ItDoesntMatter wrote:

I'll pick this back up when I can, but it might be a little while before I get to it

😬😬😬

Well, it's been a lot of a while, but here I am! Sorry for disappearing off the face of the earth for about 8 months there, but in honor of the 1-year anniversary of this thread (at least on these boards, anyway), dashball is back! Thanks to everyone's favorite virus, I've had more time than usual to work on this, and I've got a lot prepared for y'all. Unfortunately, the first post is an offseason post, so it's a lot of reading, but there's some interesting stuff in there. I've got everything ready for the 2025 season, though, so I should be able to get things out at a pretty good clip. Without further ado, the 2024-2025 offseason:

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July 26, 2024
Well, we’ve all known it for a while now, but it’s official - dashball is coming to Atlanta. NDL Commissioner Justin Ross was apparently so anxious to get this off his chest that he couldn’t even wait 24 hours after the Finals wrapped up to make the announcement, but who really cares about that anyway? You want to know the details - when, why, how? The answer is pretty much everything we already suspected. The new club will inherit the resumed contracts from the 0-50 Colorado Pinnacles, but will also hold an expansion draft, so hopefully (fingers crossed) they won’t be quite as garbage. As for their name, logo, uniforms, all that jazz - all we got was “soon.” Time to play the waiting game.

As for the league structure, things will move back to a 3-divisions-of-4 alignment, with Atlanta in the Central along with Miami, Nashville, and Orlando, kicking Texas to the West. The schedule will revert to the same 50-game one used in 2022 and ‘23. Things got much more interesting from there, though, as the playoffs are expanding to 8 teams, and Ross hinted that the NDL itself might be expanding to 16 teams in the near future. Owner Michael Wisk also briefly took the stand, announcing his GM, Joshua Jones, and his head coach, Kole Charles, who at 35 and 31 respectively, might be younger than some of the players Atlanta winds up with.

October 4, 2024
The 2024 NDL Expansion Draft is now complete, and Atlanta now has 11 new players they can add to their roster. As a reminder, each team was required to leave one player unprotected for each year they had been in the league, and Atlanta picked up one player from each team, which they will add to the players they got automatically from the old Pinnacles roster. Notable names switching jerseys next year include W/C Gilbert Allard (PHI), W/ZB Mason Shale (SEA), and B/ZB Vachel Vardon (NY). The most interesting pick, though, is B/C Thomas Notz (TOR), who will be playing for his third team in as many years. Notz, who turned 41 a few weeks ago, will likely be competing with Allard for a starting role, and with his contract up at the end of the season, is likely retiring after this year, though he should be a useful veteran presence even if he does end up on the bench.

October 5, 2024
With Saturday’s helping of draft completed, let’s look at the big stories:

- Atlanta took the obvious choice with the first pick, grabbing B/ZB Christian Gonzalez out of Central Arkansas. Gonzalez was an offensive superstar with the Bears, and while he won’t be the headliner for his big-league squad, he should be an exciting player to watch.
- An otherwise boring night in terms of wheeling and dealing started off rather interesting when Toronto sent Lewis Test to Dallas in order to trade up for the second pick, grabbing W/K Charles DeFaria. The Redbacks got their guy at #3 with W/ZB Dell’avious Houston, which is a name that absolutely belongs in Texas.
- Speaking of names that belong in Texas, I’m sure someone somewhere already has a tattoo of W/ZB Jesus Romo’s name, albeit maybe separately. It’s unlikely that that person lives in the Bay Area, however.

As always, you can check out the full list of first-rounders below:

1. ATL - B/ZB Christian Gonzalez (Central Arkansas)
2. TOR (from LA via TEX) - W/K Charles DeFaria (Alabama State)
3. TEX (from TOR) - W/ZB Dell’avious Houston (Wyoming)
4. MIA - B/ZB Jerrell Nelson (UNC Asheville)
5. NY - B/ZB Kristian Rahman (Virginia Tech)
6. CHI - F/ZB Kevin Simmons (Dartmouth)
7. NY (from ORL) - W/ZB Jeff Attleson (Northwestern)
8. NSH - W/ZB Josh Kolberg (Princeton)
9. SEA - W/K Richard Singh (Villanova)
10. CAL - W/ZB Jesus Romo (Oregon)
11. PHI - W/C Paul Phan (Washington)
12. LA (from TEX) - B/K Jaymon Olibrice (Troy)

