Curt

Kewl, you are just on the other side of the DFW Metroplex, about an hour away from me. Perhaps hooking up might be a possibility? 🙂 That leads me to a new post then...look for "personal communications"...

Ok, here is most of what I was looking for about reducing bias from a previous entry called "My Full Weird Solo-ness or Solo Weird-ness. What is yours...?". I have 33 teams for both home and away but only have a little over 70 rookie bases. They are all shuffled in a bag and made to run as far and as straight as possible but allow tweaks with timeouts. I load my 1st 3 games randomly [[33 vs 32, then 30 vs 29, then 27 vs 26]. Any remaining bases that are unused go back into the bag. After game 1, those 2 teams' bases are removed and put in the bag. Then game 4 [24 vs 23] is loaded, remaining bases are left in the bag. This is all purposed to remove as much personally biased control from my games as possible. 11 divisions of 3 teams each with a season consisting of 2 home games and 2 away games for each team allow for a complete shuffling of all the bases in the bag for all 4 rounds. Then games 1, 2, and 3 of round 2 are loaded and follow the same "shuffling schedule" until round 3 is done then game 4 is loaded after game 1. The bases are then shuffled through each playoff game, especially the Superbowl. Ok, I think that covers bases. A coin toss of heads has the home team receiving the kickoff whereas tails has the visiting team getting the ball, no exceptions. Two decks of poker cards determine offensive plays and are shuffled for each drive: Aces through 7's are running plays. Black and red 8's are 5 yard penalties against the defense and offense. 9's through queens are passing plays. Black and red kings are respectively 10 yard penalties, one each of the black and red jokers are 15 yard penalties against the defense and offense. The other jokers are a 5 yard penalty with automatic first down in favor of the offense and a turnover to the defense at the line of scrimmage. The last 2 cards, [designed to keep a deck in play], are automatic touchdowns for offense or defense. I use a single regular dice to determine which of my 6 defensive formations meets the drawn offense play. Hope this makes sense and that I didn't waste anyone's time. Blessings, Curt

Good morning. I do not allow do-overs either but my system to eliminate bias is fairly long and involved. I cannot find where I posted it before, sorry. Right now, I have to go to work but I promise I'll explain my system asap if I cannot find it to copy and paste as a response here.

Like everyone else...I'm now in season 19 with 77 games per season and have had very few but it is exciting when a safety occurs/ Blessings, Curt

Gentledudes, for those who are adventurous, I ordered a lot of my 33 teams but hand-painted my creamsicle Bucs. The Testor's glossy enamels work well for me. The ratio that best gets me to that creamsicle color is 5 drops of bright yellow mixed with 1 drop of bright orange. Something to think about but everyone must find their own best solution. Blessings, Curt

I join Daryl in his well wishes to all coaches and their loved ones for a happy Independence Day. My league slowly built to 33 teams, starting with the ones I wanted most so my suggestion to you Sir Daryl [and anyone] is to really think about which team would make you happiest and then of course continue to add teams until the madness ends, if it ever does end, ha ha. 🙂 As far as BBQ, my wife and I have an open door, open grill policy here in the Dallas Texas area. Anyone is welcome. Just bring your own meat and I will be most happy to grill it. The grill doesn't stop cooking frum lunch through dinner. I'd like to cook for and show Bobby Flay what a real Grill Master is like. [Yet another ha ha. 🙂 ] Anyway, in agreement with Daryl, safety and blessings to all. BBQ and Electric Football forever, Amen!

Yessir, thank you very much. My apologies to all. I thought it was Bob/s post from then. Having just moved across town but still in the North Dallas Area, I now have more EF space in my new office but my briefcase holds everything so well in such a small space it was easy to keep track of during the move. Plus, I thought I'd pass my storage arrangement along even though I'm probably way too late to make a difference to anyone and their setups, but I really enjoyed the pictures. They spark ideas for the future. 🙂 Thanks again. Blessings, Curt

