Discrim

Damn..."rearranging your face" has been taken way too literally here.

I'm not sure how he manages that, his landlord can't see him

For best effect, take your phone and start playing Push It To The Limit Having a white suit and looking like Don Johnson are just bonuses.

Yeah, I've seen that over the years. I also recall a pocket schedule or two that was weird about how they shortened Buccaneers. Normally it's Bucs, some go with Buccs, and I remember seeing Buc's more than once.

Gotta watch out for them dastardly Cowboys, finding a way to win even when they lose

Well, if I was a gambling man, I'd probably have won something, as it seems like my preplaying was worthwhile (though the aftereffect is I feel like I spent the whole damn week doing nothing but watching games)...only game my preplay missed on was Giants-Vikings (dice said Vikes, real life said Giants), though to be fair that one and Jags-Bolts looked like they'd be crapshoots.

Me either...holy crap. I think that's a record, both consecutively and total.

First was fun, second was frustrating, and agreed on the third. The line couldn't keep Hutchinson off Rodgers, the Niners would have feasted like they always seem to do.

Might try that someday...but new business. Auburn...used the traditional Northwestern stripe here, though admittedly the spacing is a bit odd. That's because I'd initially had a couple more stripes, but that wound up making it less "white jumper with orange stripes" and more "orange jumper with white back." The clash basically uses the same design, but in stealth mode. Included a War Eagle jumper just for the hell of it. I also give you Syracuse. The home uses the old Carrier Dome logo as part of the design, while the white is basically a sleeveless Rangers jersey. Included a throwback style jumper with printed laces, mostly because I'd had what I recently learned about that jumper style on my mind: while Victorian clubs had phased laced jumpers out by the 1920s, they remained at least somewhat prevalent in South Australia for several more decades, so as VFL clubs began adding South Australian players, said players held onto their laceups. Even a number of Victorian players began wearing them, mostly because the tighter fit made it harder for opponents to tackle the wearer. So what was the laced jumper's ultimate death knell? The same reason you can't wear shorts with pockets in flag football: would-be tacklers' fingers got caught in the laces, and subsequently broken, too often for the VFL's taste, and they were banned in the late 80s. Designwise, I figured I'd distort the S a bit, make it look like they got em nice and tight, though maybe making it a tad offset would've been more accurate. And for your viewing pleasure, some lace up jumpers from the 70s and 80s

So it wasn't just me then...the lighting seemed a bit dim in the 3rd quarter.

Somebody told Cousins it was past his bedtime, I guess. Shoulda told him the sun was still up

Well, four down, two to go. Halfway glad the Lions put the Packers out of their misery, might turn into one of those patented Giants BS Super Bowl runs.

I'm probably gonna preplay the real matchups sometime next week, but for the hell of it I'll finish the one I started, starting with Bengals at Bills. This one started like a house on fire, Cincy ran it in for the first tally, only for the Bills to take the ensuing kickoff to the house...the first quarter was almost more eventful than it had any right to be, ending 21-10 Buffalo. The Bills were up 38-17 at one point, before the Bengals tried to roar back, scoring two TDs in the fourth, and then they recovered the onside kick. Unfortunately for Cincy, they'd let the Bills get a field goal in between their scores, and the last drive ended with a Buffalo INT. It ended 41-31, but as mentioned, wasn't that close. Niners-Vikings was a bit of a snoozer, San Francisco dominated mostly through defense, as the Vikes could only muster 10 points, not helped by a pair of missed kicks in the first half. Appropriately enough, the last score of the game was a safety for the Niners, making it SF 25, Minnesota 10. Jags-Chiefs surprised me for how slow it started...it was pretty much a punt fest interspersed with a Jaguar field goal, and so little time was coming off the clock I found myself wishing the quarter would just end already (not kidding). The two teams would trade touchdowns, and the half ended 10-7 Jax. Third quarter went pretty quickly, and the Jags took a 17-10 lead into the fourth. The 4th was to interceptions what the 1st quarter was to punts, with three drives ending in picks...including Jacksonville's last drive, which would definitely land imaginary Doug Pedersen on imaginary Dumb Decisions, as that INT would be returned for the game tying touchdown. Going into overtime, the Chiefs got a TD run on their possession to make it 24-17, and then the game ended when Jax fumbled the ensuing kickoff...I could imagine Arrowhead going crazy and the Jags walking to the tunnel wondering what happened... Last was Boys-Birds, where the Eagles came out kinda flat. The good news was that they scored five times...the bad news was all five were field goals, and the Cowboys rode strong second and third quarters to a 30-15 win. Not gonna lie, I imagined Eagle fans booing Philly's last field goal.

