Football-Season-In-A-Month: Community Play-Through of 2000 Football America

This week's blog post is from PLAAY Gamer James Cast, who spearheaded a super-cool community project using our free 2000 Football America team sheet collection. It was a rousing success, and we'll feature the Championship Game on the PLAAY Space LIVE, Monday October 11th. Here are James' start-to-finish thoughts on the project...

Recently, I set up a cooperative tabletop project that was focused on completing a full-season replay in less than a month. My goal was to engage gamers by allowing them to play random games as part of a full-season project, and commit as much or as little as they wanted. Using the 2000 Football America set with Second Season Express, the goal was to complete 78 games in one month.

Goal achieved! Like most plans, this did not go exactly as I planned, but we actually completed the entire season in exactly three weeks. I expected to have a large number of gamers join our efforts and hoped I could get commitments for 2-3 games per person. In the end we had 13 gamers participate, and those gamers played anywhere from 1 to 16 games each.

While a recap of the project is below, you can also check out full results on our project webpage:

Project Summary

I chose to start with the 2000 Football America set for a couple of reasons. First, the set was being offered for free through Plaay Games. My best chance at completing this project was to make it free for all participants. As long as they had the Express version of the game already, they could compete. Second, selfishly I had never played a Football America set and I didn’t think it would be on my radar for a solo project. This was a perfect opportunity to get introduced to the alternate league with a minimal commitment.

Management for this project was fairly easy. I did not create a week by week schedule. Instead, I quickly assigned each team with home and away games (six each) and compiled a master list of games that needed to be played. As gamers signed up, I sent them a game, considering their preferences as needed. Some wanted to play a game for a specific city, others did not have a preference. I did attempt to assign games evenly per city so that we kept teams progressing through the schedule at a similar rate, but we weren’t held to any limitations. As a result some teams finished their 12th and final game when other teams were still on their 8th game.

Gamers were only asked to report final scores for the games they played. Other than using the express version of the game, no other guidelines were provided on how to complete each game. Some gamers opted to track full stats for their game, others tracked who made the scoring plays, and yet others just reported the final score without any details. All of those were fine.

Along the way we introduced a challenge called the Tour of America which was awarded to anyone that played games featuring all 13 teams. Five gamers won that award and are featured on our project website.

Season Recap

First 10 Games: Birmingham was the only club that jumped out to a 2-0 record in the first 10 games with wins over Bay Area and New Jersey. Bay Area started 0-3 with losses to Birmingham, Memphis, and Portland. Highlands Ranch was the only team that did not play in these first 10 games.

Through 20 Games: Birmingham extended their undefeated streak to three games with a win over New York. Highlands Ranch started 2-0 with wins over San Antonio and Chicago. Philadelphia beat Orlando in the first Overtime game and were 3-1, while Orlando dropped to 2-2. Chicago and Bay Area were both 0-3.

Through 30 Games: Game 21 saw a battle of the two undefeated teams with highlands Ranch edging Birmingham 35-31. Birmingham then lost to Chicago, giving Chicago their first win. Bay Area rattled off two wins, including an OT thriller over New York, to move out of the basement. Highlands Ranch was 3-0, Philadelphia was 4-1, and New York was 4-2. At the bottom was Chicago (1-5), Detroit (1-4), and Los Angeles (1-3).

Through 39 Games (halfway done): Highlands Ranch win streak reached five games (5-0) and they continued to lead Philadelphia (4-1) and New Jersey (5-2) atop the standings. Los Angeles (1-6), Chicago (1-5), and Detroit (2-5) were bringing up the rear. Most other teams were right around .500.

Through 50 Games: Highlands Ranch saw their win streak end with a loss to Orlando (4-3), but they rebounded with two more wins to reach 7-1. Philadelphia split two games to fall to 5-2, even with New Jersey. Portland struggled in this set of games, losing four of five to fall to 4-6. Los Angeles beat Bay Area to improve to 2-7 and Chicago win a pair of games to improve to 3-5.

Through 60 Games: Highlands Ranch beat Philadelphia 28-16 to run their record to 9-1. New Jersey beat Memphis to reach 6-2, and Orlando won three straight before a loss to New York to get to 6-4. Teams at the bottom starting winning as well. Los Angeles improved to 4-7, Chicago to 4-6 and Bay Area (3-7) and Detroit (3-6) now found themselves in the basement again.

Through 70 Games: Highlands Ranch beat New York to reach 10-1 and clinch the top spot in the standings. San Antonio lost two more games to fall to last place at 3-7. Orlando finished their season with a loss to New Jersey and a win against San Antonio, finishing at 7-5. That eliminated Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, Birmingham, Bay Area, San Antonio, Memphis, and Portland. Philadelphia (6-3) and New Jersey (7-4) were the only teams ahead of Orlando.

Philadelphia won Game 71 against New York to reach 7-3 and eliminate New York. Highlands Ranch beat New Jersey 37-35 to finish their season at 11-1 and drop New Jersey to 7-5. New Jersey was eliminated as they had no path to the championship based on tiebreaker scenarios. The race was down to Philadelphia and Orlando to see who would face Highlands Ranch in the championship. Philadelphia lost to Bay Area and Chicago to wrap up their season, but kept the score close in both and advanced to the championship game on tiebreakers (point differential).

Championship Game

The Championship game will take place on the PLAAY Space LIVE, PLAAY Games YouTube Channel, on October 11th at 6 PM MDT. Philadelphia (7-5) travels to Highlands Ranch (11-1). Highlands Ranch was the top-rated offense with 422 points scored and the 7th ranked defense with 297 points allowed. Philadelphia was the 3rd rated offense with 345 points scored and the 2nd ranked defense with 269 points allowed. Their head-to-head battle was Game 52 and saw Highlands Ranch win 28-16.

What’s Next?

I am already planning our next cooperative project which will kick off in November. We are switching over to Soccer Blast and featuring another free set from Plaay Games for UEFA 2020. We will replay the full Group stage games as scheduled and then set up a knockout round based on the outcomes of our games. We will also ask all gamers to track goal scorers and keep a running tally for the entire tournament. I hope this will be a continuing effort to set up cooperative projects using various PLAAY Games so that many people can participate in a full season project with minimal commitment.

NOTE: James has also launched a games podcast which features a number of topics, including other PLAAY Games. You can check out the podcast here, and it’s also available on Apple, Spotify, Google, and other platforms.