The first thing I want to talk about is CKL History. Now that're we're nearing the end of our 16th season, I think it's useful to revisit some of the definable eras of the Cavalier Keeper League. I'd break the league's history down into roughly thirds.
First Third: 2002 - 2006 - Infancy
This five year period in the early/mid aughts was the birth of the CKL. For at least a couple of years there was a UTS (University Transit Service, pretty much the bastion of all things awesome at UVA (that's the University of Virginia, dotards)) redraft league that had Kendall, Paul, founding father Joe-Joe Stewart, some Parking and Transportation IT guys, maybe Joe (honestly don't remember) and me in it. After a couple of seasons, Kendall thought he'd like the juice (and continuity) of a keeper league. With a group at the P&T conference table and a speaker phone, a Yahoo! Fantasy Football draft in August/September of 2002 birthed the CKL.
The first five years of the league included some of the more important moments in CKL lore. The Wilbur brothers won the first two league titles. Russ and Rookie (begrudgingly) were invited in 2004 when the league expanded to 12 teams. Founding Father Brian Steele famously drafted Peerless Price number one overall. Paul traded for Michael Vick who then promptly (like, the same day) broke his leg and was out for the season. Kendall earned his first two cups back-to-back, still the only CKL coach to earn that honor. And Big Joe broke through for his only cup to date.
In terms of the makeup of the league, I'll refer you to Part IV of the CKL Charter - CKL Style and History. We lost Founding Father John Hall in 2004 due to unfortunate circumstances surrounding Ricky Williams' pot-related temporary retirement from the league. We gained Mark Fulton as his replacement. I already mentioned we added Russ and Rookie in expansion, but we also replaced Founding Father Ken Wilbur with Kirk Whitt. We also had a weird Brian Steele --> Tom Humphries --> Chad Proctor change from 2004 to 2006. The other move in this period was from Joe Joe Stewart to Ben Bledsoe. We also moved the league hosting site from Yahoo! to ESPN in 2005. The league was young and there were some growing pains, but we entered the second "third" of CKL history in a much better place than we started.
Second Third: 2007 - 2011 - Dynastic Tendencies
The next fives years were defined by the back and forth championships of Mark and Kendall. Kendall got up to four total (FOUR!) while Mark was the first non-Kendall owner to earn two CKL Cups. Rookie grabbed his only Cup back in season six, but after that it went Mark/Kendall/Mark/Kendall. It got old, fast. I personally was afraid we entered a dynastic period that would never end. Of course, that fear was quite short-sighted.
The other notable feature of this period of CKL history was it's stability. We expanded from 12 to 14 teams in 2011 (welcome Patrick Adair and Norris Bunn), but otherwise did not need to replace any coaches. It was a period of relative calm and predicable results that would be followed by what I consider to be the most interesting period yet of the league's history.
Third Third: 2012 - Present - The Age of Parity
While we've had several coaching changes and scoring tweaks during our current phase, the last six seasons have been defined by parity. Every cup winner during this period hoisted their first ever cup. No repeat winners. Ben --> Chad --> Paul --> Nathan --> Russ, and we're awaiting the winner of Ryan/Norris, which will make six straight first timers. It's an exceptionally exciting time to be a member of the CKL. Everyone legitimately has a shot to win every year.
As for the changes during this period, we lost Founding Father Alan, two-time champion Mark, Founding Father Derrick, and Patrick Adair, but gained Yado Yakub, Corey Marquardt, Ryan Waters, and Heath Oderman. We also made some scoring tweaks, moved to IDPs (and eventually to DP flex), and had some of the most fun draft weekends ever.
Now that we've seen where we've been, let's take a look at where we are.
2017 - CKL Season 16 - The Numbers
Final Regular Season All Play Table
- Ryan's team isn't the best CKL team ever. It isn't the highest scoring team of all time. But it is the most dominant team the league has ever seen. Congratulations, Ryan. More on this below.
- Eight of the league's 14 teams are below .500. That's top-heavy.
- Paul looks like a playoff team according to this table. But Jenna and luck had other plans. He is currently competing for the Conso Championship, so it's clear he had a good squad this season.
- Conversely, Yado seems like the one who snuck into the Championship Playoffs. We'll have to investigate this further below.
- High score of the season belong to Russ' Week 11 beat down of Ben. Russell Wilson, Keenan Allen, and LeSean McCoy all surpassed the 20 point threshold in the run away victory.
- "I Didn't Inhale," the CKL award for lowest high score of the season, goes to Corey. But only because he couldn't overcome my horrible high of 92.3. Corey and Nathan join the ignominious short list of teams to not break into triple digits in the modern era of the league. Other members of this shitlist include Norris 2011 and Nathan 2014. Hurray, the group is four deep and I own half of them.
- Our own "Hard to Kill" team with the highest low is, surprise surprise, Ryan with 79.6 in Week 12. Which he won. Impressive.