December 31, 2024
Big news from the Los Angeles Sabertooths today, as owner Randall Ramsey announced he had fired nearly every member of the team’s front office. The only survivor will be his daughter, Bridget Jenkins, who had worked with the team in a limited capacity but will now be asked to serve as the NDL’s first female general manager. Ramsey cited “a lack of trying to get anything done around here” following a 1-51 regular season in 2024. “I wasn’t mad that we had a bad year. We had a lot of injuries on the team last year, and sometimes, you’re gonna have a bad year. What I couldn’t stand is that Prudy seemed content to sit on his hands and wait for something to fall into his lap,” Ramsey said, referring to former GM Prudenciano Fernandez. Ramsey also fired head coach Lee Flowers, promoting assistant coach Travis Britt to succeed him.

January 2, 2025
Things are continuing to shake up in LA, as a mammoth four-team trade was just announced involving the Sabertooths, as well as the Sea Lions, Sawyers, and Fugitives. It’s hard to break everything down at once, so we’ll look at what this means for each team:

LA - The Tooths are the biggest movers in this deal, and the headline piece is B/ZB Clyde Kamai, who was frustrated with the culture that has been developing recently. Kamai made it seem like things had been boiling over for a long time, and ultimately requested a trade once Tuesday’s news was made public. He will be sent to Seattle, who will be returning their third-round pick in the upcoming draft. LA will also be losing backup W/K Cedric Tola, but will gain Sea Lion B/K Rick Delaney and Fugitive B/ZB Mitch Beetle in the deal. Hopefully, these two can help rebuild the Sabertooths to something a bit better than one win.

CAL - The Sea Lions sent Rick Delaney to Los Angeles and B/K Will Baker to Nashville, but in addition to the aforementioned Cedric Tola, gained a significant upgrade in Seattle B/ZB Will Mitchell. Mitchell, a lifetime Sawyer, is 35, but is still playing some of the best dashball of his career, and hopes this trip south can net him a ring or two before he hangs it up. At keeper, meanwhile, the Lions will turn to 24-year-old W/K Zenzo West, who will be starting for the first time in his career.

SEA - The Sawyers managed to upgrade from Will Mitchell to Clyde Kamai, and only had to give up a third-rounder to do it. Hopefully, Kamai can help plug the gaps in a Seattle roster that lost a lot of talent this offseason, largely due to the number of former Pinnacles they had last year.

NSH - Nashville was largely just a catalyst in this trade. The Fugues ultimately said goodbye to Mitch Beetle, separating him from his cousin Joel, but welcomed Will Baker in his place. Neither will probably make much of an impact in 2025, but it’s an upgrade for the Fugitives nonetheless.

February 24, 2025
It’s that time of year again. The NDL season is about to start, which means it’s time to look at this offseason winners and losers:

Winner: Miami - After a surprisingly good 2023 season was followed by a surprisingly bad 2024, the Palms find themselves with a chance to turn things back around in 2025. They picked up the biggest free agent of the offseason, acquiring former Redback B/ZB Gerald Hartline, an underrated but important part of Texas’s dynastic run the past few years. They were also able to re-sign both of their major free agents in W/ZB René Siemann and B/C Ben Elkins. With the Redbacks out of the Central and into the West, Miami has put themselves in a position to claim the division crown and a high seed come playoff time.

Loser: Philadelphia - Last year, the Row dominated the East, going 22-2 against their divisional foes and becoming the lone team in the division to make the playoffs. Now, the East is viewed as a toss-up between Philly, Chicago, and New York - and while the Frost and Chargers have certainly improved, the Row are moving in the opposite direction. Philly is one of the oldest teams in the league; notably, B/C Joe Kestner Jr. is 41 and F/ZB Elenio Field is 39. While they did take some steps to add youth, like trading for Frost W/ZB Tim Todd, they didn’t distance themselves enough from the pack to give Philadelphians much hope, and a third consecutive NDLCS appearance will be a tall ask.

Nice to see this come back! I'd love to see a team in Vancouver someday. Meantime, I'll just be a neutral fan

sevsdast wrote:

Where are the sigs?

Not every content creator wants to create sigs. You can request some, but don't expect them to always be there. 

Wow your back! That's great news, I'm looking forward to see what you got in store!

Hey man I'm glad you're excited but you gotta stop filling the threads up with pointless chatter, don't spread one posts worth of chat over 3 or 4 posts. I went ahead an fixed it for you but let's refrain from doing it again.