Posted by hughesjr on 5/27/2013 2:46:00 PM (view original):
Posted by gillispie1 on 5/26/2013 3:03:00 PM (view original):
Posted by hughesjr on 5/25/2013 8:44:00 PM (view original):
Posted by gillispie on 5/25/2013 8:17:00 PM (view original):
the whole argument of if someone willfully followed the rules or not, is simply not the point. the people who keep beating that drum are looking at the small picture, not the big one. old admin, who made this game, *WOULD HAVE NEVER PULLED THIS *****. its so obviously bad when such a big % of the population of this game is predicated on people having multiple teams. seble doesnt really understand, and he didnt have a problem either, he is just trying to silence the whiners. further, there was no provision or guidance on how to unwind - rather, it was more like emy said, seble wont do anything unless someone cheats and gets reported for it (cheating meaning, abusing the two teams for an unfair advantage).problem is, people started complaining WITHOUT those coaches doing anything unreasonable between teams. hughes, explain how me having a d1 A+ prestige team and a d2 team within 1000 miles is an unfair advantage *even without intentional abuse*, as you suggest it must be. its god damn ridiculous, their pools of recruits dont overlap not even for one guy. its not even close. to claim that is an unfair advantage is just ignorant, plain and simple. so yeah, i know my a+ school isnt going after that 200 miles away guy i really want on my d2 school. ok. tell me something i didnt already know. seriously, please do... its just stupid.
the big picture is this. this game is strictly for fun, and this game needs a healthy population to be a fun game (what it doesnt need to be a fun game, is the policing of ridiculous rules). thats the gigantic flashing sign in the sky you all seem to ignore. this game needs a healthy population and its struggled to grow for many years. what keeps things going is the few coaches who do play often get hooked and pick up multiple teams. sometimes they are in different worlds, sometimes, the same world. to prioritize eliminating maybe possibly a guy gets some miniscule unmeasurable advantage from having 2 d1 schools 800 miles apart, not intentionally abusing it, over the healthy population of this game, it just makes no sense at all. the big picture is there, some of you guys are refusing to look at it. if it was reasonable to put the rule in place, it was non arbitrary to draw the line at 1000, if there was any legitimacy at all, it would be different.
Why the rule was developed or how is not relevant.
There is a rule and it is a violation of fair play to disregard the rule.
It does not even matter if there is or is not an advantage.
Fair game play means following the rules .. we don't get to pick only the ones we agree with.
i was going to try to avoid ridiculous examples, but if we cant get beyond black and white, i fail to see another way.
correct me if im wrong here, but im going to characterize your argument as not follow a rule is wrong no matter what, period.
is that an accurate characterization? i dont want to get hung up on the word "cheating" or not. right and wrong, forget the vocabulary.
my counter example, as ridiculous as it may be, is the actions of jewish people who fled germany after ordered to go to concentration camps. they didnt know how it would turn out but thought the rule was ridiculous and fled the law. if you characterize that as them doing something wrong, i cant see us continuing this discussion!
to me what makes it not wrong is the rule itself was flawed. the system of enforcement of the rule was flawed (the treatment at the camps being an unreasonable enforcement of the rule). you *cant* simply take any rule on face value and fault anyone who does not follow it. its not always black and white. can we at least agree on that?
I don't agree with every rule, everywhere, not matter what.
In this case, I am saying that this game has rules that must be followed. One agrees to follow the rules to play, before you are given a team ... and every time you pay to add credits if you have a team.
A person who says they will follow the game rules, and does not is dishonest.
Anyone who does not follow the fair play guidelines is not playing fair and is subject to being banned from the game.
While I don't want anyone terminated, I feel that I (as a paying customer) have a right to expect that if I follow the fair play guidelines, i should expect that others will also follow the same guidelines or that they will face consequences. I don't think that unfair play should be allowed and I, in fact, demand that it is not allowed. If they want to change the rules so that it is allowed to have 2 teams w/in 1000 miles, I would be against it ... HOWEVER, if it was the rule, then I would accept that people who did it are playing fair and then I would need to make a decision if I wanted to continue to pay to play a game that allowed this rule.
