2011 Game of the Week Procedures

With the season virtually upon us, it seemed appropriate to explain to players and fans how the popular (though at times very controversial!) Game of the Week Contest (GOTW) would work in this seventh season of the USCL.

First off, the prizes for the GOTW contest shall remain the same as last year namely:


1st: $200 ($150 to the winner, $50 to the loser - split evenly if drawn)
2nd: $75 (all to the winner - split evenly if drawn)
3rd: $50 (all to the winner - split evenly if drawn)


However, the method by which the top three games will be picked shall be very different than recent years. For the past four seasons we have had a judging panel of five judges (or three judges earlier) who independently voted on their top five games and then the scores were tallied to determine the winners.

While that system seemed to work fairly well and certainly had a knack for starting interesting debates, it also definitely seemed to have some problems. One big issue was that, other than Greg and myself, the judges did not typically watch all (or even most) of the games live which naturally meant that an important facet to GOTW (at least in our eyes), a game's feel/excitement were difficult for the other judges to properly take into account. This also lead to the most notable problem, that being that looking through so many games in such a short time frame (due to having not watched them live) was a huge task, and at times this was a tremendous burden on the other judges.

Taking everything into account, we have decided to revert back to the system used in the two initial seasons of the USCL - that being that GOTW results will be decided behind closed doors by Greg and I alone. That is, unlike the past few years, rather than voting independently, he and I will discus everything together and come to an agreement on which three games should take the prizes.

While I am certainly somewhat skeptical as to whether this is the most effective way of doing things (I anticipate many a broken bone when he and I have irrevocably different opinions), we nevertheless feel it is the best way of doing things at the current moment and therefore what will be done for the 2011 season.

Any feedback about this change is appreciated, but remember you must register a Google account to comment - there will be no anonymous commenting on the USCL blog this season!