Let the 2025 Games Commence!

Fellowship,

Welcome back for our 2025 season, and the lucky number seventh year of battle to rule.

We begin another epic season of The Fellowship of the League! As your trusty commissioner, I am overjoyed to embark yet another journey through Middle-earth, where fantasy football meets the rich tapestry of Tolkien's world. And look, while I have put in a Justin Timberlake amount of effort thus far, we still have a whole season in front of us.

This year promises more memes, newsletter fun, and 10x the amount of gooners each week (if the off-season was any indication of that, the NFL gives us more than enough material to keep this shit running).

Sharpen your strategies, rally your rosters, and prepare for a season filled with unforgettable moments and heroic feats. May the best team claim the One Ring and be crowned the ultimate champion of our fantastical realm!

Please see below on all of the updates that are coming to our league for 2025. Truly, I am excited to be back and to welcome everyone back to the league - this is the first year where we don’t have any turnover!

Football season is one of the best times of the year and I can’t wait to get this season kicked off!

A Fixing of the Realm

I’m going to admit I messed up last year, but would also like to put more of the blame on ESPN and their wannabe sleeper app. When I made the divisions, Ron and Jimmy got mixed up and played in the wrong division. But that is fixed for this year, so we have better realm alignment with the significant others and rivals to each be in their own world.

So here is how the divisions will shape up. West Coast, Best Coast for Jimmy, and Ron gets the DK Metcalf treatment where he goes from his nice spot in West to being reunited with his Role Model Aaron Rodgers in the East:

While the divisions make a slight change, the schedule themes remain the same!

Sir Jimmy the Kid will be getting married the first week of October, so we will see the return of Significant Others week during week 5.

The Battle for Middle Earth will remain at week 7 and the halfway point of the season. The East (aka Shittsburgh) won last year by a mere game, but the West shall prevail this year.

Followed by a fabled Week 11 Rivalry week. A nice late in the season key match up to steer your hand to playoff fortune or woe.

Our Fantasy schedule is always custom made and never the same each year. Check out who you play and when below.

The 2025 Draft

Let’s get down to the most important piece of business: Our Draft.

This is big two parter. We have our draft date (and location) and our draft event.

Draft Day:

tradition It The season is coming quickly, and pre-season is over, which means rosters are pretty much locked.

We will be building our rosters and journeymen on August 31st, 1pm EST.

And this year we will be drafting as much as we can in person! For those in Canfield during the Labor Day weekend, we will hold an in-person portion of the draft. This will mean that the time per pick will be expanding so those in-person can have extra time - and if you are going to be in town hit me up so we can make sure everyone can be in person that can be.

Draft Day:

As is tradition, the winner of the league from the previous year gets to select the draft spot of their choosing. Which means in the 2025 draft, Alex “the trees speak Vietnamese” has selected the 2nd overall pick.

That leaves draft spots 1 and 3-14 for open for the rest of the league.

And because I’m a lazy sack of crap, we’re going to put our marble ballz to the wall for a second time. That's right, bring on Marbula 1 and let’s go racing! Like last year, the 13 of us will be turned into Marbles, competing in an elimination based race for our draft spots.

Here’s an reminder overview of how this year’s event will work:

• 14 marbles will race to the finish line through randomly generated tracks.

• The marble that finishes last for that round will be eliminated.

• The process will repeat until there is only one marble remaining.

The elimination race will not determine the draft order, it will determine the order in which we select our draft spots. Win the race and you get to pick your draft spot. Then finishers two thru twelve will continue to pick their spot (sorry last place, you get whatever spot is left).

We will be running the 2nd running of The Great Fellowship Marble Race this Wednesday, August 27th, around 9:30pm EST in our discord server. If you’d like to watch this live, come join us! And if you can’t make it, don’t worry, I will have another recap of the draft order with the recording of the race.

Rule Updates

None! Everything seemed to work out pretty well last year. But, if you have any ideas you can always let me know and I’m happy to discuss.

Let’s get the 2025 journey underway! If you are around, we’ll see you on Wednesday. If you can’t make it then look out for our next newsletter update.