Rumbling, Stumbling, Slowly

 

Connect THIS, MFer!... I won't bore you with the details, but I've been fighting an uphill battle to fix my HIGHLY erratic internet connection for the past week and a half. After finally getting through to a living person (I think) at AT&T, I believe the solution is in sight. We'll see. In the meantime, I will continue with this stuff as long as my connection and patience hold out.

Well, Well, Well... the seemingly invincible Blizzard took one on the chin this week, and now, combined with another Sticks' win, the Kuhlmann has tightened right up. Those two clubs are a notch (at least) ahead of the Hughes League pack and headed for a showdown in about a month. Which reminds me....

Since the Playoff tab refuses to populate the sixth projected playoff team. I'll do the work for you. The playoff tab is now fixed (more or less). If the playoffs started this week:

Byes,..Bliz (#1 seed) and Holes (#2)

WC Games: Legends (#3) vs. Nats (#6) and Sticks (#4) vs. Bombers( #5). 

Elsewhere across the league... the Legends have quietly emerged as the leader in the Lombardi Division. They are tied with the Bombers (a big winner this week!) and hold a Week 1 win over Bobby. That's a Week 14 rematch to look forward to. 

....the Nationals remain right on the Holes' heels 😏, but, like the Sticks, they lost the first matchup, which adds a bit more of an uphill tilt to their efforts to win the Barenholtz. Their rematch comes in the last week of the season. Buckle up! The R'backs, at 4-4, are very much in the picture. In the first division go-round, they beat the Holes, then lost to the Nats. Both games had razor-thin margins. It's worth noting that they are the only team currently outside the projected playoffs to be at .500 or better.

Yes, we have FIVE teams at 2-6. Five. That's pretty weird. I've mentioned previously that seven wins can often come with a Wildcard slot, but the way things appear this year, it is tough to visualize a playoff path for any of those clubs. Maybe I'm being pessimistic. All I know is that I got a terribly lucky and much undeserved win this week and went to bed thinking maybe I was getting some fortune smiling at me. But the first email I get is a lineup from my next opponent, the Sticks. A guy can't even enjoy a moment of respite from a shit season. LOL It was soul-crushing, lemme tell ya!

A Gentle Reminder... a lot of the IR'd guys we picked up on spec earlier are now hitting the active NFL rosters. Once they are off the IR, you'll need to activate or cut them before the system will allow you to make any roster moves. 

The Ed Hughes Page... As I mentioned last week, I've been picking up some new items for my Ed Hughes collection, and they have all arrived. New to me are game programs from his 1971 season with the Oilers and his appearance in the '53 Gator Bowl with Tulsa, a Topps trading card that shows CEH, a ticket from his debut on the sidelines (shown last week), and various photos, some bought, some found on the 'net, and more. 

Nearly everything is now posted on the Tribute page. I've also rearranged the page to get it into chronological order (more or less). I'm still editing text and researching some of the photos. But the page is ready for viewing. Click the link to the right and let me know what you think. It's not mobile-friendly, so a desktop view is best. I'm working on perfecting my skills in various areas, such as limiting photo size, etc. 

Did You Know?... With my recent interest in expanding my Ed Hughes collection, I've found a few interesting facts about his life and career while digging through publications and websites. For example:

• He is listed as having played for the Hamilton WildCats of the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union (IRFU) in 1949, which meant he was (presumibly) playing amateur Canadian-rules football before attending college. From the sketchy details available about that league, it was not 'rugby' as we know it, but indeed the 110-yard version of football played in the current CFL. That's my assumption since the Hamilton franchise played for the Grey Cup in the '40s. 
• He played football at North Carolina State, Cameron Junior College (OK), and, finally, Tulsa.
• He began and ended his coaching career at the collegiate level, returning to coach at Tulsa in 1959 once he retired as a player, and finishing with a year as the defensive coordinator at Division III Lake Forest College in 1990. 
• His younger brother Dick followed him to Tulsa to play football and, in 1956, led the Golden Hurricane in rushing yards. He was drafted by the Steelers in 1957. He played just one game that season (two carries for six yards in their season opener vs. Washington) and was out of the NFL after that. 
• Tulsa was in the Missouri Valley Conference along with the Houston Cougars in 1952 and 1953 when EH played there. They split the two matchups. Houston won in 1952, finishing first in the MVC, but Tulsa was ranked higher (11th vs. UH's #19 finish in the AP poll) and got an invite to the Gator Bowl, where they lost by a point to #15 Florida. 
• EH's brother-in-law was Dick Nolan, a long-time NFL player and coach. They met as rookies with the '54 Giants and had two separate stints working on the same NFL staff over the years. 

