Simulation Football Leagues, Living in the Past, and Learning to Love Football Again

A few years ago I found myself on a plane to my Navy reserve duty and cracked open one of my many football books. Being an uber football nerd from the 1970s I have always loved playing computer football games; however, unless I was playing against someone in the same room, be it on an Odyssey 2, Game Cube, or  Play Station. Sadly, my childhood only saw one instance of me playing a table top football simulation in 1980, that being Sport's Illustrated "Paydirt."

Now mind you, I am involved in fantasy football every year usually, including this year when I got invited into my office's league [very disappointing season for me].  However, as I read Ted Kluck's wonderful book, Past Time, I knew I was really missing out on something special, that being a member of a simulation football league.  In essence, I had been missing out on being a member of not just a league, but a group of people that, like me, love the professional football of yesteryear.

As stated at Bookshop.org, "Ted Kluck found, online, a community of computer nerds and football enthusiasts so rooted in the past and so uninterested in the future that they have created algorithms and computer software that can accurately simulate football games, seasons, and careers using fields of data that already exist on the thousands of players who have suited up in the National Football League. All of these players are now old. Some of them are now dead. But they became the object of Ted Kluck's fascination. 

The Odyssey Online Football league began in 2006, with the 1966 NFL season, and has been gradually working its way through NFL history ever since, "drafting" players, crafting game plans, calling plays, winning and losing. Theories are tested. Team owners have theories. What if NFL teams went back to power offenses like the late-80s Parcellsian Giants? Are running backs over 220 pounds more effective and less likely to get hurt? Can a running quarterback survive if he's deployed more like a running back? And why are there whole groups of people out there this obsessed with the past? 

Past Time explores these questions and many others, as the author-a jaded journalist, a lifelong football player, and a burned-out coach-spends a year immersed in the late 1970s, in hopes of rekindling his love for the game. Part memoir and part Bill-Jamesian exploration into football nerdery, Past Time is an homage to football's past, and a meditation on its present and future."

Bottom line, if you love football, nostalgia, and numbers, then online simulation football is for you! At the end of 2020 I finally had enough of playing Madden by myself and downloaded the latest copy of Action PC! Football and began my quest to join a league. Fortunately, within a few days, I was a member not just of one league, but three! The Paydirt Spring and Summer leagues assigned me the Saints and Lions respectively, while the third league (and the subject of this article), the Mottafied Football League, per my request, made me the owner and coach of the expansion 1966 Miami Dolphins! (FINS UP!!). Fortunately for me I came into the league right after the league (which, as in Ted Kluck's book also has started with the 1966 NFL/AFL teams) run team had tied, during the first week of the season, with the expansion 1966 Atlanta Falcons. 

It's one thing to be a member of an online fantasy league, where there is very little interaction between competitors unless it involves smack talk, but being a member of a league where you actually get to talk to your opponent and not only compare Xs and Os, but also get to know each other and become friends.  In the past year I have found that comradery with fellow CFL fans north and south of the border, where I manage the 1995 Baltimore Stallions in the Cold Snap CFL Dream League, where we, thanks to the game makers at PLAAY.com, roll the dice and face off. The league was a response to the CFL being cancelled.  As a result, I have made some close friendships, which is really the best part of football, that being the friendships and memories it brings.

So, with that introduction, I present to you, the 1966 Miami Dolphins. A team so lacking in talent that by the time the franchise made it to Super Bowl VI on a few of those on the original roster had been left.  For me being the owner and coach of the team is not about the winning (which I want to do of course), but also learning and building.  Simulation football, especially, in a league such as the MFL, where you play with historical teams, allows one to contemplate, "what if?? 

For the 1966 Miami Dolphins, who were just a tad more talented than their 1976 cousins in Tampa Bay (whose Creamsicle uniforms supplanted those of the Miami Dolphins as the coolest in my opinion), are presently filled with a lot of players who will be out of football either before or by the end of the decade. Among them were George Wilson (Jr.), Cookie Gilchrist ("lookie lookie here comes Cookie!), Wahoo McDaniel, Rick Casares, George Auer, and countless others.  The only who did make it to those two super bowls and that perfect season was Howard Twilley.

In that inaugural year, the Dolphins ranked eighth in both offense and defense. They scored a total of 213 points, passed for a total of 2,048 yards with 16 touchdowns and 32 interceptions, rushed for a total of 1,410 yards with five touchdowns. They did manage to win three games of which two were against the then Houston Oilers.  All told, by expansion team comparisons, they did better than what could be expected of a team that had been given nothing and even less in expectations.

So, with that said, the Dolphins head to 1966 St. Louis for their second game, after a 17-17 tie in game one with Atlanta, where the football Cardinals await....