This is great, can't wait to see the teams and pick what fictional sports team I'll get way too invested in this time!

Bit of Business:

Each fictional person in the league above the rank of player will have a unique personality trait that will affect their decisions and relationships. This applies to owners, coaches, managers, or other personnel as the story develops. I will base all decisions they make on what their personality trait would suggest. I think it'll be a fun bit of depth to the story and simulation. Each of the owners and head coaches were randomly assigned traits. Bear these in mind when voting on scenarios.

To promote cohesion in the fan bases, Emerson announced that longer tenure would give fans more voting power. Each season as a good standing member of a supporter's club will be accumulative and if a fan decides to sell shares and move to a new team, they will start over from zero. He hopes this will prevent “club jumping” and unnecessary tampering between clubs.


First Club is Revealed

With all of the business out of the way, Mr. Edward Earl Emerson was prepared to announce the first club in the PUCH and removed a cloth drape to reveal the new jersey as the logo was projected onto the wall.

Empire City HC will be located in Manhattan, New York and play their games at the newly-built Macy's Center which seats 7,500. The club will be owned and financed by Tom Torrence, an investment banker who has lots of money but is terrible at managing it and has a penchant for overspending. The team staff is built on the remnants of an athletic club in Manhattan where Emerson and Torrence used to play amateur hockey together. Torrence is gung-ho but notoriously unreliable and Emerson felt it best to keep the club nearby just in case.

The club will be coached by Blaine Bartholomew, 65, who is a crony of Torrence and his uncle by blood. Big Bart is about as incompetent as they come, often unaware of what is going on and the modern game has long passed him by. His ass. coaches are Andy Ackersley, 43, and Steve Searsey, 47, all from Manhattan. Ackersley considered himself something of a savant, always trying to invent new strategies in hockey while Searsey is a great coach but is terrible at teaching anyone anything about the sport.

The club is named after the Empire State Building and New York City and Torrence chose purple and gold because his favorite 60's Jaguar is purple and he likes to invest in gold bonds when he's not too hung over to write checks.


With that, Emerson quickly pushed a clearly drunk Tom Torrence back behind the curtains and prepared to reveal the next new club.

C&C always appreciated!

Aside from the material the jerseys are made out of, are there any other unique elements that New Balance brings to the jersey design (i.e. weird cuts leading to odd looking sections of the jersey)

Dan O'Mac wrote:

Aside from the material the jerseys are made out of, are there any other unique elements that New Balance brings to the jersey design (i.e. weird cuts leading to odd looking sections of the jersey)

 
Great question! Knowing there is some type of euro football influence when it comes to ownership structure (fans voting being the equivalent of the 50+1 rule in the Bundesliga), I’m really hoping that the inspiration doesn’t stop there. We are very accustomed to threads that take most of their structure from the history (design and progression) of the sport being simmed paired with slight inspiration from other sports, but we really haven’t seen a sport taken over by the norms of another. With NB and euro football at its core, this has the potential to be really outside the box by Alt standard. I’m hoping to see that euro football influence trickle down to the identities of the league. Not sponsors on every team’s chest or anything, but maybe a hybrid of the numbers on front look that you see in college hockey and the simple euro football kit aesthetic. Hell, I’d be charmed by smaller markets willing themselves into existence. This is where the self proclaimed hockey markets should thrive. Minnesota and “Hockey City”, I’m looking at you. Can’t wait to see it unfold.

Second Club is Unveiled

Mr. Edward Earl Emerson readjusted the podium, while making sure his security staff had escorted Mr. Torrence out of the building, particularly because there was no love lost between him and the next owner up for a club reveal.

Metropolitan NYC will be located in Queens, New York and play their games at the freshly revamped Hangar Center which now seats 11,000 much to the chagrin of architects who say having that many fans in the old building will be problematic. The club sponsored by JetBlue Airways, a local Queens-based company. The club will be owned and financed by Bob Byrnes, a quarrelsome and meddlesome local businessman who absolutely detests Manhattan and is peeved that his club got announced second after Empire City. Byrnes loves to stick his nose into anything and everything, literally and figuratively. If there's something he can meddle with, it's guaranteed he will do it. (Thus him being convinced cramming 11,000 seats into tight former hangar that shouldn't seat more than 6,500 was a good idea)

The club will be coached by Smokey Joe Jackson, a 58-year-old chainsmoker who always seems more interested in endless cigarettes and finding the next best Cuban than actually coaching hockey. Jackson has oodles of hockey knowledge but he often can't be bothered to get involved in anything related to the game. Dave Dorksi is an assistant coach, a 44-year-old who has a childish petty streak and is always feuding with somebody and creating grudges out of nothing. Young Kevin Kyles rounds out the staff and he's barely 30 and only wants to fit in so nobody ever takes him seriously.

Byrnes is a diehard Mets fan and decided to unabashedly take most of their identity when creating Metropolitan. Emerson tried his best to steer him away from it but to little avail. Byrnes added NYC to the already long name as a dig to Empire City to remind them who the real New York team is in the city. The color scheme of orange and blue and white is applied to a geometric deco styled M logo and paired with a deco number system, similar to what is found in NYC subways. Originally Emerson had his designer make a different logo but Byrnes tracked down the poor young designer at his Brooklyn apartment and talked him into making a rash of changes.


With New York out of the way and their owners back to appropriate distances away from each other, Emerson prepared to reveal a new city.

C&C always appreciated!