I would post my opinion of the rule when asked and petition to have it changed if possible ... but I would accept the rule (as a term of service to play the game) and abide by it.
All I am saying is that there are terms of service to play and everyone needs to follow the terms of service ... that puts everyone on an equal playing field and within the parameters of the game. When people do not follow the terms of service and it is known by everyone that it is happening, it undermines all the other fair play guidelines too.
If Coach A does not have to follow the 1000 mile rule, why do I have to follow the "No Throwing a Game Rule" (it might be good for my whole conference if Team B gets into the NT and not hurt my seed at all to lose the last game in the CT) or the "No Collusion Rule" (No need to risk me and Team B going for the same recruits ... we both have A+ prestiges and really only need to fear each other ... if we exchange lists then we can both recruit better and we are going to beat the other guys in the area anyway ... what does it hurt) ... etc, etc?
The bottom line is, if there are rules for fair game play then all users need to follow them all the time ... we don't get to pick our own rules to follow or none of them matter.
edit: im going to go ahead and clarify that this isnt really worth reading unless you are hughes having the conversation with me, and even then its questionable :)
i see where you are coming from, but i take a couple exceptions.
"A person who says they will follow the game rules, and does not is dishonest." - first, i cant recall signing a license or use agreement when i add seasons. i dont think i ever agreed to follow seble's new rule, and i dont think anyone asked me. ive made it perfectly clear ive had teams within 1000 miles even though it was never made clear to me if it mattered if they were cross division. i knew that the possibility existed and hoped seble wasnt stupid enough to make the rule cross division, but he is, and he did. so i was in violation, but i *never* claimed to be following that rule. most people in this position can make the same statement. theres a difference between saying you will do something and not doing it, which is somewhat dishonest (as you point out), and saying, this is total bullshit, im going to ignore it. most people who have had multiple teams went with the latter, myself included.
im glad you would accept any rule and just go with it, that makes life simpler for you. and you are generally a pretty good guy so im happy that system works for you. im personally not OK with playing a game for 5 years and then having the situation ripped out under me. its too big a hit to the enjoyment of the game. its similar to (but of greatly different magnitude) when people flee a country for having rules they cannot stomach. typically, this is predicated by those same people ignoring rules they could not abide by, when the repercussions were small enough to risk. just like in prohibition - people knew it was illegal to drink, but they did. they broke a rule they were not willing to abide by. the ramifications of getting caught are small enough to risk it. at some point, if the government says, the penalty for drinking is death, those people generally want to leave. sometimes they have the financial means, sometimes they dont.
this is a similar situation. my responsilibity to follow seble's rules is pretty small, so is the grievance. in the context of this game though, which is a minor facet of life, the grievance is quite significant. im perfectly happy to have enjoyed the game a bit longer and get banned as a result, because i really have very minimal interest in playing by seble's rules when they are so pitifully communicated and executed. you want to take the idealistic view of no matter what, id follow the fairplay rules. but the impact to you is nothing. if i didnt drink, id go along with prohibition. but if the government put prohibition in now, they would have to pry the makers mark from my cold, dead hands. i dont drink often, but its my right and the government can go **** themselves if they have a problem with it. this is a for fun game, and its everyones right to enjoy it. if seble wants to majorly screw that up and do nothing to mediate the situation, he can go **** himself. its really easy to take the idealistic view until it actually affects you. i hope you can recognize that and see that its not out of maliciousness or dishonesty that some of us refuse to follow sebles stupid system (the rule is ok, the implementation and execution is not ok). its out of the impact just being meaningful enough. you'd do the same if you loved drinking and the penalty for doing so was a ticket. at least, 99% of people would. occasionally a situation comes along, socrates agrees to get put to death for crimes against the church, when his guards will allow him to escape, and he refuses on moral ground. but most of us would simply escape, and i am one of them. im for being idealistic, but whats the cause here? the cause has to justify ignoring the simple realistic tradeoff. following the rules of an idiot who doesnt know what hes doing, for the sake of following his rules, just isnt a big prize, in my book.
