"We made it! We’re in the %#@&ing World League!" That was my first thought after pulling out an overtime, underdog victory to win CPL East. It wasn't about who we'd play for the league title, or even the prospect of finally winning a gold. To me, gaining a place among the game's best teams was reward enough.
Providence was definitely ahead of schedule. A roster of S4 dots in its first season after absorbing the Grand Banks Bluenoses, neither Pariah or myself expected to win a conference title that quickly. Most of our games during the season were close ones, and the consequences of our youth showed up with annoying regularity. Most believed that we’d eventually become a force to reckon with in Canada, but no one expected it in Season 12, ourselves included.
That giddiness lasted only 48 hours, as a complete pasting by the Kansas City Rams had many questioning whether or not we deserved the spot. They had a point. Regardless of how well respected the Rams’ potent passing attack may have been in S12, getting white-washing 80 to 9 does not inspire confidence. Doubt naturally replaced that initial feeling of accomplishment.
“Do we belong?” “How many games can we win?” “Are we going to embarrass ourselves and the CPL?” Those questions came to mind unbidden, but as far as I know, there was never even a question of whether not we would accept the spot. Even the prospect of losing sixteen games and getting kicked out in disgrace meant less than the simple fact of being there. Some people get hung up on whether or not the World League really includes the 32 best teams at any particular time, but they’re missing the point. It’s the World League. If you make the major leagues and someone thinks that a prospect stuck in Boston’s farm system might be better than you, it doesn’t actually matter. You’re there; he isn’t.
Plus there was the added bonus of being the youngest team ever to ascend to that level. That, of course, was before I had ever heard of Valhalla. By a quirk of the scheduling, Providence still lays claim to being the first S4 roster to achieve the feat since our conference championship came a day earlier. That thought gave us hope, because we would continue getting better while others declined. Or that was the plan, but losing your league championship by 71 points makes you question just how much ground you can really make up.
Fast forward to the new season and the announcement of schedules. A Week 1 rematch with Kansas City did nothing to quell my paranoia about having been cursed to eternal GLB frustration by Bort as a result of my obnoxious posting. To this day, Halifax’s two championships are my biggest evidence to the contrary, since I can’t imagine that he likes them much either. In any case, the feeling wasn’t so much that we would have a chance to avenge our previous embarrassment as concern about how an opening loss would cripple any playoff delusions we might have. I knew that I could do a better job with the defense, and Pariah came up with better ways to neutralize the impact of Sacker Backer, but truth be told, the hope was really more to keep things close than to dream about a victory.
Yet that’s what happened. Kansas City, a team that had been talked up as one of the best new-comers alongside Valhalla, somehow went down against the squad they had so thoroughly embarrassed the previous season. That’s when our attitudes started to change. That’s when we stopped hoping to be in contention for a playoff spot, and instead starting looking ahead to how it might actually be accomplished. The second game against Monmouth only fueled that fire, for while I actually did expect to beat them, no one saw a 65 to 10 result coming.
That’s the point at which Gmathiasf posted his “WL Top 10” thread, in which we were frequently and prominently mentioned. I said at the time that I appreciated it, but that we didn’t deserve it, and I made similar comments in our own forum. We were better than I hoped, but my take on our situation was simply that the competition we faced to that point was not as good as most people assumed. That assessment would bear out in the following weeks, as we eliminated a fair number of people from WL Survivor by losing a fluke game to Team Perkis, followed by another loss four days later against HHW.
Those two losses were emblematic of what has always irritated me about GLB. I can take losing because someone has better dots, and I can take losing because someone has a better gameplan. What drives me insane is for turnovers to spin an outcome in a totally different direction than it should have gone. That’s largely been the history of my own team, as one great regular season after another resulted in playoff flame-outs thanks to turnover-filled games. In the six playoff losses for Grand Banks, only one came without turnovers being responsible, with a combined total of 9 more than our opponents. Obviously that will and should happen from time to time, but the alarming regularity is what spawned my aforementioned paranoia about being cursed by Bort.
