PLS put your best foot forward to new members!!!!

Football is a macho game - no doubt - and "picking on the rookie" and hazing have been long part of football tradition (although kids on my HS ftb team dont get away with 1% of the hazing i endured as a rookie HS player in the late 80's - it was just a different era)...

I know sometimes - ESPECIAL;LY in games - veteran players get real "sensitive" about actions of NEW MEMBERS - often players misinturpret their actions... They may break a rule and verterans could view it is CONTEMPT for the MG (or even them personally) - with the exception of 1 high profile person (where too many threads have been wasted on him already so i am not even mentioning his name) - NEW PLAYERs who break rules are not doing this OUT OF SPITE for the MG or the player they are playing - THEY ARE BREAKING THE RULE OUT OF IGNORANCE!!!! (and i am saying IGNORANCE in the litteral sense of the word - THEY JUST DONT KNOW)


Of course when commishes get new players in their LGs - they ask the standard questions: Do you know the rules? and of course the guy wants in the LG - so whether he does or not he is going to say YES!!! LOL - so we always follow up and tell them where they can find the rules and i always tell them to "copy" the rules, open a WORD file, "paste" the rules and than print a "hard copy" that they can have next to there PS3...

Unfortunately, our rules are quite cumbersome and i have taken steps to streamline them (i have divided them into On the Field Rules an Off the field Policy/Procedure)... nevertheless; we have 34 rules to remember in the MG - new GUYS are not going to learn all the rules within 1 season of play let alone in the 1st few gfames they play!!!!! There is going to be "slip-ups" - but striking out agauinst these opponents who are truely just ignorant of the situation and mean zero contempt IS NOT THE ANSWER!!!!

If you are playing a new player to the MG - before you start - POLITELY ask them if they have seen are "massive" rule book (make a joke about it - call me the "RULE NAZIS" if you want - nothing wrong with making light of the situation - but at the same time u want the new player to recognize that RULES ARE A CRITICAL PART OF THE MG!!!)...

The next thing to do is to EXPLAIN TO THE PLAYER - that you will pause the game IF NEEDED - to help explain any rules that come up in game play (ask him to NOT BUM RUSH your pause while your doing this - if he knows that you are making these pauses to help climatize him to the MG, HE WILL NOT TAKE IT AS A PERSONAL ATTACK ON HIS GAME PLAY!!!! - but if you dont make this caveat - he could see it as you "dissing" him...) If the new player breaks a rule - pause the game (like u explained) - and tell him the rule he broke and why it is a rule (in a cordial fashion)- BUT DONT TAKE IT PERSONAL remember he broke the rule out of ignorance NOT contempt!

If the game is filled with consistant rule breaches despite your efforts - save the replays and report them to your commish like u you would against any1 else!!!!

The bottom line is that its getting more diffeicult eachg day to find REPLACEMENT PLAYERS - there are more and more LGs available and less players to fill them - THEREFORE WHEN WE GET A REPLACEMENT PLAYER - WE DONT WANT TO SCARE THEM OFF - (at the beginning of the year when we had 20 player wait lists - if guys broke rules consistantly - we just booted you - but know we have to make sure guys are breaking rule out of CONTEMPT and not because they JUST DIDNT KNOW! Where we reuired we have to take steps to educate these members about our UNIVERSAL SIM RULES!

Special thanks top R088 who has refferred a number of players to the MG recently - if any1 else knows of players that would enjoy what we do at the MG - let me or 1 of the commish know about them - the best new players are always refferals!!!