College Baseball League needs Commissioner

[RebelYell]

I have created the "Cobb Goes to College" Baseball League with 40 college teams. The game is different from most leagues for obvious reasons, including:

*56-game schedule with regionals and College World Series
*Four-year careers for every player with one redshirt season allowed
*Four 10-team divisions with a "mid-majors" league of four 10-team divisions possible.
*No finances, obviously, as prohibited by the NCAA
*Double-elimination Conference tournaments to decide automatic bids.
*Promotion/relegation from the Major 4 Conference level to the mid-majors based on superior or poor performance.

A season will take about 12 weeks and can be simmed in as little as a month with active league owners. You play two non-conference games and then four conference games, two home and two away each week.
We'll split the series home and away because you don't have to actually travel in the sim world.
By the end of the season, we'll use power polls to find the 24 or 32 (depending on if I get the mid-majors started right away) teams invited to the regionals. We will skip the Super Regional nonsense and get right to the CWS, run in the old-fashioned true double-elimination format.

What I'm looking for, besides team managers, is one person with a little vision and a lot of OOTP experience who is excited about this idea to help me put it together. The idea is to import the actual major leaguers for "recruiting" each season.
I need ideas on things such as how to import and keep track of all the players without doing a lot of inefficient work. I also am looking for somebody with website experience, my biggest shortcoming.

If your interest is at all piqued by this idea and you have ideas to make it work, then please send me an e-mail to Richnamanda@earthlink.net
Send me any league experience you have, including positions you might hold such as a commissioner or league president.

Any potential owners who would like to bypass the co-commissioner option are welcome to claim their collegiate teams now. The 40 teams are the 10 best from the SEC (not Kentucky nor Vandy), the ACC plus Miami, the Big 12 (minus Colorado and Iowa State who really don't have programs) and the Pac 10, including even Oregon, which is baseballess.

If you're a Big 10 or Mountain West or any other conference's fan, the "mid-majors" would carry up to 40 teams.

North Carolina, Oklahoma and Arkansas have already been claimed.

[Ronzonie7]

This sounds very interesting. I'd be interested in taking my alma mater (University of South Carolina) to the CWS.

Question though: Will the game do a good job of 'developing' players if there is just a four year window (five including the redshirt)?

[thefreaks]

Hmm...Sounds very interesting, and a lot of fun. I'd be willing to take over those Oregon Ducks as an owner if they are still available!

[RebelYell]

regarding the question:
I would only be speculating if I were to try and answer how well the game would replicate college careers.

I can say this, though: I'm going to take a copy of the Lahman database and change everybody's ages to 21 so that I can best track all the players. I will also change the entry years of rookies so that we have 10 players available for every team each season. They way, we have 40-player rosters available most all of the time.

I'll put you both on a mailing list and you can have the teams for which you've asked ...

[RebelYell]

OK, putting together a schedule isn't too terribly hard. The schedule generator doesn't do what I need it to because I need something fairly precise. But, I've got 56 games and 36 conference games scheduled for each team.

The biggest problem with the standings is that I can't find a divisional standings report which, for this league's purposes, would be a conference standings report. For now, I'm keeping the conference standings by hand. This is important because only the top eight teams from each conference make their conference tournament.

I've played 14 games, including two conference series (4-game series with two games apiece at home) and I've found a handy use for the power ratings. They are going to be this league's Associated Press ratings.

Here's the first Top 20, all teams controlled by the computer:
1. Oregon
2. USC
3. Wake Forest
4. South Carolina
5. Maryland
6. Auburn
7. Washington
8. Alabama
9. Florida
10. Duke
11. Kansas State
12. Washington State
13. Georgia Tech
14. Kansas
15. LSU
16. Arizona
17. Texas A&M
18. Texas
19. Ole Miss
20. Virginia

I've had several people inquire about some things like drafting, which will be a recruiting process in this game. Players will be "recruited" by each participating owner by ranking them from 1 to 20. If two or more people want to recruit the same player at No. 1, then it will basically be up to the player to choose which school he attends based on A) Location and B) the school's baseball prestige.

So Ty Cobb, when he comes along, might have 18 owners want him as their No. 1 pick. He is most likely to go to a Georgia school, though, based on where he was born, and if Tech has been winning more ballgames than Georgia, he would have a greater chance of choosing Georgia Tech.
It will be lottery-based, though, so that even a school from far away would have a shot at him.

Teams that are owned, therefore, will have a much greater chance of winning in the long run than the teams that only have the computer to watch over them. So if you see your team up there and want to keep them there, join in now. We'll start up as a league for Season 5.
If you don't see your team ranked, they definitely need your help.

Add Nebraska to the list of "spoken fors."

[jollytacoman14]

I'll take LSU..if they are taken Boston College...or UConn..? Not sure which schools you are using.. but let me know if I can have any of those

[Ronzonie7]

I'm really starting to warm up to the idea of this league. I think the unique 'recruiting' aspect will be interesting. I'd be interested to hear exactly what MLB players you are using to fill the league. Is it multi-era? Are there any fictional names?

Plus I'll really want my team to win, for pride's sake. Go Gamecocks!

