In the year 2000, during another frustrating fantasy football campaign, a freshman at a community college envisioned a different way to play fantasy football – one where someone participating in the league didn’t have to know the teams, players, stats, mascots, coaches, cheerleaders, trends, or even like the sport. This hairless baby busy packing on his freshman fifteen would one day become the NPL Commish. Rather than pay attention in class, he would scribble notes on how the league would be played, how to make it more fun and engaging, and reminders to shower once a week.
It started like all of your favorite pick’em leagues: the player with most correct picks wins the league. The first few years of operation followed this boring, been-there-done-that formula, because The Commish was not very creative. But during this mess, early elements of the modern NPL started to take shape. Awards like the Player of the Week, Solo Soothsayer, Lonesome Loser, and Monday Magician were all created in these early years. They had cute little artworks that were “borrowed” from unknowing artists, had colorful text slapped over them, and listed the players that qualified. These were simpler times.
Awards like the Player of the Week, Solo Soothsayer, Lonesome Loser, and Monday Magician were all created in these early years.
The results were placed on a GeoCities website (throwbaaaaack!) each week, so players could review how they performed in the week and see how they stacked up in the league. The first NPL logo was created during this time by using a web search of “shield”, settling on something that may have been from a Zelda game (not sure), then adding cliche things like red, white, and blue backgrounds, a football, and the letters “NPL”. It was amateur at best, the way we like things around here. When MySpace came along, the geocities website was put out to pasture, and our #1 friend, Tom, took over hosting duties. He was not actively involved. MySpace blog posts became the epicenter for the NPL.
The Commish didn’t like the “most correct picks wins” format, simply because players lost interest halfway through the season when they realized they had no chance of winning the league and the cash prize of $0. Players quit each year. Players quit after week three. It was really annoying by the end of the season to only have 3 players out of 10 actually participating. So, a change was needed. The Commish wanted a way to keep players engaged, one where a player that has a bad week doesn’t feel like their season is entirely over. They were still shamed relentlessly, but at least they could bounce back. The head-to-head format started to take shape.
Then other things started to change. Player names were replaced by team names: Erin became “The Erin Exploders”, Shawna became “The Shawna Shanks”, and Tetzlaff became “The Tetzlaff Pterror-dactyls”. The tradition of giving teams ridiculously stupid names was born back in 2007, and wasn’t topped until “Washington Football Team”. Side note: the NPL started referring to Washington by a less offensive name (“Washington Footballers”) years before that dickbag owner in D.C. did anything about it. Just another way the NPL is better than you.
The tradition of giving teams ridiculously stupid names was born back in 2007, and wasn’t topped until “Washington Football Team”.
The new, head-to-head evolution of the NPL started small – just 16 players. The teams were split into two conferences, with two divisions each: Prophet and Psychic in the Clairvoyant Conference, and Augur and Oracle in the Soothsayer Conference. That’s right – at some point, the divisions switched conferences and no one noticed. We also had an absolutely batshit rule where the Away teams and the Home teams would pick from different game pools.
The “NFL Picks League” was here!
Ties. The “kissing your sister” of sports. In the early years of the NPL ties were allowed. The early anti-tie rule, different game pools for home teams and away teams, wasn’t fair. The home team might get Undefeated Powerhouse vs. Monkey Shit Fight for one of their games, but the away team might get We Suck vs. We Suck Too. Players not on even playing grounds is frustrating, so it was done away with after the 2007 season. But, ties started to happen more frequently, and ties suck. In 2008, a new rule was put in place to combat this icky tie issue: The Monday Madness Tiebreaker.
The early anti-tie rule, different game pools for home teams and away teams, wasn’t fair. The home team might get Undefeated Powerhouse vs. Monkey Shit Fight for one of their games, but the away team might get We Suck vs. We Suck Too.
Players would now submit a combined score for Monday Night Football (i.e. 32 to 21 = 53 pts). Should the players tie, the player closest to the final total would get the win over their opponent. Ties were greatly reduced, but people would submit the same score (42!) every week. Another rule was added shortly into the 2008 season: Away teams had to submit odd scores, Home teams had to submit even scores. This guaranteed that a tie could not happen anymore. There was much rejoicing!