Ok, I'm an idiot. I was Just recently perusing the forums again when I saw a title of "Storage ideas for teams?" originally posted a year ago by Bob but now I can't find it. I wanted to wait to respond to this one especially today as it is my 60th birthday and also my 50th anniversary of playing electric football. As Bob intended to grow his league to a full NFL compliment of teams [Done yet?] and also asking for simple suggestions on storage, I thought I'd share my [really late to the party again, sorry] very simple yet effective storage arrangement for my 33 full teams [home and away jerseys] which includes the current 32 NFL teams plus a fully outfitted Houston Oiler team. I use an oversized hardshell Samsonite briefcase. Each team has its home and away jerseys combined in a snack sized Ziploc baggie. I also have baggies for my game accessories like goal posts, yard markers etc. etc. etc, my quarterbacks, bases, the dice I use for defensive formations, and my footballs which are shuffled for each pass or kick. There is room for my stopwatch and the 2 decks of poker cards I use for my offensive formations, penalties and turnovers. The top section with its partitions holds my past season results, my current season statistics and my rule set. Everything is there right at hand in my very simple briefcase, so it is a tremendous space saver, especially when making space for a full 33 team league but the hardshell case has endured these many, many years. I do however love the setups that were pictured there and would love to expand mine if possible. Perhaps one day it will happen. I have loved playing EF these 50 years and hope I have many years left to play as I am not in a hurry to quit. I've already had to give up Model Railroading and Music. Long live Electric Football! I hope I have not wasted anyone's time. Blessings to all, 🙂 Curt.

Ladies and Gentledudes, I'm hoping this waorks. It has been awhile since I've perused the forums for many reasons that keep me busy. One reason is having moved across town with the packing, moving, and unpacking processes causing delays. The best reason though is having so much fun trying out many suggestions for Home field advantage. Let me begin with the ones that just didn't seem to fit right for my league. There may be many that fit yours but these 2 somehow did not have what my league needs: Two attempts at passes longer than 30 yards. I do not use passing sticks, just the QB. Pass attempts for me remain at "One and Done" Home team gets 2 point conversion attempts from the 2 yard line and visitors from the 5 yard line. Paying close attention to results, it turns out for me that plenty of 2 yard attempts get missed on both sides of the ball so 2 yard, 2-point conversions will remain the same also. If I did not include your suggestion, please do not take offense. This is what works best for my game, my rules, my weirdness. Best of luck with your leagues coaches. Now then the rest I am keeping. Having gone through dozens of games so far, except for 2 games with a visitor victory and 2 games with a greater than 6 point spread, I am happy to say that all of my games with these home-field-advantages incorporated into them were decided for the home team by 3 or less points, kewl. 🙂 They are as follows: Two attempts at 4th down field goals for the home team. Round up half yards for home team and visitors will just be out of luck. Allow home teams a touchdown if a ball carrier breaks the plane of the goal line. Visitors must break the plane of the end zone. Allow home teams a safety if a visitor ball carrier breaks the plane of the goal line. Allow Visitors a safety if a home team ball carrier breaks the plane of the end zone. Home team takes all pushes/benefit of the doubt on those infuriating, close, hard to call plays. Home team given 'the electric slide" and visitor has any touch tackling at the point of contact. Home team given 'the electric slide" on wide run arcs and visitors are down at the point of contact. Home team to "ignore the electric slide" over the line of scrimmage and attempt a pass if the quarterback is not yet down. It is awesome to see how things develop over time. Again, I have found these fit with my league. As always, you will need to find what works best for you and your league. Best of blessings, Curt

I do not do social media of any kind as I am severely technology challenged but I wonder when she learns electric football [yet?] what your 1st defeat will feel like. My wife and I tried everything under the sun but could not have kids, so we became foster parents. Our oldest girl aged 7 loved to play with me until she was placed with extended family out of state. 😞 The first game I lost to her was a heartbreaker. One last item, not related to EF, I have to quote my college anthropology professor, Boys are easy as you only have 1 boy in town to worry about. Girls are much harder because you have every boy in town to worry about. 🙂 Back on track. But it is true that EF calms the nerves. I love this forum and the EF community. It is very therapeutic having these connections. Blessings to all, Curt

Anyone with tips on how to set up pass patterns? I’ve never really done this. I’ve always just lined them up and seen who got off their defender. we allow the qb to throw the ball to any open spot, away from defenders, around the receiver Well, I do a little of both. Poker cards determine which pass formation I use. Coach Shawn's extra pivot is applied to 1 extra home team player to make for 1 more eligible receiver. The quarterback is set a little deeper on both sides to allow for a little more time before he gets across the line of scrimmage and to give eligible receivers time to get off their defenders. However, I also waive nefgm.org's electric slide to the home team if their qb slides across the line of scrimmage prior to the pass if that makes sense. I only use Triple Threat Quarterbacks. I do not use passing sticks. Any player hit by the football is now the ball carrier and may continue until tackled, out of bounds or scores. If the ball hits the board within bounds but no players, any players within 10 yards of the ball may be turned to it and the first player to the ball becomes the ball carrier and may continue until tackled, out of bounds or scores. Otherwise, it is ruled incomplete. If it is unclear who gets to a ball first, home team takes possession at that spot. Hope this helps but it is really up to what works best for you. Good Luck and Blessings, Curt