I Should Know Better, But... when your team isn't on the right track, you have a lot of time to think about other league-related matters. Lately, I've been thinking about roster size, IR slots, that sort of thing. I even got to musing about a 'taxi squad' spot. It would entail a drafted or claimed rookie that is put into an inactive slot until an owner decides to 'promote' him. Once active, the player is not eligible to be put back on the taxi squad but is treated like any other rostered player. 

Two things I know... 1) the taxi squad slot is available under the MFL system, and 2) anything we do has to be fully automated within the system. In other words, I do not want to have to monitor it as commish. 

I have to look more closely into it. I'm not sure, for example, if an owner should or would be able to fill the taxi squad slot once his original rookie was activated. My initial thought was that once the drafted rookie is activated, the slot goes away, but I'm not sure if that is an available option.

Your thoughts, as always, are very much welcome. 

Never stop, Jim Kerr. Never stop!

Oh, the same goes for you, Peter Gabriel!

Weak 7

If you had told me forty years ago, hell, TWENTY years ago, that I'd be sitting here in 2025, almost 73, doing Hughes League newsletters and listening to someone who calls herself beabadoobee I'd have advised you to cut back on the cocaine, and yet, bygawd, here we are. 

Hey, check this out....

Care to venture a guess as to the significance of that ticket? Well, the 1971 Hall of Fame Game in Canton was the first time Ed Hughes stood on the sideline as the Oilers' new head coach. I've been picking up some nice CEH-related items lately, and this ticket is among them. This is only the second example of this game ticket that I've seen. Luckily, the seller of this one was in a mood to accept an offer.  In a week or two, I will update the Hughes Tribute page with some additional new items. 

And the back of the ticket lists the '71 Hall inductees...

Jim Brown, Y.A., Title, Norm Van Brocklin, & Vince Lombardi!!! That made for quite a group. Don't want to shortchange Andy Robustelli (one of my father's favorites) and Bill Hewitt either. 

Speaking of Lombardi... his 'Division' in the EHFL suffered the ignominious fate of losses across the board.  But when everyone is marching backward, nobody falls farther behind, right? ;-/

Over in the Barenholtz Division, the Holes have established a one-game lead over the Nats and R'backs. As we turn for home, that one is anyone's for the taking.

The Kuhlmann houses the two strongest clubs in the league, the Bliz and the Sticks. Looking closely, you see the power of having a great defense in our league! Paz' crew is 7-0 with a two-game lead on the Sticks despite the two clubs being almost identical in scoring power. Again, the difference is the PA column. There is over a one-hundred-point difference, and that explains the two-game gap. Week 12's Bliz-Sticks matchup looks big, but with a two-game lead and a win in their first game, the Bliz have a bigger margin for error. Gonna be interesting.

Homepage items... I'm not sure I like the addition of player photos everywhere on the site. There is supposed to be a way to exclude them on some modules (I'd prefer they not clutter up the Waivers page, for example) but I have not had any luck in making that work. I'll keep trying. 

That's all for this week, as we stay pretty busy with appointments and grandparent stuff. 

RIP John Lodge

My Kind Of Town

 

We had a great time in the Windy City! We didn't do much sightseeing (we've done it all that many times), but we hit a bunch of our favorite food joints, celebrated our granddaughter's first birthday, and spent a lot of time with 4-year-old Leo. I did go downtown to watch Manchester United pull off a rare match win with the Chicago MUFC Supporters group at their bar. That was a lot of fun. 