The TLDR version of the rest of my pre-play: Cowboys and Bucs punt a lot, Dak tosses winning TD, Dallas 24 Tampa 17 In a close one that was a game of runs, the Seahawks took a 17-10 lead into the half but can't do much of anything in the second half, 49ers win 31-23 Vikings have a hot 3rd quarter where they score 20 en route to a 40-16 win over the Giants Much like Cobra Kai, the Bengals struck first and struck hard, never trailing as they beat the Ravens 33-13 Took a while for the Bills offense to wake up, but it did in time to take a 10-3 halftime lead, holding on to oust the Dolphins 23-17. And just for the heck of it, figured I'd go waaaay back...back into time to replay two games from the last week of the 1968 season: Vikings at Eagles and Packers at Bears, the results of which would decide the NFL Central champion-Chicago had won both of their games against Minnesota, and both teams entered Week 14 at 7-6, so the Vikes needed to win and for the Bears to lose or tie. IRL, the Vikings edged a terrible Eagles team 24-17, while the Bears couldn't take advantage of the Packers being down to their 3rd string QB and basically being a shell of their former selves, and a furious comeback fell short, losing 28-27. Figured I'd get Minny-Philly over with, and man did the 68 Eagles suck (the Vikes must've caught the Eagles on a good day IRL). Until a field goal midway through the 2nd, they either punted or threw picks, and to add insult to injury they threw two straight pick sixes in the first quarter. It was 17-3 at the half, and Minnesota won 31-9. Over in Chicago, the Bears took a 14-3 lead into the 2nd quarter, but then Green Bay scored 21 unanswered points, and it would have been 28 if time hadn't run out in the first half. The Bears managed to cross the goal line late in the game, but their hail Mary was knocked down to seal the end of their season, losing 24-21. And now a TLDR review: if you wanna feel like you're coaching, Fast Drive Football's not the game to scratch that itch. FDF is more like you're watching a game unfold, but much faster than real life. In similar fashion to Gridzone, which I downloaded when it was free but have yet to play, there's a module in place enabling you to create your own league from scratch, recently improved with a module enabling injuries and improvements in-season. I figure one thing, there's a good chance you'll come away from a game feeling like you'd just watched on TV. For the curious, LINK.

In sports gaming, there lies a subset known as quick play, which is mainly used in conjunction with a full featured game like Strat or APBA. They can be as simplistic as just rolling for a final score, or they can be beefier affairs that can stand alone just as easily as they can supplement other games. Fast Drive Football is one such a offering that was created to work with Plaay Games' Second Season (while mimicking its baseball brother, History Maker Baseball, as teams are rated) but can stand alone, to the point that you can create a fictional league relatively quickly, and I'm intending to pre-play the upcoming wild card round, starting with Chargers @ Jaguars. Bolts 7-10-0-14---31 Jags 0-17-14-7---38 This was a pretty even matchup, both teams had some traits that could serve them well but also some drawbacks that could screw them over, but basically the Jags scored last in a game that easily could have gone into overtime.

Been doing some more tinkering...and I managed to create a back view, for one thing. Also figured out it's possible to create a mulit-page PDF in Inkscape now. Made some tweaks to the player figure (the helmet was slightly oblong, mainly) and tested it out with a Falcons set. Figured the once-worn color rush set would be a good one to show off in an impromptu huddle. Well, that and I forgot to change the regular red and white figures' skin tones to what you see here, so CR red it is. As you see, I managed to get logos on the helmet Got a Saints set printed off last night, complete with field art. As per usual, I can't get no satisfaction with my board, but I'm much closer than I used to be. As I mentioned in the last post, I figured out a good way to enable interchangeable field art...first, what led to this in the first place: I've been using rolls of laminate on my boards for some time, and at first, I'd used what I could find at Walmart, which worked pretty well, and I could even use poster tape to stick stuff on. The only hangup I had was it's glare, which I would have no issue with were this trying to replicate a sheet of ice or a basketball court. At some point, I found a different brand of laminate at Hobby Lobby, and have been using that since. The matte finish is perfect for what I want, but there's an issue with this one too: it doesn't play well with anything stickier than painter's tape. A lot of scrapped ideas later, I hit on the idea of clear 'tracks' to slide midfield and 25 yard line logos into. The end zones are basically covered with elongated card sleeves. Also placed tracks on the 20 yard lines so the board can be converted for a Superb Owl. Dealing with a bird infestation The end zone, my home, the one place I live I has map, now needs compass

I know some teams have been doing that for a while now, notably the Bucks' Fear the Deer and the Raptors' We the North.

This'll be the first time they've gone with black jersey/white pants since they introduced the black pants, isn't it?

Which is ironic given that the white helmets came later.

The Kraken RR kinda looks like something I'd do when I want to mimic gradients.

Minor issue I noticed with the schedule: just wondering why for weeks 1-3, it's nicknames but it then abruptly switches to city names the rest of the way (that, and unless it's an NBA schedule, just New York never cuts it.) I'm out and about ATM, so I'll comment on the uniforms later, but I know one thing, white pants don't suit the Lions at all.

The original Kats weren't but the second Kats were.

As long as they went with the original Kats' style but in two tone blue. The Titans/Miami mashup was a travesty.

Nashville Kats anyone?

And the last game before the National Championship is a half dud...Utah and Penn State were evenly matched in the first half, and then Penn State's defense turned into Gandalf. Ute shall not pass indeed.