Good Evening Ladies and Gentledudes. Sorry I'm so late to this party. Testing out the many suggestions to fairly promote home field advantage has been such a blast, time has just gotten away from me. I also have to apologize for being unclear. Let me address this from a previous post: I use to remove all the bases and put them in a barrel. Then I'd blind draw bases for each team. I called this shuffling process my draft. I'm not sure what Curt means. I often ask if my posts are clear because my thoughts run wild quite easily, and distractions knock me off course quite often. This is due to my many, many, many health issues which include having had 3 strokes, 2 major heart surgeries, 1 remaining collapsed artery on the back of my heart, and a benign tumor behind my right ear. [I can no longer play guitar so I shipped it to my brother in Seattle. Expensive!] But not to digress. I'm richly blessed and will continue to play EF until it becomes impossible. Now then, I have 33 teams for both home and away but only have a little over 70 rookie bases. They are all shuffled in a bag and made to run as far and as straight as possible but allow tweaks with timeouts I load my 1st 3 games randomly [[33 vs 32, then 30 vs 29, then 27 vs 26]. Any remaining bases that are unused go back into the bag. After game 1, those 2 teams' bases are removed and put in the bag. Then game 4 [24 vs 23] is loaded, remaining bases are left in the bag. This is all purposed to remove as much personally biased control from my games as possible. 11 divisions of 3 teams each with a season consisting of 2 home games and 2 away games for each team allow for a complete shuffling of all the bases in the bag for all 4 rounds. Then games 1, 2, and 3 of round 2 are loaded and follow the same "shuffling schedule" until round 3 then round 4 if that makes sense. All bases are shuffled before playoffs The 1st 3 playoff games of my 11 game playoff structure are loaded. Game 1: My Wildcard or best of my 2nd place teams meets my 11th place division winner to meet #4. Next winner will be winner D. Remove bases, add to extras in bag. Load Game 4: 6th vs 5th meets #1 Game 2: 10th vs 9th meets #3. Next winner will be Winner C. Game 3: 8th vs 7th meets #2. Next winner will be Winner B. Game 4: 6th vs 5th meets #1. Next winner will be Winner A. Shuffle all bases after each game. Load Winner D vs Winner C and load Winner B vs Winner A Shuffle all bases Load Winner D/C vs Winner B/A for Superbowl Shuffle all bases. Load next season games 1-3 I really hope this clarifies things for you all because I now realize it took my overloaded and tired mind almost 2 hours to put this little blurb together tonight. I loved doing it because I love the EF community and I never want to ruffle anyone's feathers. I'm still testing the many suggestions I got for home field advantage so it may take a while to respond to things, but I will get to them asap. Please keep comments and questions coming. Thank you all for your patience with me. Blessings, Curt

Hey Greg, here is another wrench to be thrown into the tie-breaker wheelhouse. I have 33 teams consisting of the Houston Oilers and the current 32 teams which after an initial season having 11 divisions of 3 teams listed in alphabetical order are reordered in the following sequence. Each team plays their division team twice, once at home and once away. This makes for a 4-game season, balancing the number of home and away games for each team. They are then ranked for the next season based on 1st, win loss record, 2nd, points scored, and 3rd, points allowed. Only twice in 18 seasons have I needed to go back to a previous season's statistics to determine a tie breaker for 2 teams matching in those 3 "categories. That is followed by a 12-team tiered playoff structure where my wildcard or best of the 2nd place teams meets my 11th place division winner. The winner of that game meets my 4th place division winner. 9th and 10th place division winners square off to meet my 3rd place division winner. 7th and 8th play to meet 2nd and, 5th and 6th play to meet 1st. I think you can guess the remainder of the playoffs. With 11 divisions of 3 teams playing 4 games each and an 11 game playoff structure, I find playing 3 games within a 2 week window completes a season within a calendar year. Start New Year's week and Superbowl makes for a very Merry Christmas. 🙂 I hope this helps with your tie-breaking efforts. Blessings, Curt

