The UTBA Minor League is a good idea and obviously a lot of thought was put into it, but personally I really do not think the league needs to become more complicated now. You guys can shoot me if you want, but here are my thoughts against the Minor League:
- The UTBA is just evolving to the point where fighters are going to age beyond Prime which sets into motion a new set of rating rules regarding the fighters. I fully support this and think it will help lengthen careers of our favorite fighters.
- Speaking completely selfishly, the record keeping is going to get even more time-consuming and difficult for me. Keep in mind that I am not complaining about the current workload, but another 10 bouts a week involving 192 more fighters is really going to tough to keep up with (even when the league goes to 2-weeks per round)
- This will accelerate the speed at which we chew through the fighter database.
- The Minor League just seems like a way to protect prize fighters and still be able to tailor your roster on a weekly basis based on the opposing team without the risk of possibly losing fighters in the waiver wire. Example: Tomato City decides to move a high-rated rated Beginning fighter to the minors and replace him with a 3-rated scrub in the FLY divison because the opponent has a very high chance of winning anyways. Tomato City then finds what weight class the opponent is weak in and then replaces a scrub in that division on his roster with a higher rated "minor league" guy to have a better chance at winning. This will result in too many manufactured mismatches instead of what we have now.
- An alternative to this (which I also do not support) would be expanding the roster from 16 to 24 (3 per weight class) and increasing the total cap - 105 (Major League Cap) plus 48 (Minor League Cap). Each team would still only have 2 fighters per weight class in action each week - but would have to adhere to the "Gametime" cap of 105. Here again, this would protect fighters, would not have the age restrictions of the Minor League mentioned above, would not chew up the fighter database faster and would allow managers to pick and choose what mismatches they would like each week. I could handle this option much better from a stats-guy perspective as there would not be an additional 96 bouts each week.
Overall, I don't think that we need to change anything - but if it goes to a vote, I would say "no" to the Minor League addition, but may consider the "Alternative" plan outlined above. Sorry for the sour grapes, but do we really need to make sweeping changes after each season?
Dave (Romultiltus - Tomato City)