2023 Pro Football Showcase: PLAAY Spring Football!
The first weekend of XFL 3.0 is in the books and it was not a bad presentation: a handful of semi-famliar names, some interesting wrinkles and a couple of exciting finishes. The Rock and Dany Garcia did a nice job, I think. In-stadium attendance was down from previous spring league opening weekends, which was not a good sign. We’ll soon see what the TV ratings were, which really is what’s going to decide whether the league will make it or not.
Last year, we outlined our thoughts on an alternative, spring-time pro football league that would give football fans what they really want. We called it the "Pro Football Showcase," and created a download package for Second Seaason Pro Football game designed to bring it to life on the game table. It proved to be our most-downloaded freebie of the year! So, by popular demand, we're bringing it back for year two!
The Pro Football Showcase is a fan-friendly, month-long extension of the football season. History has shown that fans DO show up to an alternate league’s first couple of weekends of play, with generally strong, sometimes impressive attendance figures. Call it novelty, call it habit, call it whatever, fact is, people have demonstrated a willingness to continue to watch pro football games after the Super Bowl is in the books. For awhile anyway. Once the baseball season begins and hockey and basketball playoffs, there’s increased competition for the sports dollar/viewing and attendance at spring football games naturally fades. It fades even faster when the football product is minor-league caliber. But history has shown that for a month or so after the Super Bowl, there IS an appetite for more pro football.
So, the PLAAY PFS gives pro football fans exactly what they want: a month-long extension of the football season featuring recognizable, talented players, splashy uniforms, exciting games with innovative rules. And, in the spirit of “leave ‘em wanting more,” almost as quickly as it appears, it’s over. Not only is this the perfect scenario for fans, it’s also perfect for TV networks, which have routinely seen solid ratings for spring football, but only for a few weeks. The networks get the benefit of the novelty and curiosity factor, without committing to televising extended weeks of football games with ever-shrinking audiences.
It also provides a valuable launching pad (or, in many cases, the opportunity to re-launch) for players wanting a shot at playing pro ball. That includes solid veteran players squeezed out of the league by salary cap restraints, young players who’ve tasted pro training camp and want another shot, and even college players who want to elevate their status in the upcoming pro draft and believe enough in their abilities to take a chance on themselves (we've expanded this category for 2023, more on this shortly).
Our original PSF blog post cast the full vision for the showcase concept, you can refer back to it if you missed it the first time around. From here, let's outline the evolution of the concept as we launch the showcase's second season. As part of this package you’ll find the eight 2023 Pro Football Showcase teams. All of these are real players, you’ll undoubtedly recognize many of them. For 2023, we'e expanded the concept to include likely first-round draft choices--last year, we presumed that most of them would be unwilling to risk their draft status by playing in a showcase arrangement. We'll circumvent that by saying that top-tier players get a million dollar paycheck instead of $100,000 and a lucrative insurance policy covering both diminished draft status due to poor performance or injury. (Ah, the beauty of tabletop sports projects, right? Money is NO object!)
We’ve also expanded the number of college stars for this set--the 2022 showcase featured about five dozen college stars, this year's showcase has three times that many. These are players who are eligible to be chosen in the upcoming NFL draft. Indeed, whereas last year players with NFL experience out-numbered college prospects, this year it's the other way around. It's kind of like an expanded Senior Bowl, with eight teams instead of two, each team peppered with "mentor" players with actual pro experience! Players with pro experience are marked with a star symbol after their name.
Once again, you’ll notice is that there are no player run/pass ratings. That is by design, and will, I think, make for a strongly compelling tabletop football project, one in which everyone’s experience is different. The player ratings will be generated by the SECOND SEASON game engine, as you play. It will be completely open-ended--just as if you were watching the showcase unfold before your eyes on TV.
We use the decider die to accomplish this. That is to say, when you roll a result in the Second Season game book and it asks if the player is rated “2,” or “0,” you’ll roll the decider die. If it’s “yes,” you’ll pencil in that rating for the player for whatever play was called, run or pass. If “no,” you’ll pencil in a rating of “1” for that player for whatever play was called, run or pass. After the initial call, when a player gets called on again, he’ll use whatever rating the decider die generated.
In some situations, the game book will bring into play two players--for example, it might ask if players A or C are rated 2/pass. In these cases, you’ll roll the decider die. If both players are un-rated, on a “yes” decider result ONE of the players will get the 2/pass rating. You can decide arbitrarily, or roll the decider again. The other player will remain un-rated. On a “no” decider roll, BOTH players are given a 1/pass rating.
As you continue to play, the ratings will create themselves, team identities will emerge and players will establish themselves as stars, scrubs, or somewhere in between. Reserve player ratings can also be established, by replacing starters. If a stater generates a poor rating though game play, you can start the reserve the next game and, using the same NO/YES process, see if he becomes a better performer.
New for the 2023 showcase, we're assigning scrimmage grades randomly as well, using the profile assignor included with this package. You'll roll two dice for each player, black and white, and the resulting dice roll will determine that player's scrimmage grades. We suggest that the grades remain in effect for the entire showcase.
We're also including the "coach 'em up" chart we created for last year's showcase. After each game, the each team is given two (or, three) "coach 'em up" dice rolls, which can improve or in some cases reduce a player's rating in a specific aspect of the game. If you like, you can also conduct a "coach 'em up" scrimmage grade re-roll for your one or two players per team.
The download includes eight teams, each with two-deep rosters for both offense and defense (four deep for running backs), scrimmage grade generator, a league schedule (which features likely first-round draft QB’s Will Levis and Bryce Young squaring off in week one!), and the “Coach ‘Em Up” chart.
We hope you enjoy the 2023 Pro Football Showcase! Feel free to post or share your results with us, we'd love to hear how your showcase evolves!