PCTI off-season dateless itinstick

What a tumultuous week it was around the virtual office of PCTI.

First Chairman Dan looked ready to push through a spring date for PCTI VIII, only to have Abe snipe his plans at the eleventh hour. Rumor has it that Dan is working the back halls as we speak, trying to forge and agreement.

No matter where you come out on this one, you gotta admit, it's so PCTI to have plans affected by Korean professional volleyball.

Perhaps sensing that the moment of chaos was the perfect time to strike, the PCTI Win King came out of the woodwork to simultaneously announce his reemergence and lead a Turkey-esque political takeover. Smo has a long history of poisoning the water at Dan's expense and right now it remains to be seen how this latest chapter will play out. From my view on the Bored, I'm content to let it all play out and am confident that the stronger leader will emerge and PCTI will be better for it.

In the meantime, I figured it was in the best interest of all to put out a loose schedule for the league's off-season business. This way you have something to look forward to, Or more realistically, you know the correct event to bitch about when it hasn't happened yet. Going off of past years, here's how things should play out on The Road To San Diego.

A final note: I plan to reprise the podcast this year under a slightly different format. The pod will serve as a reaction show for each of these events that I'll do in the days after each of these events goes down. The guests will be the guys who are behind each thing, and we'll work in some random check-ins as well.

OFF-SEASON SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

1. COMPLETED: Videos edited and uploaded to YouTube

my note - props to Deuce on his continued good work. I might be alone in this one, but I loved the slightly elevated view he worked in this year from the top of the bleachers.

2. Sabin re-stat including the return of the Sabin Productivity Rating

my note- Rumor out of DFW is that this process is already underway. In terms of the stats, it was a great (re)addition to have the realtime stats available this year and I think it played at least a small role in the competitiveness of the games. However, Sabin's stats will always be the official recognized stats of PCTI (thanks to Ben for standing in during Sabin's hiatus.)

As for the Sabin Productivity Rating (I think that's what it's called), for those of you who are new, this is an algorithm that only Sabin knows that is meant to encapsulate in one metric a player's overall impact. It's perfect for PCTI because if you rank highly you can use it as a way to feel better about yourself and if you rank low, you can disregard it as utter bullshit.

What I'd like to see: Sabin doesn't include the SPR on the initial stat sheet and instead counts down each player from bottom to top with what they scored and a quick take by him on what he thought of each guy's performance. Would make a great string of posts on the blog. I think everyone craves as much Sabin analysis as possible.

3. MVP and All-Tournament voting

my note- This is AHop's territory and I'm assuming that he'll head this up again this year. I never remember how many spots(light) we actually vote on but I'm counting on Hops to sort all this out.

What I'd like to see: This might already be on the blog, but it would be great to total up each guy's A/T and MVP honors through the years and get that in one place where everyone could see it. One fun fact that I think is true, Abe has been MVP in all of the even numbered PCTIs.

4. Captains named

my note - As the winning captain, Ben has the right to either stay a captain or hand off the job to someone of his choosing. The other captain will be the MVP.

What I'd like to see: This is always one of the best parts of the off-season. I pretty much laid out what I'd like to see in the post game six inteviews, go back and check those out if you haven't yet.

5. Captains establish pick order

my note - Draft strategy, draft strategy, draft strategy. I can't remember if the winning captain gets to choose if he wants the first pick or the snake two-three picks. Ben probably knows.

6. PCTI VIII roster is finalized

my note - If we've learned anything, this is a fluid, year-to-year thing. As I expressed to most of you in Cincinnati, I feel like every person this year (and Smo) has earned tenure and should have a spot for as long as they want one. Obviously, I hope everyone can make it next year but in the case that someone can't, this is when we'll make decisions about what to do.

what I'd like to see - Right now, we stand at 15 with Smo back in the fold. I wouldn't be opposed to rolling with an odd number but would be worried if the team with 7 had an injury and it turned in to 6 vs. 8. These are things we'll consider down the line, if need be. For now, it has plenty of time to play itself out.

7. Draft!

my note - Donley said it on the blog and I know I've had similar conversations: this should be the most intriguing draft in history. In year's past, it's been pretty easy to rank everyone and predict the draft order with pretty good accuracy. All you have to do is look at the stats this year to see how even everyone played and that should make this draft very interesting. The Kittens Disaster marked the death of the "draft a team with a profile in mind" approach and since then captains have been free to pick "best available" without any need to explain. My guess is this year captains will be forced once again to pick with an identity in mind.

what I'd like to see - Last year was fun with the Google hangout but I think we can make this even better. Google hangout is unpredictable and hard to keep track of everyone. With that said, I have no idea how we can make it better...it may be necessary to get Deuce linked in to this and think about taking the draft day presentation to the next level...we'll see.


8. Training season

my note - Cincinnati was perhaps the best example yet of how important it is (as we all continue to age) to put the time in to prep for this thing.

what I'd like to see - Videos/stories of the stupid things we do while we're in the gym are usually hilarious and in a weird way motivation to others to get their work in. I hope the trend of sharing this stuff only grows. If you haven't seen Nature's video of him doing defensive slides from last year, you're missing out.

9. Actor takes over and gets us ready for SoCal

my note - If we need a roommate draft, this is when it will go down. I think everyone loved staying under the same roof in Cincinnati and I'm guessing Singz will try to mirror that.

what I'd like to see - Don also raised the bar with the itinstick. I'll expect the same detail at VIII.