Cue the trumpets. Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a new champion. Please bow down and pay your respects to Alan Bays AKA Endzone Jones! This season more than any other season was over before it started. Endzone Jones grabbed the league lead by the horns and never looked back. There may have been five or fewer weeks where Alan was not the #1 overall team and those proved to be flukes anyway. Endzone Jones had nary a weakness all season, coming in second place for the points title and tying the best record. In so many words, Endzone Jones is the most deserving, complete, and dominant winner that Big League has seen during its four-year toddler lifespan. Somehow, this dominance was not only limited to the regular season, but Alan surged even in the playoffs to the last push. He was able to nab the #1 overall wide receiver, tight end, and defense on the week with Drake London, Freiermuth, and my beloved Ravens. This was, plain and simple, a trouncing. Alan neutralized Sam Darnold against Riley Read Option, neutralizing the highest leverage position while Riley Read Option couldn’t connect on some solid plays. Kyle AKA Riley Read made valiant, on-paper plays for a competitive lineup, but a -6 point tally from the Dirty Birds and a door-thudding 1-point appearance from Jordan Addison just killed his chances at gold.

In a complete head-stumper, Sel AKA Freakofnature cake-walked to 3rd place and the easiest $75 ever made on Earth. Luke AKA your killin me willis didn’t submit a roster. I still have yet to make contact with Luke so I’ll hold my roasting until I know what exactly happened here. In the meantime, I can celebrate Freak who consistently makes smart moves and advantageously positions himself to win. Even down to the final wire, Sel savvily rostered the likes of Pearsall, Geno Smith, and Marvin Mims, throwing up an impressive week 18 sum of 115.32. There’s limited poetic wax to burn on this candle for the time being, just because it’s still a mystery as to what exactly happened here.

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Thus, we conclude the 2024-2025 season of Big League Fantasy and year #4 of this endeavor. Through four seasons, we have four different champions, and totally different paths to victory each time. What does this mean? I’m not exactly sure but I know it means we have no dynasties.

In reflection, I think this was a great success for Big League and a healthy indicator of our future. We hit 40 teams and reached some of the closest matchups and highest point totals we’ve seen. We saw ridiculously obscure players ball out and also saw future Hall of Famers flame out like burnt toast. I always like to give a preview of what’s to come, but that will be limited this time around.

We likely cannot commit to transitioning to an app yet, although I think that is a goal for the end of this decade. For the first time, I envision Big League downsizing from 40 members to a number more like 32 or 36. Certain members have already bowed goodbye, while others have indicated that this may not be the best format for them.

I think “Empty Lineups” is still the largest problem Big League faces. The fines have worked well to a certain degree, but I am discovering that this behavior lies more in individuals than in the environment. For instance, a given individual who is not competitive in this league will not be incentivized by a fine to suddenly become competitive – they will simply drag the rest of the league down with them. I have potential ideas like a written contract, binding you to pay your fines. But at some point I start to feel less like the fun, goofy, Commissioner I aim to be and more of a jailer/tax man. All of this being said, with a focus on quality members of the league as opposed to inflating our ranks as large as we can, this issue will hopefully work itself out.

The most marked change I aim to implement will be for site functionality. I’d like to further streamline site navigation and updates. Automation would be the key to taking some of the active workload off of Matthew’s shoulders.

A separate endeavor of the site would be to introduce some level of personality and history to the League. I’d imagine some archive through which a user could seamlessly scroll through past weeks, teams, divisions, and write-ups. In this imagined version, each team would have a customizable, visitable page with your overall win/loss record, divisional statistics, etc. Of course, the divisions change to a certain degree every year, but by year five we might as well have a decent public record of our misery.

To the spirit of personality, I’m also going to re-tinker the write-ups. Next season, I will solicit a number of ‘sideline reporters’ to weigh in on the preceding week. I think this will be fun.

I’m ending this write-up with an invitation to give me feedback. My number is 270-799-7170 and my email is turnermanley@gmail.com. I thoroughly enjoy running this league and endeavor to implement the most fun changes possible.

Thanks, everyone! I think we’ll have one last post next week to officially wrap everything up.