I'll come from a different slant/avenue.

Playbooks. (Offensive and Defensive) Setting them up, streamlining them defensively and layering them offensively (with the appropriate %s on 1st and 2nd downs, particularly, is crucial)

Defensively, you're allowed up to 30 plays. (broken down by Goal-Line, Normal, Nickel, Dime and Quarter) First thing is you never want to use 30 defensive plays or really come close to it because a) you learn defensive plays slowly and do not want to be that divvy'd up and b) there's no way you'll get that many to be effective. You'll be a fireworks display on the 4th of July in a bad way every game with exploitable plays.

Any ways, get enough effective plays in each Defensive Set above and leave wiggle room. Clip out the bad ones in each set as you go along. Basically, pit the defensive plays against each other and come out in the end with your strongest possible defensive playlist circa 20 plays....in and around.

Ok, that's enough for one post. :)

The USFL/WFL also has a mentoring committee.

Nice to hear...but I was alluding to game mentors as a whole....i.e not specific to a league/conference.
Every league can have mentors/rules/do's & do not...but give a new comer a point of contact that he/she can lean on is an invaluable good start.

That’s exactly what the mentors are in the Parody league. You can ask them questions about the game, get their assessment, get advice.

Thank you all! Very nice to see that so many managers are willing to help....very useful advises...i think i will take my time for awhile and scout the best teams/players and see where this goes..... if this does`n work i`ll go with the mentoring approach....

Now you tell me! LoL First year in the game, been thinking all year "why do all my defensive plays ****?"

How do you make these evaluations? Are you studying the code to the game engine? Do you have a simulator where you're running plays over and over and focusing on one position at a time sliding guus skills up and down to see what matters? I'm a programmer, can you tell? :)

I suppose I should ask at this point, our league is totally new, going into the last game of the first season, should I put considerably less than 40 plays in my offensive play book as well? If you guys were in a brand new league, game one, season one, how many plays wpuld you have started with in your offensive and defensive playbooks?

If you are in a new league, I would start the season with 40/30 plays and check to see how they are doing over the course of the season. After a couple games, you can see what plays are working and what plays are not. At this point you can start cutting down to the better plays.

One thing to note, if your formation or pass/run selection are somewhat balanced, make sure you use multiple plays from a certain formation or you will get the dreaded overuse statement, "I think the defense is getting familiar with that play!"

There was another sim game engine I played....Jump Shot Basketball and also Fast Break Basketball where the end users/league owners purchased the game and could therefore experiment hours with it. In this case, only JDB has that peek behind the curtain powers. Thankfully.

I wouldn't even bother or respect playing someone in that basketball sim where you know the person you're up against can toy with the results or be so immersed in it you don't have a shot. That was definitely wack.

I much prefer this. :)