just to be clear, i dont collude with other coaches in recruiting. why? not because its a rule. because its an unfair advantage, that i want nothing to do with. there is a moral responsibility to follow rules but it has to be weighted against the situation and the rule itself, the value of "doing what you are supposed" to wins out when its close, but not when its not. when i drive down a 25mph road and its questionably too late for kids to be out, i go 25mph. there is reasonable justification, and even though my opinion differs, i follow the rule. when im driving through the middle of PA and its clear as could be, no traffic, and the speed limit is 55mph, i go faster. what am i going to do, veer offroad and hit a cow? i see the justification for a speed limit, but in some cases its ridiculous, so sometimes i comply, and sometimes i dont. maybe you always follow the speed limit, but 99% of people have rules they follow when they dont strongly object, when the costs of doing so are low. but when the rules dont make sense in that application, 99% of people have a case where they bend or break a rule. if you havent, i would bet money its from lack of experience, not a sincere devotion to idealism.
what im saying is, this is not about honesty or dishonesty. ive been 100% honest, ive had teams within 1000 miles forever and would not move them myself even if i knew seble meant you couldnt have teams within 1000 miles even in different divisions. i simply dont agree people are subject to following the rules no matter what. if this was a free situation - if i had nothing invested - id have no say. but i have plenty invested, so i get some say, in my book. its not honesty or dishonesty, its a matter of principles and your values. my values are such that i can do whatever the hell i want until i infringe upon the rights of someone else and cause them some harm, where they suffer non trivially as a result. so can anyone else. if someone tries to inhibit that sort of behavior, without good cause, i dont respect the rule. i can see if you disagree with that philosophy, but i do object to calling it dishonest.
anyway, one last point to touch on. you say - "When people do not follow the terms of service and it is known by everyone that it is happening, it undermines all the other fair play guidelines too." - exactly! i feel like finally, we agree on something. thats the point. thats my way of protesting the system. the whole fair play guidelines system has been shoddy from day 1. i find myself on the other side of the coin in one sense, but in the big picture, my stance has not changed. in the past, i pushed for a clearer system and better enforcement of anti-collusion rules. but its more about the communication and clarity, and how the rules are implemented and enforced, than the details of what is allowed and what is not. i say the same thing today, i could accept (and follow) a set of rules that i didnt totally agree with. i cant accept the way the system of rules is handled by those responsible for handling it. same complaint ive had for 5 years. if i really agreed with the way the US govt operates, id probably respect that 55mph speed limit on a long straight flat road in the middle of nowhere, at least more than i do now. not following the rules where i legitimately disagree, and can tolerate the penalty, is partly how i express my objections to the system as a whole. now, i dont go up to the police officers and tell them that, but people around me notice it, i notice when the people around me do it, and to some degree, its a protest against the system in general. i dont drunk drive, but that doesnt mean on the way home from the drive through, a whopping couple minute drive from home, i wont sometimes crack open the first beer on the way. why? because i should be allowed to and its total bullshit i cant. you cant get drunk drinking a third of a beer during a 5 minute ride home. its no worse than drinking water. does that make me dishonest? i dont think so. does it make me in the wrong, simply because i didnt follow a rule? thats debatable, but i dont think you or anyone else has the right to tell me not to do it, until it does (or has the potential to) directly and substantially infringe upon your rights. in short, anyone who says i cant crack open a beer 3 minutes from home, can go **** themselves. i rarely do it, not wanting to put up with the bullshit that can come with it, but its *NEVER* because i feel its wrong. and in the rare case i do open that beer 2 minutes early, its not because i cant wait, but out of frustration that some ******* is a big enough ******* to tell me not to do it.
5/27/2013 9:12 PM (edited)