Sir Chris, I'm glad you asked it too. There are so many possibilities like you said. I think this has been my favorite thread to date. I'm currently very early in the [long] process of testing out as many suggestions as I can. Certainly, other coaches have influenced how I play my games. Take you for example, I allow the home team 2 tries at 4th-down field goals. Two other of my favorite coaches that come to mind although not limited to, are Coach Shawn [for using extra pivot] and nefgm.org [for electric slide]. To any not mentioned, please don't take it personally. I do love all the suggestions I have received and welcome any new ones that may pop up. I kind of wonder what it might be like if a new thread were started titled "Who is your favorite EF coach?" but that sounds like it could be a little dangerous, so I'll let someone else ponder that one. 🙂 Blessings, Curt.

Hi Greg, For my visiting teams, a tackle is any touch from a home team defender and to add a little bit of home team advantage, the electric slide [if applicable] is granted to a home team ball carrier after being touched anywhere by a visiting defender. Does that make sense?

Hey Coach Shawn, as I'm keeping a very close eye on how season 19 plays develop etc., I'm finding I really like your idea of "•home team gets an extra pivot." so I'm currently using it too. I listed all suggestions above and then consolidated them further to make it easier to review them for use but nothing is really discounted until it just proves not to be practical for my league. For now, and for me, extra pivots rock! 🙂 Thanks Coach Shawn. Thanks to everyone and please keep ideas coming if you think of one. Blessings, Curt

Ok, I'm very excited about the start of my season 19. I've done some more whittling through this long thread of possibilities for home-field advantage and when my #32 Atlanta Falcons start the season by hosting my #33 New Orleans Saints, these are the "rules" that are going to be under review for use or not use. Again, thanks for all the suggestions, keep them coming. Apologies for wasting anyone's time or ruffling their feathers. Blessings, Curt. Home Field Advantage Ideas to review: Two attempts at 4th down field goals. Two attempts at passes longer than 30 yards. Round up half yards for home team and visitors will just be out of luck. Allow Home teams a touchdown if a ball carrier breaks the plane of the goal line. Visitors must break the plane of the end zone. Allow Home teams a safety if a visitor ball carrier breaks the plane of the goal line. Allow Visitors a safety if a home team ball carrier breaks the plane of the end zone. Home team takes all pushes/benefit of the doubt on those infuriating, close, hard to call plays. Home team gets 2 point conversion attempts from the 2 yard line and visitors from the 5 yard line. Home team given 'the electric slide" and visitor has any touch tackling. Home team given 'the electric slide" on wide run arcs. Home team to "ignore the electric slide" over the line of scrimmage and attempt a pass if the quarterback is not yet down.