[RebelYell]

jolly, you've got LSU

Boston College and UConn would be mid-majors at this time.

Ron: I'm going to go into a lahman database and re-date the rookie years of the players chronologically so that we always have a recruiting class of about 400. That should hold us for about 40 seasons or so ... It won't be multi-era in that Cobb will be on the same field with Ted Williams or Sammy Sosa, but we'll move forward through time from the start of baseball history.

There are fictional names right now because I just let the game create everything. The first four years I'm doing for test purposes and just to establish histories.

[RebelYell]

Latest update:
I've got the league constitution all typed out. I'll send it to the above folks who inquired and anybody else who is interested.
It's pretty thorough and describes a fairly detailed league without a whole lot of micromanagement by the participants.
Send me an e-mail
Richnamanda@earthlink.net
... if you want a copy of the constitution.

Also, I've set up my yahoogroups as this league's home base.
sign up by sending an e-mail to

OOTP5-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Be my 10th member. McDonalds only served 10 people before they got to "billions and billions" right?

[RebelYell]

"Cobb Goes to College" now has a co-Commissioner and discussions with him have opened up more possibilities.

Everything previous still stands, but there will be a couple of adjustments to the constitution. The one thing that excites me most about the minor changes is that we're going to institute a lottery system that allows the player to "choose" the school he wants to attend based on where the player was born and the prestige of the schools involved in recruiting that player.

So ... let's use Ty Cobb as our constant example. If he is chosen by 11 different schools as their top choice, the schools will each be given X chances to win Cobb over based on the school's recent performance on the field (we're going to use the previous three years records) and the proximity of that school to Cobb's birth place.
We'll plug in all the numbers and probably even write up a release telling the owners what players have been recruited where and who is still yet to make a decision.

Also, some folks have inquired about making their team a non-baseball playing school. Providence, for example, just dropped baseball a couple of years ago. If you want to be Providence, you will start in the Big East (one of the four mid-majors conferences) and try to play your way into the ACC.
If you want to be Cal Poly SLO, you'll start off in the Big West. If you want Montana, then Big West ...

There will be a cap of 80 teams put on the league. It's going to be tough enough to manage that many clubs. But there's space still available. Just send me the team you want and we'll be ready to go in the next month or so.

For those of you who can't wait, I'll have the schedule finished today (I hope) and I will be glad to try and zip up the league file and send it out to you with the League's 40 major teams.
I'll also run out the latest top 20 when the schedule is ready and the halfway point of the season is reached.

Thanks to everybody who has inquired ...
Rich

[RebelYell]

First season's Top 20 through 26 games:
(Just to give folks an idea, the home run leader has 14, RBIs 30, and ERA leader is at 1.17. Nothing really jumps out as being ridiculous. The leading batting averages are high, but not out of whack and not extraordinary for any league just 26 games into the season. College baseball normally has higher batting averages and this league may not have those kinds of high numbers.)

1. USC
2. Oregon
3. Washington
4. Georgia Tech
5. Texas Tech
6. California
7. Duke
8. Kansas
9. Georgia
10. Virginia
11. North Carolina
12. Tennessee
13. Nebraska
14. Texas
15. Texas A&M
16. Maryland
17. South Carolina
18. Alabama
19. Wake Forest
20. Washington St.

Add Auburn to the "taken" list.

[sporr]

Do you happen to have a website for this league. I'm intrigued by the concept.

[RebelYell]

No, no website yet. I have a couple of people who have offered to help with one and not sure if that means they have the space or what. Me, I have earthlink space and no know-how.

It is a goal of mine to find a place to share the league (and a 1950 football league) with people. That's about the most satisfaction I think I could get out of running a league is having people come and visit and keep up with it.

[bsbll_n_mn]

i'd be interested, but i would want the MInnesota Gophers, seeing they aren't there, i'll just see how it all plays out

[RebelYell]

And how about that hockey team, eh??

With this league, you can have Minnesota. They'll start in the "weaker" of the two 40-team leagues, referred to as mid-majors. I'm basically going to put all the Big 10 teams in one "mid-major" conference.
I know it isn't actually mid-majors, but I had to choose what I felt were the four most dominant college baseball conferences.

So, if you want them, Minnesota is yours. The object of the game for them is to basically dominate their conference (and it won't be easy with people wanting Michigan and Ohio State) and earn a promotion into one of the four major conferences. I guess for Minnesota, we would jump them into the Big 12.

[bsbll_n_mn]

nice...hockey was awesome...sorry to you michigan fans, it was a great game ((but the better team won ))

is there a website that i haven't seen a link to?

[I Am The Game]

PC still available?

Damn that Title IX, running baseball out of Providence.

[RebelYell]

I'll put you down for Providence. They'll be a mid-major in the Big East and I think I've got a guy taking Nova, too, so you guys will have to fight over climbing into the upper echelon.
Kansas State has been taken as well.

[BigDuVall]

I'd like to join at the Clemson Tigers!

[RebelYell]

You're Clemson ... just give me your e-mail address and I'll add you to the list.

The schedule is finished and I'm coming upon another bi-weekly Top 20 ... probably have it posted here tomorrow.

12 different owners so far. We've got room for many more.