- And lowest low? Corey with an anemic 52.6 points in a Week 9 loss to the Wampas. Must be nice to win when you only score 62.6 points, eh, Joe?
- "Mr. Explosive" is Russ', as his 23.76 standard deviation indicates all kinds of outcomes are possible with his team.
- "Mr. Dependable" is Nathan's, in that his team was dependably shitty. When your season high and low are only 25.9 points apart, that means, uh, you're...uh...dependable? I got nothing.
- Corey didn't clear 1,000 points. That's usually not what one would consider a "good thing."
Final Regular Season Hotness Table
- Russ looked like he was primed to make a deep playoff run. Jenna's luck ran out, though. After two straight years, Russ might finally be running on fumes. The lady is incorrigible.
- Don't recollect if I've ever seen Kendall on the bottom of this table.
- Norris, Ben, and Ryan also are hot heading into the playoffs.
- Kirk, despite spending a good chunk of the season in the basement with Corey, Heath and me, really turned it on down the stretch.
Final Regular Season Luck Table
- Weird how I had a suspicion that Yado might have had some luck getting into the playoffs. You gotta ride that wave as long as you can, though. It's hard NOT to have some luck involved in a Cup run.
- And to totally contradict that point, both Cup finalists, Ryan and Norris, had negative luck this regular season. Which means they're both a little underrated overall. More on this later.
- Kirk. My man. Kirk. Geez. What weird voodoo have you been doing to earn a -3.00 score this season. You should've been 6-7. That's wild.
- It's been a while since Joe was complaining about his bad luck, right?
Final Regular Season Jenna Table
- Well that wasn't close.
- Jenna LOVES her some Russ.
- Really not much else to say. Good luck satisfying her in 2018, anyone else.
Weekly Playoff History
- This was a new addition last season. It shows the playoff seeding after each week of the regular season. Additional columns on the right show seed change from the previous week, the number of weeks of the regular season a team was "in", and the rank of that number.
- Ryan and Ben were the only teams to be "in" all season long. That's impressive.
- On the other hand, Joe and Corey were the only two to be "out" the entire year. Hard to do, especially for Joe, who earned the seven seed.
- There is cause for particular pain for Chad, and to a lesser degree, Paul, who were in the playoffs for nine and six weeks, respectively. Chad was in the playoffs for 69.2% of the season, only to enter the Conso as the eight seed. A six game winning streak followed by a six game losing streak will do that to you. One of the weirder seasons I can remember.
In Season Improvement
- I'm conflicted if I should even include this set of tables, as I haven't figured out a decent, readable way to present it yet. Basically, this shows team's average by "thirds" of the season. The first set is the first four weeks, the second set the second four weeks, and the rightmost set is the final five weeks of the regular season.
- The second two sections also include information on changes in average points and percentage improvement/decline compared to the previous "third." The idea here is to show how the various team's performance changes over the course of the season.
- Ryan had the best average in section one, Norris in section two, and Russ in section three. All three made the playoffs.
- Low averages by section went Corey, Kirk, then Corey again.
- Best percentage improvement was Corey from one to two, and Kirk from two to three.
- Teams that faded the worst were Kirk from one to two (which probably aided his improvement from two to three) and Kendall from two to three. Sometimes, 14 trades don't get you what you want. But damn did he try.
- If you have any ideas of how I could better present this, let me know.
Top Ten Current Era Seasonal All-Play Records
- Remember that note about Ryan having the most dominant team ever? Here it is. A full 12 games better All-Play than Kendall's 2011 Cup-winning squad.
- Norris with a low-key impressive as hell season. Coming in as fourth best since 2011. And he had to compete with an all-timer in Ryan, which makes it harder to get a bunch of All-Play wins. Although with me and Corey, there were a few cupcakes on the "schedule" as well.
- Kendall has three of the top 10 All-Play seasons since 2011, which is no surprise. But he's only "managed" one Cup in that range.
- Russ had two, and the other five with a season each, are Ryan, Norris, Nathan, Patrick, and Joe.
- Russ' 2014 looks exceptional from a total points perspective.
Current Era (2011-2017) Franchise All-Play Table
- This. This is my kinda table. Total All-Play records from 2011 to present. And zero surprise, Kendall dominates.
- Ben, after having a historically horrible team over the first half of his CKL tenure, is tied in second place with Joe and Paul. He's truly turned things around.
- Notable how the teams that have changed owners are all in the bottom half of the league.
- Founding Fathers (and there are only four of us left) are one, three, four, and, uh, 12 on this list. So, how did I win a Cup again?
- This table is a bit bottom heavy, with eight squads above .500 and six below it. In general the worst teams are worse than the best teams are best. Does that make sense?
- 8.8 points. That the difference between the top and the bottom of this list in average points over the last seven regular seasons. The margins in the CKL are hella tight.