Ok, exploring Home Field Advantage Ideas from its original question: Does anyone give the home team any kind of advantage, or just play the game normally. I’m thinking of using one of these: giving the home team a 3 point lead to start For my league [as every review will be], all points must be earned so I'm planning on not using this one. giving them the second half kick off and possession at the opponents 25 Coin toss and touchback starts at the 20 are remaining rules. two attempts at field goals I allow field goals from anywhere and count as regular downs too[so ex if FG is called on 1st down, 4 attempts are allowed to make it but I like and will test 2 attempts for the home team on 4th down FG's. two attempts at passes longer than 30 yards. I'm going to have to try that one out. one team automatically wins the coin toss to start the game. Coin Toss will remain as heads for home team and tails for visitor team. home team gets an extra pivot. home team gets extra timeouts. T I have set formations already and allow tweaks with timeouts so I think I'll leave it at that. The home team gets the ball first. I'm leaving Coin Toss as it is. each team has its own actual field, so there's a natural home field advantage in sense that you get to know the quirks of your own board much better. I only use my Ultimate sized board so I can't try this one out. removing one audible from the visiting team’s offense simulating home crowd noise. How about a five yard false start penalty against the visiting team at a point in the game of the home team's choosing? You can give your home team a larger amount of bases that run longer than your visitors for somewhat of an advantage. In the spirit of trying to remove as much personal control from the game as possible, I'm going to pass on these. to foster home field advantage, you can round up half yards for your home team and your visitors will just be out of luck. Official NFL and EFL rules allow a touchdown to be awarded if a ball carrier breaks the plane of the goal line. I require a ball carrier to break the plane of the end zone. Official NFL and EFL rules can be applied to just the home team here and your visitors can follow "my" rule for touchdowns [safeties, and first downs too]to elicit another slight home field advantage. I'm going to test these out. Your idea to give the home team the benefit of the doubt on those infuriating, close, hard to call plays is very intriguing. I also like the home team getting benefit of the doubt--great idea. Definitely testing this one out. "I think I will have to back up the 2 point conversion next season. It was too easy to get it from the 2 yard line". "A lot of coaches, including myself, do this from the 5 yard line." Here's yet another late thought regarding 2-point conversions. I really don't pay attention to my success rate and mine are made from the 2-yard line. But, if it really is easier from the 2-yard line than from the 5-yard line, you might consider this. To further promote home field advantage, your home team can attempt their 2-point conversions from the 2-yard line and your visiting team would have to attempt theirs from the 5-yard line. Does that make sense? Yup, testing this one. Since I only used a limited number of bases last year, I gave the home team first picks on the best bases. I shuffle bases too often to apply this one. AKA 'the electric slide". It is a common practice in electric football to give the ball carrier the yardage gained after the switch is turned off. I play a form of "forward progress" where the ball carrier is not down until his forward progress has been stopped. If you wanted to give the home team an advantage, then have the home team use forward progress and the visiting team play by any touch tackling. Definitely trying this one out. 🙂 Now this would take some serious experimentation to foster a "reasonable" home field advantage. Once the desirable vibration level is found, the better of the vibration levels could be used for the home team when they are on offense and a slightly lesser vibration level could be used for the visiting team when they are on offense. Does that make sense? Re: field speed idea—how about that reflecting “momentum” instead of home field? Like, after an interception in a one-score game, board gets turned to the better speed. Forcing a quick 3 & out. And after a long go-ahead TD drive, board gets turned down for the following return and offensive series? I'm wavering with this one in that I wonder if it might be too difficult to find the right settings but I really like the forced momentum idea so I have not discounted it yet but I'll try it out to see how well I can make it work. This has been a good thread with a good variety of ideas presented. Certainly some ideas would have a larger impact than others. Which adds a further development into the mix. That being the notion to give each team a “home field advantage” rule unique to that team. This is very intriguing especially since I have 33 teams. It might be easier to achieve this with a smaller league. I try not to play favorites with my teams either and the temptation to favor a particular team with a particular advantage could creep up and bite me. I think I'll experiment with these a while and see if this could apply to my league, thanks. I noticed sometimes a ball carrier starts to veer on a wide arc and although forward progress may be stopped at any time to avoid yardage loss, a yard may be lost by the time the power is shut off and he actually comes to a complete stop if that makes sense? So, I'm going to "test" giving the home team the furthest yard gained and the visitor the actual stopping point, similar to what nefgm.org calls electric slide. I love that term. 🙂 My second home-field advantage test is also related to electric slide. In my most recent games, I noticed that sometimes the electric slide takes my quarterback over the line of scrimmage. As it has been and will be for Superbowl 18, once past the line of scrimmage, a pass is no longer an option. However, I'm going to allow the home team to "ignore the electric slide" over the line of scrimmage and attempt a pass if the quarterback is not yet down. Does that make sense? I'm going to test these too. Again, if anyone has any other suggestions at any time, please let me know. I hope I did not ruffle anyone's feathers. Blessings to all, Curt