Back here in the real world... Thursday night's MFL Live Scoring snafu resolved itself as expected, not long after the game ended. I might not even have noticed, as I rarely watch or check in on games/scores on Thursday night. But I flipped over after the Rangers beat the Sabres and kind of enjoyed seeing the Giants dismantle the Eagles. My father was a Giants fan, and they still own a piece of me.

But the glitch caused the commish message forum to experience a 'meltdown' of epic proportions. "My league is in revolt!" "MFL won't be around next season!" Yup, guys actually typed those sentences. I was all rather amusing. At least one other commish shared my perspective. He suggested everyone wait for Friday's USA Today and calculate their league by hand. Oh, the memories!

Sorting Out The Week... I don't think I quite have a handle on what happened. The Flyers had to score 125 points to win a freaking game, and at that, it was a less-than-five-point win...at least I'm spared the shame of a zero-win season... the Blizzard seems unstoppable right now...they own the top seed at the moment but the season is just arroaching the halfway mark... the R'backs are on top in the Barenholtz but have scored the fewest points in the division and have fewer points that any of the three 1-win teams!! No need to scratch your head, just look at their PA...

...the Legends have won three straight to claim a share of the Lombardi lead. I spend a lot of time prepping for the draft, James, well, not so much. WTF?... I dunno about the rest of you bottom feeders, but you know that 7-7 can get you a decent shot at a wild card bid. Poker players will tell you that all you need is 'a chip and a chair' and anything can happen! I figure I've had some bad luck to open the year, so maybe a few breaks will swing my way... 

Updates On This Site... With the issues some had on the league site now a memory (knock on wood), I've had a chance to work on things over here on the blog. If you click the Memorials link over on the right, you'll see that I added a small photo collage and memorial blurb for my uncle, Ralph Straley. As you know, he passed away earlier this year and was the guy who inspired me to start this silly thing that we enjoy each fall. BTW...the same update was applied over on the league site under the 'About Us' tab. 

Something else I've recently worked on, something I'm excited about, is adding some photos to the Ed Hughes Tribute Page. There are some new sideline photos, including one with running back Joe Dawkins that I particularly like (for no real reason other than 'just because'). I've added a couple of archived NY Times articles that ran late in the 1971 season as the Oilers' season unraveled and Coach Hughes' seat got hot, and a Chicago Bears 1985 anniversary team pic that has notations for CEH as well as Walter Payton.  

Even better are some pictures of EH in action in the late 50s with the Giants and Rams. Coming soon are three items I've been chasing for quite a while. I think I'll wait to discuss those when I have them in hand, scanned, and posted. 

The Team Profile page is a revision of one I had previously linked on our league site. It's been cleaned up.  The Flyers Helmet History is a complete redo of a page I did a long time ago and hadn't touched in forever. It's just for fun. 

In general, I've been trying (with mixed results) to bring some visual consistency to those pages. I used different methods to compile many of them, Excel, MSWord, ChatGPT, coding by hand, the native Blogger system, etc. That's why, for example, the fonts are inconsistent from one page to the next, and some columns are different from one page to the next. I'm working on those things slowly but surely. 

Yeah, Right! LOL... For reasons not worth getting into, I've recently looked at changing where I host this blog. One choice was Wix.com. I eventually decided that I'm not going to make any moves, but not before I clicked one of the options at Wix, which was claiming a domain name*. I typed in EHFL.com and here's what popped up:

The stuff in red represents my reaction. I think I'll pass. But if I change my mind, you can expect a slight rise in league fees for 2026! 🤯🤯

*=I used to own 'www.hughesleague.com'. But it was costing me an annual fee, which wasn't worth paying since I had no real need for ownership of that domain name. 

More Chicago tunes!

Scenes from Aìda's birthday weekend.  Yes, she is always this happy!