Why Expansion feels better this time.

[Beketov 8,955]

I’ve been around a long time; I don’t exactly hide that fact from anyone. So I have seen the league grow from 8 original teams to 8 plus a handful of VHLM teams (I can never really keep track of how many) to 10. After that of course back down to 8 and now we’re going to 9. It’s been a lot of change over the years as our recruitment has warranted different amounts of teams; at least we thought it did.

 

Honestly, back in S30 when we expanded to 10 teams initially it was a bad idea. People were excited of course, after all a lot of members had been asking for more teams since the league first began and 30 seasons seemed like a long time at that point. But really, it wasn’t good. We didn’t have nearly the amount of players to support 10 teams and recruitment efforts were, less than stellar. Honestly @Kendrick (RIP) was pretty good for it and others such as @Green could be counted on with the right incentives but most drafts consisted of maybe 1 good round and that was basically all re-creates. When @Will and I decided to contract the league a few seasons ago it was honestly for the survival of the league and I believe that. Teams were spread way too thin and we were dying because of it.

 

Jump ahead a few years and we have the 9th VHL team entering the fray. Honestly when it was first proposed I thought people were crazy. We basically just contracted, why expand now? But honestly, I’ve turned around on it. The numbers don’t lie and ultimately our recruiting efforts are going so well with so many new first gens (huge kudos @Recruitment Crew ) that it’s a good time to bring in another expansion. Not 2 of course, we made that mistake, but I think 1 will work out well. Plus that logo is sexy as hell. People are excited as they were last time, obviously since expansion is exciting, but this time at least I think that there’s valid reason to be; just as there was valid reason to expand. We didn’t expand for fun because everyone kept asking for it. We expanded because the league is thriving and needs the space. That’s the best reason we could hope for and I’ll gladly expand more if the trend continues.