So there we were. 3-2, with the odds-on favorite for conference champion ahead. No one was mentioning us in a top 10 list anymore, and it would be many weeks before anyone else used us in WL Survivor. All that early euphoria about pulling upsets and proving that we truly belonged had melted away into the cold realization that we were behind the eight-ball and needed to turn things around if we wanted to grab a playoff spot. The games to follow went largely as expected, aside from another extraordinarily frustrating loss to Dakar where we dominated the entire game and yet somehow found a way to lose.
Heading into the final game of the season, our contest was more or less a foregone conclusion. The question wasn’t whether or not we’d beat Answer Please, but whether or not we’d hold them to few enough points to advance another rung in the tie-breaker. The real story lay in the battle between HHW and Krungthep, for even though the Garudas had been eliminated from playoff contention long ago, they still showed themselves to be competitive. Plus in this era of regional rivalry and match-fixing, it wasn’t out of the question that the Warriors might lay down to benefit another team from the U.S. Thanks to a late-season charge, Monmouth had worked their way back up into the playoff race, and actually would have beaten us out in a tie-breaker if Honolulu dropped to 9-7. Fortunately for us, the Warriors took care of business and we managed to take the eighth and final playoff spot by the slimmest of margins.
The 72-9 playoff beating that followed gave me a distinct feeling of déjà vu. Once again we managed to achieve our goal, only to get obliterated afterwards. I don’t know if we will turn things around against MoD the way that we did against Kansas City, nor do I particularly care. Old losses used to be consoled by the belief that we were the best S4 roster, and that we would eventually have our day. Those beliefs have passed.
To paraphrase Neal Stephenson, I used to think that under the right circumstances we could be the baddest team in GLB. Then we saw Valhalla. In a way it actually has been liberating, as now we don’t have to worry about whether or not we’ll ever become the baddest team. The position is taken. This more or less sums up my entire experience with Goal Line Blitz. My teams have been perpetually great, but just not the greatest. A combined regular season record of 147-28-1 speaks for itself. So does the noticeable lack of meaningful trophies.
This team that I share with Pariah continues that tradition. We are one of the best teams in all of GLB, but in all likelihood, we will never be the best. I’m ok with that. I value being here. The World League has meaning to me, and making it this far validates all the ridiculous time and effort I have put into this silly internet game. Or to me it does, and in the end I’m the only one to whom it should matter. The Providence Radicals achieved entry into the World League, and moreover, we proved that we belonged by beating long odds to stick around for at least one more season.
Providence was definitely ahead of schedule. A roster of S4 dots in its first season after absorbing the Grand Banks Bluenoses, neither Pariah or myself expected to win a conference title that quickly. Most of our games during the season were close ones, and the consequences of our youth showed up with annoying regularity. Most believed that we’d eventually become a force to reckon with in Canada, but no one expected it in Season 12, ourselves included.
That giddiness lasted only 48 hours, as a complete pasting by the Kansas City Rams had many questioning whether or not we deserved the spot. They had a point. Regardless of how well respected the Rams’ potent passing attack may have been in S12, getting white-washing 80 to 9 does not inspire confidence. Doubt naturally replaced that initial feeling of accomplishment.
“Do we belong?” “How many games can we win?” “Are we going to embarrass ourselves and the CPL?” Those questions came to mind unbidden, but as far as I know, there was never even a question of whether not we would accept the spot. Even the prospect of losing sixteen games and getting kicked out in disgrace meant less than the simple fact of being there. Some people get hung up on whether or not the World League really includes the 32 best teams at any particular time, but they’re missing the point. It’s the World League. If you make the major leagues and someone thinks that a prospect stuck in Boston’s farm system might be better than you, it doesn’t actually matter. You’re there; he isn’t.
Plus there was the added bonus of being the youngest team ever to ascend to that level. That, of course, was before I had ever heard of Valhalla. By a quirk of the scheduling, Providence still lays claim to being the first S4 roster to achieve the feat since our conference championship came a day earlier. That thought gave us hope, because we would continue getting better while others declined. Or that was the plan, but losing your league championship by 71 points makes you question just how much ground you can really make up.
Fast forward to the new season and the announcement of schedules. A Week 1 rematch with Kansas City did nothing to quell my paranoia about having been cursed to eternal GLB frustration by Bort as a result of my obnoxious posting. To this day, Halifax’s two championships are my biggest evidence to the contrary, since I can’t imagine that he likes them much either. In any case, the feeling wasn’t so much that we would have a chance to avenge our previous embarrassment as concern about how an opening loss would cripple any playoff delusions we might have. I knew that I could do a better job with the defense, and Pariah came up with better ways to neutralize the impact of Sacker Backer, but truth be told, the hope was really more to keep things close than to dream about a victory.
