I appreciate the post, at least for the anti-flaming rant. I never saw much point to it, but then I stated that in the other thread too.
I haven't said anything I don't stand behind then or now. On the downside, yeah, I believe it was cheating, no question. I don't even have to play them, in all likelihood, and I'm still plenty angry for those who do, and I think my two favorite teams each week will still be New Hampshire and whoever is playing Albequerque. I hope they do get moved to another division that will be more competitive for them. Sure, they may lose a game or two here and there as the season goes, but they still have a competitive advantage due to cheating, and while there's ways to overcome advantages through great coaching - which I think helped us with the Michigan team coming off the win that put them in consideration for being a top team in our division - it still makes it a lot tougher to compete.
I also don't buy the just a game arguement. People spend money on it, people spend obscene amounts of time on it. Sure, its not going to end the world, but that doesn't make cheating that impacts other people's ability to have fun and compete right, sorry.
BUT, there is no justification for commenting on things we have no way to know about. The sick child is one of those. How do we know? Its entirely plausible. If it is true, as someone who worked in a women and children's shelter and saw an awful lot of sick, hurt kids in that time, I wish the kid and his family well without reservation. But in no way does that make cheating ok either. The situations are not the same. I can feel sympathy for their real life situation without it in any way also wishing that they will get fined and moved to another division. Likewise, I can hope the latter without telling anyone to go play with something poisonous. Totally not the same things.
The flaming has gotten way out of hand. I think the first post here might go too far the other direction, sure, but I said before that people needed to chill and try and be practical.
There's some people on the team who, I think, could honestly have just been shortsighted and wanted to stick with their friends without thinking about it. I think there's others who probably realized exactly what that team would have a good chance of doing in BBB and did it anyway. How different people with the Devils organization have acted, responded and reacted is just as valid in forming my opinions now as the fact they cheated in the first place. Byron apologized, backed off the 'just a game' arguement, and agrees that it wasn't a cool thing to do now. Some of the other Devils and former Devils who've PM'ed me - I'm also honestly pretty good with now.
Others, not so much. But getting to know more of the situation and people involved has certainly been more productive, to me, than flaming away.
And if we do play them, I'll do my best to win and compete, like I would with anyone else. I'm not going to pretend its all good, because sure, I'm still upset, but I'm also going to work on my own team and try and get us set to do the best job we can this season before anything else. That's not in question. I'd just prefer, honestly, that they were in AA or something so it was a non-issue. Not my choice though, so I'll wait and see, and just wish everyone else over in the West the best, and wish a lot of luck to those players on the Devils who want to abandon ship now before things get started after seeing what's come of this.
