SAG 2021 — Week 5 Report
Dear SAG family,
The office of the Commissioner is an often-lonely place. A mental strip mall replete with a dodgy vending machine, empty offices stuffed with aged Formica covered desks, a couple of neon sign toting poorly partitioned massage parlors of questionable ilk, an immigrant run bodega crammed with well past used by food stuffs and selling black market cigarettes under the counter, and a car park marked with the ghosts of parking bays bygone and adorned with various crushed cans, smashed glass, and debris. A veritable over exposed sun-bleached wasteland of a place. Soulless and friendless.
It’s in these times that the overworked and underpaid staff of the CO turn to those closest to them for support, an empathetic shoulder to lean on. From these bonds, there springs a comradery that blossoms like a well fertilized fruit tree in late spring, a helping hand to shine a ray of friendship into the world. Without these moments, the conversation that we bring to you today wouldn’t happen, the insight into the minds of the SAG’s GM brigade never shared.
The great suspense generated after the following interview’s announcement can now be ended. In what the CO hopes will be the first in a series of exposés into the life and times of the GM’s, it's with immense pleasure that I bring to you an exclusive interview with the GM of the Channel4 News Team. Enjoy.
SAG Commish: Welcome Channel4! Great to have you here.
News Team: Thanks Commish. It's a real outer body experience let me tell you. You have no idea how many times this very conversation has been had with myself in the shower!
SC: Let's get straight into the nitty gritty. You are a double jacket wearing, asterisks free GM, who to be honest hasn’t put the runs on the board in recent years. Are there issues at C4NT HQ?
NT: You’re not wrong. Shareholders and board members have been showing increasing levels of agitation over the last few seasons, all because of some lackluster on field performances. Has a part of us been focused elsewhere? Sure, that's one argument. But we aren’t in the business of making excuses. We want to be back to those heady early days of SAG when the News Team signified titles, when a weekly head-to-head matchup with Channel4 caused sleepless nights, when BeastMode ruled at RB. We want that more than anything.
SC: That’s ambitious talk. What's actually being done to address this?
NT: We engaged Collective Minds at the end of 2017 to take the whole organization through a rigorous deep dive into the culture and attitudes that were, to be honest not up to expectation. Something went wrong however with various wires being crossed. They were double booked and ended up working with a South Australian based AFL club instead. After this fell through we lobbied hard at league headquarters for a shift away from the snake-draft format which failed to see our player development team secure the top draft pick even once. The positive response that came out of the Office of the Commissioner following this intensive PR campaign, the talent identification group knuckled down. They watched the fantastic Brad Pitt film Moneyball every Tuesday and Thursday religiously once the auction format was approved and we think that this should start to have a positive impact on the draft strategy sometime after 2024. Look, this isn’t a league where things turn around overnight. Things take time and we’ll be going out to our supporters begging for patience and to trust in our processes.
SC: Not sure any of this made sense or was helpful…
NT: Thats fine, we expect our supporters to be confused. As a team we like to think of ourselves as success-fluid, or winning-neutral.
SC: I’m going to change tack. Do you have any comment around the allegations that continue to dog your team that you and league HQ are in cohorts, or dare I say it, collusion?
NT: I find that C word offensive. That is the type of tripe that sounds like its being spread by that carny traveler people team from down the highway. Spurious and baseless claims. The News Team is nothing but a bastion of fairness and a pillar of anti-corruption in the fantasy world. Next question!
SC: Taking things away from fantasy football for the moment, tell us, what keeps you busy away from the magnets and data and redzone watching of SAG?
NT: Tomatoes.
(pregnant silence)
SC:…elaborate please.
NT: I like to grow, nurture, raise, and eat tomatoes. What else is there to say?
SC: Plenty I would have thought. Perhaps this is representative of the simple man you are outside of SAG?
NT: Well, it's all I have time for. To be honest I’m not really sure where the time goes. Sometimes it only feels like I have 12 hours in a day and that I’m living a half-life but I’m sure that's just got something to do with the altered perspective we’re all experiencing due to the spicy cough lockdowns.
SC: Great point. To wrap up, let's get your take on the Wuhan Flu situation and its impact on SAG.
NT: The biggest impact it's had on me is that it's completely ruined my YouTube algorithm. Seriously, I watch one clip from a flat earther giving me a detailed and thoroughly researched synopsis of the DNA mind control program run by Bill Gates and the lizard people, next thing you know, I’m inundated with 9/11 cover up clips, fake moon landing evidence exposes and illuminati recruitment videos! I mean, fuck. How is a man meant to just relax in front of a few funniest moments from the office clips? What if I just want to know how to rewire a power socket in my house or have an Indian guy show me how to solve an Excel problem that I have? It's impossible, they aren’t listening to me anymore, the whole world is screwed, Egypt is being taken back by the pharaohs…
(interview was ceased at this point as the subject walked off muttering incoherently about dogecoin being the next Martian colony currency…)
Thanks Channel4 for that insightful look into the trials and tribulations of a high-flying SAG GM. The SAG community looks forward to hearing more stories from GM-land in the future. Let's turn now to week 5 action and this feels very much like burying the headline. Could this have been the highest scoring week in SAG history? By golly by gosh it sure could have been but I’m not going into that level of data analysis after spending all week on the beat chasing interviews. Let's say it was and worry about the details later. To the match round-ups:
C4NT defeated TacoCorp
The first re-match in the Battle of Highett Street had huge hype coming into the weekend. In the end, each of these team would have only beaten one other team this week but in head-to-head there's always a winner and a loser. Given it's an odd week then true to form, that was TacoCorp. Hurts took out top scorer with 23.92 after having only 4 points early in the 3rd quarter. Which sounds impressive but I can already hear Lamar J yelling ‘hold my beer’ in the background…
Patches defeated Rubbers
Patches went large for 181.21 pts this week which is bonkers. What is more bonkers is that it was only the 3rd highest score of the round. The luckless Rubbers were respectable with 149.15, consistent across the board and only two single digit scorers. Patches had four single digit scorers, but countered that with his QB’s racking up a combined 83.56pts. Which is Tom Brady’s actual age.
CO-Cainers defeated Bandits
The rumbling Bandit train kept its slow building this week posting 158.14 points… and lost. Monster RB totals for Django and a blinding TE score from Andrews on MNF couldn’t compete with the run-away express of the Cainers. 188.49pts. Mental. He is completely destroying the SAG LAB+ stats machine (hence it's been put to bed for the week). But wait, Barkley scored an effective 0 in that total. A mind-boggling performance, it's really exciting just to hold on and see how this whole run ends up. My moneys on a flaming all-consuming blow up.
The JABs defeated the Gypsies
This looked close-ish after Sunday games but with JABs comfortably predicted to win. Seems like the comfort was thrown out somewhere around breakfast on Tuesday morning and this became a belting. JABs piled on 85.33pts in a single game, and not just any game but MNF football no less. Truely outstanding. I wasn’t watching the game, but it seems as if Lamar had 7 points at half time, to come back out of the locker room and go about chalking up a lazy 42.88 match total. Hey Jalen, hold Lamar’s beer.
Week 6 is only days away. Stay frosty GMs.
4th and goal,
Commish Clue