The early seasons of the NPL were not easy for The Commish. It’s still not easy, but it was way harder back in the day. In 2008, The Commish started tracking picks on pencil and paper, like a caveman. All of the league records from 2007-2009 were handwritten, sometimes on yellow legal pad, sometimes on blank spreadsheets that were printed at work when the boss wasn’t around. The Commish would then write up the results and standings on a MySpace or Facebook blog post for everyone to view. The Commish still has these handwritten picks, schedule, and standings in a notebook displaying the original NPL logo (the “Zelda” rip off).
After the 2009 season, The Commish caved in and decided to enter picks on a spreadsheet on a (“dude, you’re gettin’ a”) Dell computer between his shifts delivering pizza. The downside is the inevitable loss of electronic data because The Commish hates backing things up, but the upside is that The Commish didn’t have to carry that picks notebook around anymore. Spreadsheets are used to this day in the NPL, however they are more complimentary to the data on the website, rather than an absolute necessity.
After the 2010 season, The Commish wanted to somehow include highlights of the action in his Facebook write-ups. Using the vastly underrated football game, Backbreaker, The Commish created teams and logos for each player. He would then play the “Game of the Week” for the NPL and take low quality screenshots to upload into the write-up. This turned out to make the write-ups even harder to do, so this practice didn’t last more than a few weeks. However, it did give every team in the NPL their own logo, and the Commish thought, “Heck, that’s kinda neat.”
The Commish wanted to keep using these logos but didn’t want to take pictures of his TV for each team, so he got to painstakingly recreating each of these logos in Adobe Illustrator. Some of the current team logos (as of 2021) are still using the original color scheme used to create the logo in Backbreaker. There’s your fun fact, you piece of shit. The weird-as-fuck team naming convention made the artwork portion rather complicated. How does one draw a Vapulater or a Braggadocio? What the fuck is a Tichorrhine? The Commish figured it out eventually, but that’s why you might see new teams have “easier to draw” weird names like Jellyfish or Blue Tits.
Some of the current team logos (as of 2021) are still using the original color scheme used to create the logo in Backbreaker. There’s your fun fact, you piece of shit.
Logos were created, but The Commish is a creatively starved asshole and wanted to do EVEN MORE to customize each team in the league. Up next were realistically designed helmets that look like they’re right out of 1993. That’s fine because unlike the NFL, player safety is actually important here and we don’t allow hitting in real life – only in fake write-ups where people die but it’s no big deal. The Commish found a photoshop file that allowed one to enter a logo, customize colors, and make cool looking helmets that now decorate each player’s team page.
It was also during this time that a series of Facebook posts allowed then-current NPL players to provide feedback on the new NPL logo that would replace the Zelda-esque shield logo that had been in use for several years. This feedback was largely ignored and the ultimate pick went to The Commish, but it is nice to make the peons feel like they’re contributing something. Keep the peasants happy and all that.
16 teams in 2007. Seven of these teams were still active in the 2020 season. Some players took several years off and eventually returned, because the NPL is like teabagging in Halo: you know it’s stupid, but it’s tough to resist. Two ‘non-player’ teams were used to fill in for those that repeatedly failed to submit picks: “Coin Toss” and “The TI-83 Terminators”. Thankfully, these two non-player teams have been retired for a long time.
24 teams in 2009. The four 4-team divisions became four 6-team divisions. The playoffs were wacky then, too. Wild Cards would be pulled from throughout the league. After the four division winners, the next four best teams in the league would make the playoffs. So one conference could have six of their eight teams in the playoffs, even representing the other conference. It was an experiment coming from the best intentions, but it didn’t make much sense. Thankfully, the Wild Card rule was changed in 2010: two Wild Cards per conference.
Some players took several years off and eventually returned, because the NPL is like teabagging in Halo: you know it’s stupid, but it’s tough to resist
28 teams in 2015. Because why not? The Commish hates himself and nothing seemed more annoying than building a schedule for 7-team divisions. A “soft” realignment shifted players into divisions that had more in common with one another: history, geographical location, whether or not they’ve seen Ethan naked, etc. The Commish truly despised seven teams in each division, but (Hey, Google!) how does one make friends? The Commish was running out of people that actually liked him. So, the league sat at this annoying number for five seasons. 2015 also saw another change to the Wild Card format. Because the divisions were so big now, the runner-up of each division would earn one of the Wild Card spots, two additional Wild Cards were granted for each conference, for a total of 12 teams in the post-season. Like the previous change to Wild Cards, this would also last five seasons. Dang, the NPL has been around a while, huh?
