself "what's next? Jkits' sliders? Do I really want to give my players no ability at all and still end up winning all the time once I figure that out?"

So I went back to the drawing board known as the sliders forum, searching for a ratings based experience. I would like to build my team up to a powerhouse and THEN we can talk Championship. I came across an interesting title: Not Another NCAA 14 Slider Thread by jbrew. And I'm thankful that I opened it because he pointed out that fatigue played a much bigger factor in competition than it should. The proof was in the experimentation for everyone that tried, so I gave it a try, continuing to use the OS community sliders but with fatigue turned OFF.

Now, the first two games I tried this are actually the MWC championship game and then the subsequent Las Vegas Bowl using my beloved UNLV Rebels. So I'm not going to post the reports for those games in my regular format. Quite frankly, I needed to see some competition here or else I was going to quit reporting altogether.

I beat New Mexico 35-17. The competition seemed a little better, but I was still stopping the Lobos' running attack for the most part. I did see that they weren't letting up in the second half like they normally do, but my team was just hitting on all cylinders. Our teams are rated similarly, so I've got no problems with that.

The second game, however, was a different story. Here's where it really started to show. My bowl game was against Oregon, long since removed from the high flying Chip Kelly/Mark Helfrich glory days, but still rated more than 10 points over UNLV. And they ran all over me. True to jbrew's word, they never let up and seemed to run even stronger in the second half. I was blown out 34-3, and it would've been worse if I didn't milk the last 4 minutes off the clock on my last possession to just get it over with. Seriously, this was the first game that I can even remember where I just gave up so that they wouldn't score more. That's all the proof I needed.

So now that losses could become a regular thing, perhaps dynasty reporting could become interesting again. So I will continue the reports for now. I will, however set my penalties and A.I. sliders back to default at least to start the next season to bring some balance back.

So there you have it. The Rebels finish the first season of the O'Bannion era 12-2 with a much more "challenging schedule" to look forward to next season, lol. Now that UNLV won't be "sneaking up" on anyone next year, we will see how O'Bannion handles the adversity.