Thanks for that. Now comes the task of exploring new rules, how fun! I went through all the entries in this thread and copied every suggestion into Notepad as they appeared in order. Wow, what an incredibly long list! I thought I might list them here and then make entries for each rule as they "pass or fail" but that would be way too long of an entry. Now as games proceed, those which may not work for me may be left out and those that make sense for me will remain. Thanks to everyone who gave suggestions. Please do not take anything personally if I do not incorporate one of your suggestions. I am trying to find out what will work for me. How long it will take is unknown. This all boils down to "My game, my rules, my weirdness". You have to find what works best for you. My review criteria come from all the following suggestions given in this thread, including my own: By "new rules for review" do you mean that you will try the new rules for a season and then reevaluate whether or not make the rules permanent? Let's say I get to the end of the regular season for season 19 and have not yet decided upon the fate of a particular rule. I will not use that rule during the post season for season 19 and will revisit that rule in season 20 until a decision can be made whether or not it will become permanent. I plan to try out all suggestions in my season 19 and whittle them down to a good balance which will take some serious time. Plans are to start the first game with all of the aforementioned disadvantages for visitors and then for as many games as needed, slowly weed out and sort them to create the best acceptable balance for future games with the best home-field advantage as possible. Does that make sense? So, regrettably, it may take quite a long while to find the right combination of allowances for games with realistic home-field advantages, sorry. A lot of good ideas in this thread. Not sure I’d appreciate being the visiting team if ALL of them were implemented though. This has been a good thread with a good variety of ideas presented. Certainly some ideas would have a larger impact than others. Yes, I expect home teams to win often but that is part of and hopefully the quickest part of the process to find what make sense for me. I wonder though if by providing any of the advantages listed for the ENTIRE GAME gives the home team TOO MUCH of an advantage. Perhaps trying it for a season and recording how often the home team wins vs the road team and comparing those stats with actual NFL stats would provide a good indicator as to whether the rule is fair or not. Just some thoughts. I want to make as quick a work of the process as possible so I plan on reviewing the rule used with each play it was used on and record, based on results, whether or not it was too successful to keep, not useful enough to keep, or perhaps some type of an adjustment needs to be considered. I do not intend to incorporate NFL stats into this though as it is ultimately just for my Electric Football League. Does that make sense? Of course, I welcome any feedback at any time. You will not ruffle my feathers. I hope I do not ruffle anyone else's feathers.

You are most welcome, anytime, sir. Yeah, it is great to see how things just turn out. I enjoy heavy defensive games as much as high scoring offensive games. I agree with you about this being a fairly assertive defensive game. Looking forward to how this game would turn out kept me up tonight so it just had to be finished. It is almost 2:00 a.m. here in Dallas, Texas. The New York Giants pushed through for one more touchdown and a 2-point conversion, stealing Superbowl 18 from my Minnesota Vikings with a 16-12 victory. 🙂 My brother, a lifetime Vikings fan, will probably not be thrilled. Oh well, that's the beauty of Electric Football. You just never know what will happen next. Let it never be said that life is boring! On to season 19, yeah! Blessings to everyone and good night from Texas ya'll, Curt

Howdy Bob, yes, I will try the new rules for a season or as many games as it takes to determine if any of the new rules should be permanent. Perhaps an example is one "rule" I already know I will not use for home-field advantage, is providing a better set of bases for my home team. I have enough bases to load [a little more than] 3 full games. I try to make all my bases run as straight and far as possible and allow tweaking only with timeouts. However, to try and eliminate personal bias to any team on any given game day, I shuffle the bases quite often and whatever "set" a team gets, well, they have that set for that game. Does that make sense? Now let's explore this further. Let's say I get to the end of the regular season for season 19 and have not yet decided upon the fate of a particular rule. I will not use that rule during the post season for season 19 and will revisit that rule in season 20 until a decision can be made whether or not it will become permanent. I feel like I'm beginning to ramble but cannot think of anything else to clarify this. Does that help at all though? Now then on to your next question, what does my season 18 playoff structure look like so far? Ok, here goes, trying to make it as clear as possible: My 11th place division winner Oakland Raiders beat my Wildcard [best of 2nd place division teams] Seattle Seahawks 14 to 6 to face my 4th place division winner Green Bay Packers. My 10th place division winner Cleveland Browns beat my 9th place division winner Kansas City Chiefs 13 to 0 to face my 3rd place division winner Minnesota Vikings. My 7th place division winner Indianapolis Colts beat my 8th place division winner Tampa Bay Buccaneers 18 to 0 to face my 2nd place division winner Houston Texans. My 5th place division winner Dallas Cowboys beat my 6th place division winner Buffalo Bills 15 to 10 to face my 1st place division winner [Top of the League] New York Giants. My Oakland Raiders beat my Green Bay Packers 28 to 13 to face my Minnesota Vikings. My Minnesota Vikings beat my Cleveland Browns 24 to 23 to face my Oakland Raiders. My Houston Texans beat my Indianapolis Colts 31 to 29 to face my New York Giants. My New York Giants beat my Dallas Cowboys 26 to 22 to face my Houston Texans. My Minnesota Vikings beat my Oakland Raiders 13 to 8 to face my New York Giants. My New York Giants beat my Houston Texans 21 to 16 to face my Minnesota Vikings. I am now 2:33 into the 3rd quarter of Superbowl 18 and my New York Giants have a 1st and 10 on their own 30-yard line. They trail my Minnesota Vikings 12 to 8 but there is still a lot of football to be played for Superbowl 18 and I have seen bigger comebacks than this so we shall have to wait and see what happens. Hopefully, this is sufficient to answer your question. Hope I didn't ramble too much or waste anyone's time and that everyone enjoyed it. Blessings to all, Curt

