First, though, here are a few overall announcements:
- All BBA GMs hit their TN counts!
- TWC was down overall points. They are provided a waiver for this year (*)
Now onto a bit of BBA PPT Esoterica…
EXPORT Rate
The BBA exported at a 95% success rate. This was down from 96% last year, but screw it. It was 94% the year before that and 93% four years ago. So, yeah, we rocked it when it came to actually managing our teams.
UMEBA numbers fell to 65%, but that's a bit of fake news. My accounting is poor for guys who bump to the BBA, and then the last export or two saw some pretty ugly numbers as contraction news circulated. I'd eyeball the "true" export rate for the UMEBA at about 75-80%, just a little down from last year's 83%.
Three Make the 200 Club
We had three GMs crest the 200 point level this year: me, Nigel (for the third time), and Justin Niles (for the second time)!
- Al Hoot (2002)
- Ed Murphy (2012, 2013, 2022)
- Aaron Weiner (2019, 2020, 2021)
- Ron Collins (2027, 2031-2043)
- Joe Lederer (2039, 2042)
- Vic Caleca (2040, 2041, 2042)
- Nigel Laverick (2041-2043)
- Justin Niles (2042-2043)
- Neill Thomas (2042)
- Chris Wilson (2042)
- Mike Simon (2042)
Turnover
We had a pretty high turnover rate this season, which is most likely a cause of the UMEBA contraction process that is going on as I type this report. Alan Ehlers and Lee Honigsfeld left due to pressures at work. Dillon left after being promoted into the BBA, and then at the end of the season, Jeffrey also left due to pressures at work. Both Brett Schroder and Mike Bieschke requested UMEBA teams for fear they could not keep up with BBA participation requirements, which again pulled UMEBA GMs up.
I am aware of another few GMs who were severely limited by outside pressures, including, if I’m honest, me.
Due to several issues, which I’ll just call administrative, we also lost UMEBA GMs like Neil Thomas (who has now returned!), John Diaz, and Chuck August. Adam Dyck, Jason Russell, Kevin Norris, and Jackson Schilling, joined and then left. Jouve Crawford brought his friend Harpreet Harrideo into the league, but both kind of ghosted their teams, and apparently didn’t respond to requests for interest.
Bottom line: if you think this was a tumultuous seasons, you’re right.
Much of this is, I think, covid related, but we do need to note that it’s unusual. I think it says a lot about out gang that we’ve done so well during this, as they say, very difficult time. The group of GMs we have in the fold continue to seem really strong.
Let’s Look at Some Charts, Shall We?:
Of course I track this shit, because, what else am I supposed to do when I’m avoiding my writing, right?
Overall PPT
- 2043-PPT-TM.PNG (14.05 KiB) Viewed 693 times
At 81.5 PPT/Team, 2043 was the third highest PPT season in the history of the league on a per capita basis, behind 2042’s colossal 127.7 and 2035’s 95.6. Seriously, this was a huge year—and it came in a season that saw podcasting fade quite a bit. I want to focus on this chart for a moment because if you were to trend line the past decade or so, you'd get a really strong curve. This is important to me, because that's not the work of one person going overboard for a little while. In fact, as my own numbers have fallen a little in the past few seasons (not counting 2042), the league has seen per capita growth.
That's a really good sign.
Team News
- 2043-TN-TM.PNG (14.76 KiB) Viewed 693 times
Here we can see why PPT were strong this year—it’s in the Team News, which, again discounting 2042, has continued to see a really strong growth.
While we did (as usual) have a few teams rushing to hit the Landis deadline to get into Good Standing, the bottom line is that 2043 produced 2,609 Team News posts. Yes, this is dwarfed by last season’s 4,087, but if last year had not happened, we’d be patting ourselves on the back for what was nearly a record season. I should note, too, that this season included some outstanding work, too.
And this isn’t counting the UMEBA—which had some interesting numbers—specifically, again, Herb’s.
Posts:
- 2043-POSTS-TM.PNG (17.26 KiB) Viewed 693 times
The Forum does continue to see lesser participation. Some of this can still probably be attributed to Slack, which has (IMH) taken over the Forum as the place to talk about actual sim activity (sim posts seem down in participation, but real time conversation is pretty high). This probably makes sense.
Still, realize that this season saw just over 5,000 posts on the forum, which is still well over historical average. Can we do better? Sure we can. And I intend to work on that a bit going forward. But the counter here is that I honestly don’t know many other online worlds that can boast 5,000 posts in a three months season. I think it says something for us that in a season where some have outwardly vocalized a sense of general malaise around the forum, we're doing these kinds of numbers.
Enjoy, friends.
Life is too short to be grumpy all day, right?
UMEBA
I've got UMEBA numbers, too. And they, too, are pretty good. I already noted the exports. In raw count, the UMEBA saw its second best PPT count, and its third-best forum post count. TN were way down. I'm not really posting them here, though, because I really don't trust that they tell a story about the UMEBA. This was a league that entered the season looking really hot, and then through both basic attrition and BBA raids, lost a lot of steam.
The numbers being all over the board reflect that.
We'll see what happens in 2044.
OVERALL COMMENTS
Congrats to Louisville for a huge Landis victory. Congrats to San Antonio and Charm City and Hawaii for clawing into the post season for the first time in a while.
Congrats to everyone who made it through a tough year at home.
Congrats to the Atlantic Division for sending four teams to the post season.
And good luck to everyone as we head into what could be a particularly interesting off-season.