Yet that’s what happened. Kansas City, a team that had been talked up as one of the best new-comers alongside Valhalla, somehow went down against the squad they had so thoroughly embarrassed the previous season. That’s when our attitudes started to change. That’s when we stopped hoping to be in contention for a playoff spot, and instead starting looking ahead to how it might actually be accomplished. The second game against Monmouth only fueled that fire, for while I actually did expect to beat them, no one saw a 65 to 10 result coming.
That’s the point at which Gmathiasf posted his “WL Top 10” thread, in which we were frequently and prominently mentioned. I said at the time that I appreciated it, but that we didn’t deserve it, and I made similar comments in our own forum. We were better than I hoped, but my take on our situation was simply that the competition we faced to that point was not as good as most people assumed. That assessment would bear out in the following weeks, as we eliminated a fair number of people from WL Survivor by losing a fluke game to Team Perkis, followed by another loss four days later against HHW.
Those two losses were emblematic of what has always irritated me about GLB. I can take losing because someone has better dots, and I can take losing because someone has a better gameplan. What drives me insane is for turnovers to spin an outcome in a totally different direction than it should have gone. That’s largely been the history of my own team, as one great regular season after another resulted in playoff flame-outs thanks to turnover-filled games. In the six playoff losses for Grand Banks, only one came without turnovers being responsible, with a combined total of 9 more than our opponents. Obviously that will and should happen from time to time, but the alarming regularity is what spawned my aforementioned paranoia about being cursed by Bort.
So there we were. 3-2, with the odds-on favorite for conference champion ahead. No one was mentioning us in a top 10 list anymore, and it would be many weeks before anyone else used us in WL Survivor. All that early euphoria about pulling upsets and proving that we truly belonged had melted away into the cold realization that we were behind the eight-ball and needed to turn things around if we wanted to grab a playoff spot. The games to follow went largely as expected, aside from another extraordinarily frustrating loss to Dakar where we dominated the entire game and yet somehow found a way to lose.
Heading into the final game of the season, our contest was more or less a foregone conclusion. The question wasn’t whether or not we’d beat Answer Please, but whether or not we’d hold them to few enough points to advance another rung in the tie-breaker. The real story lay in the battle between HHW and Krungthep, for even though the Garudas had been eliminated from playoff contention long ago, they still showed themselves to be competitive. Plus in this era of regional rivalry and match-fixing, it wasn’t out of the question that the Warriors might lay down to benefit another team from the U.S. Thanks to a late-season charge, Monmouth had worked their way back up into the playoff race, and actually would have beaten us out in a tie-breaker if Honolulu dropped to 9-7. Fortunately for us, the Warriors took care of business and we managed to take the eighth and final playoff spot by the slimmest of margins.
The 72-9 playoff beating that followed gave me a distinct feeling of déjà vu. Once again we managed to achieve our goal, only to get obliterated afterwards. I don’t know if we will turn things around against MoD the way that we did against Kansas City, nor do I particularly care. Old losses used to be consoled by the belief that we were the best S4 roster, and that we would eventually have our day. Those beliefs have passed.
To paraphrase Neal Stephenson, I used to think that under the right circumstances we could be the baddest team in GLB. Then we saw Valhalla. In a way it actually has been liberating, as now we don’t have to worry about whether or not we’ll ever become the baddest team. The position is taken. This more or less sums up my entire experience with Goal Line Blitz. My teams have been perpetually great, but just not the greatest. A combined regular season record of 147-28-1 speaks for itself. So does the noticeable lack of meaningful trophies.
This team that I share with Pariah continues that tradition. We are one of the best teams in all of GLB, but in all likelihood, we will never be the best. I’m ok with that. I value being here. The World League has meaning to me, and making it this far validates all the ridiculous time and effort I have put into this silly internet game. Or to me it does, and in the end I’m the only one to whom it should matter. The Providence Radicals achieved entry into the World League, and moreover, we proved that we belonged by beating long odds to stick around for at least one more season.