Oh definitely Bob, definitely that is the plan to try out all suggestions in my season 19 and whittle them down to a good balance which will take some serious time but just to add more confusion, I have 2 more ideas to add to the long list. I don't incorporate changes during my playoffs. Changes have to be "proven" during regular season games. Playing catch-up from COVID-19 delays as fast as possible, I'm now done with my season 18 playoff games and my season 18 Superbowl will have my New York Giants facing my Minnesota Vikings. Once that game is done and season 19 begins [and its conclusion is due by Christmas this year if possible], I will add 2 more items geared to home-field advantage for "review" purposes. I noticed sometimes a ball carrier starts to veer on a wide arc and although forward progress may be stopped at any time to avoid yardage loss, a yard may be lost by the time the power is shut off and he actually comes to a complete stop if that makes sense? So, I'm going to "test" giving the home team the furthest yard gained and the visitor the actual stopping point, similar to what nefgm.org calls electric slide. I love that term. 🙂 My second home-field advantage test is also related to electric slide. In my most recent games, I noticed that sometimes the electric slide takes my quarterback over the line of scrimmage. As it has been and will be for Superbowl 18, once past the line of scrimmage, a pass is no longer an option. However, I'm going to allow the home team to "ignore the electric slide" over the line of scrimmage and attempt a pass if the quarterback is not yet down. Does that make sense? I know all this is a complete mess, but what a lovely mess it is! Don't you just love it? 🙂 I can't wait to get on to season 19 but rushing my Superbowl 18 is not an option either. Blessings to all, Curt

Oh definitely agreed ya'll. More great ideas, thanks. 🙂 I haven't tried any of them yet honestly. Thanks to COVID-19, I got behind in my season-per-calendar-year schedule. I should complete season 19 by the end of this year if I were on task. However, and still playing catch-up as fast as possible, I have 4 more games left to play in my playoff structure for season 18. I do not try any adjustments during my playoffs because it seems right not to change anything for post-season games that did not show up in regular season games if that makes sense. When season 18 is completely done, visitors for season 19 yes and unfortunately, are in for a real shock. Plans are to start the first game with all of the aforementioned disadvantages for visitors and then for as many games as needed, slowly weed out and sort them to create the best acceptable balance for future games with the best home-field advantage as possible. Does that make sense? So, regrettably, it may take quite a long while to find the right combination of allowances for games with realistic home-field advantages, sorry. Blessings, Curt

Ok, here I am in the middle of yet another game. I had this thought about one of my much earlier boards. I submit this one on the previous comment "You think “out of the box” and I hope you continue to share your thoughts." One of my earlier boards was much smaller than my Ultimate board. The vibration control was in the corner of one of the endzones. While I do not have this issue with my Ultimate board, I noticed that closer to the vibration control, the field buzzed a little stronger and the players moved a little faster. Now this would take some serious experimentation to foster a "reasonable" home field advantage. Once the desirable vibration level is found, the better of the vibration levels could be used for the home team when they are on offense and a slightly lesser vibration level could be used for the visiting team when they are on offense. Does that make sense? Honestly, I think this has been my favorite topic of all since it is always on my ever-so-slowly moving mind. You all are so incredibly fabulous for being so patient with me. Thank you very much and the best of blessings to all of you, Curt. 🙂

Sorry ya'll, here's another late, late, late thought that occurred to me while playing [as that is when most thoughts present themselves. Are you sick of me now? :)]. I allow tackles from any angle. Sometime a ball carrier gets hit really quickly and the momentum gains him an extra yard before he comes to a complete stop. I've always likened that to the extra effort I've seen NFL players give each time they carry the ball. To add yet another slight advantage to the home team. Should that happen, the home team would be given that extra yardage whereas the visiting team would have the ball spotted at the point of contact. Does that make sense? Blessings, Curt.