History of the LOD
2020: The League Goes Remote; Change of Commissioner; New Age of Content; Tanking Culture Takes Off; Gio’s First Championship
The 2020 season would be the first in history in which there were no changes to the lineup, with all 10 returning for the following year. This would be one of the very few areas of stability, however, as the season also saw the relocation of several League Members, the changing of League Leadership and official codifying of rules after a scandal resulted in Chuck’s resignation. Last, but not least, a global pandemic commenced that threatened the season even happening.
Impact of COVID and the End of The Trap House
The 2020 offseason began with the peaceful transition of the Trophy from Wings to Erik on Super Bowl Sunday, with Chuck and Roberto in attendance as witnesses. This would be one of the final in-person League events before the onset of the COVID pandemic. As this event unfolded and began impacting pro sports, there was some concern for the upcoming NFL season in the fall. At this point in time, all the League could do was wait and weather unprecedented times.
Coinciding with the pandemic was the end of the Trap House. During the offseason, Chuck and Ant made the decision to split up and move to new cities. Chuck relocated to Buena Park in neighboring Orange County, while Ant would leave for Colorado, becoming the second LOD team to move out of Southern California. Ant’s relocation would eventually result in the recruitment of Ryan Batista to the League and preceded the further branching out of the League to other parts of the country.
Jacobsgate, Wings becomes Commissioner, Creation of Official Rules
2020 was the first offseason fully on the Sleeper App. At the time, the only formal rules governing Keepers were those in the November 2018 Rule changes. These rule changes stated that “Current rosters will remain intact from the beginning of the offseason until the keeper deadline, which will be set during the Offseason Owners’ Meeting.”
The Keeper deadline was set to be a week before the draft. Due to an oversight in the offseason Sleeper settings, any free agents dropped before the deadline were available to be picked up by any team. As teams started to cut players from their roster, Nauch dropped Josh Jacobs to the free agent pool. With Jacobs available, Chuck picked him up with the intent of setting him as a Keeper and circumventing the draft. This was immediately called out in the League chat, with it being regarded as unethical and unfair by a majority of the League. Chuck insisted that there was no rule against it, but did eventually drop Jacobs under increased pressure to do so. This controversy would later be known as “Jacobsgate.”
Shortly after the scandal, Chuck announced his resignation as Commissioner, effective immediately, leaving Wings as sole leader of the League. One of his first actions was to formalize the rules into a written document and to ensure they were prepared for future uncertainties such as Covid. The first draft of the Official Rules was formally adopted by a League Majority on August 15, 2020, with policies in place to amend the document through annual rule changes.
Along with establishing clear definitions of the League Year, Keepers, and other important settings, additional rule changes were introduced. The most important of these was the return of a trade limit, with 8 transactions being allowed per team between the end of the draft and the trade deadline.
2020 Season Results
With a significant amount of change and uncertainty, the League made it to Draft Day on August 15, 2020. With no official draft party, some League members were alleged to have held off-the-record gatherings. As the season progressed, Covid had a surprisingly minimal impact to the progression of the season, notwithstanding the rescheduling of games and some challenges with roster management.
The regular season was significantly less competitive than the previous year. Gio emerged as the heavy favorite to win the title, having been a top 5 scorer in all but 2 weeks of the season. He would end the season as the top scorer by a 300-point margin and the only team to hit the 10-win mark, cruising to a bye. Nauch, at a respectable 9-4 record, got the second seed despite having finished 6th in total PF. Because of the perceived view of an easy schedule, he would be given the nickname “Frauch.”
Original 6 teams Hurtado, Joe, and Wings, who all missed the playoffs the year before, would make their returns with bounce-back winning seasons. Erik, who had a difficult title defense, ended 7th in PF but made it to week 13 in a winner-take-all matchup versus Rob. Despite being second in PF at season’s end, Rob had bad luck with matchups all season and would end up losing to Erik, just missing out on the postseason after clinching the 1 seed the previous year.
Along with his resignation as Commissioner in the offseason, 2020 would mark the first time in LOD history that Chuck missed the playoffs entirely. The year would provide a definitive ending to the period of Chuck’s dominance from the ESPN era.
Round 1 of the playoffs began week 14. In a rematch of the 2018 semifinals, Joe would avenge his loss versus Wings with a 40 point blowout. On the other side, the defending champion Erik would carry the previous week’s momentum to upset 3 seed Hurtado, who had the worst performance of the first round.
The semifinal featured another 2018 rematch for Joe, though this time Gio would be the one to get revenge, winning in a shootout to advance to his second consecutive Championship game. Erik, meanwhile, finally ran out of magic, losing to Nauch in a low-scoring affair. While Nauch advanced to his first Championship game, Erik would fail to make the Final after back to back appearances.
Both championship teams put in a fair amount of hype leading up to the Final. The matchup itself was a blowout as expected, but Gio still managed to entertain the rest of the League through a record-breaking performance, dropping 262 points and winning by nearly a 100 point margin against Nauch, both were records at the time. Gio won his first LOD Title in just his third season with the League and would be the first of two in his early-20s dynasty.
2020 Season Legacy: The Rise of Tanking
Shortly after the conclusion of the Draft, Ant was dissatisfied with the roster he assembled, and before the NFL season even commenced made the strategic decision to trade any and all valuable assets for future Draft Picks. While the previous season featured significant levels of draft pick trading and Members out of contention selling at the deadline, this was one of the first instances of a team tanking in this manner. Ant was successful in this, amassing a large stockpile of 2021 and some 2022 picks that would set him up for a future Championship. This would be the beginning of Tanking culture, which was one of the biggest challenges for the League during the Keeper era.
League Content: Blogger Boyz and TCR
With Wings taking full-time control of the League for the 2020 season, he did not intend to continue blog duties which would have left the LOD without weekly posts. Chuck, who had resigned from his Commissioner duties, decided to team up with Ant to form the Blogger Boyz, and started a new blog for the 2020 season that remained the main source of posts through the present day. Unfortunately, blog records from 2020 and 2021 have been lost and not yet been recovered.
Wings, meanwhile, would change his own mind on stepping back from content in the wake of the Pandemic. The Commissioner’s Report would debut via the League’s iMessage group chat as a weekly podcast summarizing the events of the previous week in a more humorous manner, serving as a complement to the written posts from the Blogger Boyz. The podcast would continue to use iMessage for its weekly episodes, until Nauch re-approached Wings to get the podcast hosted on his Discord channel, renamed to LODSPN. Episodes would be posted here through season’s end.
All TCR episodes are archived and will be available at a later time.