A “soft” realignment shifted players into divisions that had more in common with one another: history, geographical location, whether or not they’ve seen Ethan naked, etc.
32 teams in 2020. The great realignment. The final form. NPL always wanted to reach the golden number of 32 teams, four 4-team divisions in each conference. The goal had a simple motivation: much easier to rip off the NFL scheduling formula. The four 7-team divisions each received a new member. Then those divisions were split, forming eight 4-team divisions. This meant The Commish had to think of four more “someone that predicts things” names, which was more annoying than you might think. After focus testing with his internal monologue, the four divisions were named: Mystic and Foreteller would join the Soothsayer Conference, and Auspex and Sage would round out the Clairvoyant Conference. Wild Cards were forced to make sense again: each division champion proceeded to the post-season, with the #1 and #2 seeds getting a Bye week, and each conference gets two additional Wild Cards, keeping the total at 12 teams in the post-season.
Facebook sucks. MySpace was better, but it was dead and Tom didn’t want to be our friend anymore. What was the NPL to do? We needed our own space, so The Commish went out and bought “thenpl.xyz” because “thenpl.com” or “npl.com” were already claimed. I mean, at least it wasn’t “thenpl.info”. After one season of texts saying, “What’s the webpage again?”, The Commish went out and bought “nationalpicksleague.com” and removed all references to “NFL Picks League” from the memories of the players, using advanced techniques in memory manipulation (i.e. hitting them in the temple with a tire iron). The National Picks League was the new name and we had our own space on the web.
The Commish removed all references to “NFL Picks League” from the memories of the players, using advanced techniques in memory manipulation (i.e. hitting them in the temple with a tire iron).
Initially, The Commish coded each and every write up in PHP or HTML. After too many write-ups in this practice, the train to Fuck-that-ville finally arrived, and the website was ported over to WordPress to give The Commish an easier way to compose weekly write-ups. Custom plug-ins were developed for populating stats, weekly results, fictional author names for the articles, and more. We were in the future!
Wanting to pat himself on the back for being so freakin’ good at this, The Commish decided it would be neat to expand awards beyond Solo Soothsayer, Lonesome Loser, and Monday Magician. In 2017, a new league-wide award was created, “Are You Smarter Than ESPN?” This award was given to each player to guess the games more accurately than people that get paid to watch football all day. The Commish would select 9, 11, or 13 ESPN analysts at random (depending on who actually made picks that week) and let the majority pick represent ESPN. The inclusion of the “AYST Award” (as it is lovingly nicknamed here at the NPL offices) inspired The Commish to expand even further.
The NPL Title Belt also came around. The rule is simple: if you defeat the player holding the belt, the belt becomes yours. Some around the league still have no idea what holding the NPL Title Belt means, but we’re keeping track, I promise. And it means nothing. Get over yourself. But it’s another fun digital trinket to argue over and that’s what’s most important: fake internet points.
Some around the league still have no idea what holding the NPL Title Belt means, but we’re keeping track, I promise. And it means nothing. Get over yourself.
Badges and Pins came next. Pins were the “You unlocked an achievement!” type awards for reaching milestones, like 500 correct picks, getting a season accuracy over 66%, or being old (I mean, being around since 2007). Then Badges filled this role for the week to week achievements: submitting picks first, changing your picks and it works out, or submitting 42 for your MM score over and over and over again.
Joining the badges and pins were the Accolades: Wild Card, Division Champion and Conference Champion banners, trophies for best accuracy, Rookie of the Year, Player of the Year, and winning the Seer Cup were added to fill out the Team pages.
What happens to the NPL going forward? Well, 2021 already saw the next great shake-up: the NFL expanding to 17 week seasons. The NPL quickly adapted to this change by saying, “Nah, we’re not gonna fuck with that.” Instead, the NPL will have its first ever BYE week league-wide. Whatever other bullshit the NFL has to throw at us, we’ll adapt. Because we’re fucking cool like that.
I think you’re all caught up. Thanks for reading!