S12 Podcast

Brett and Sam discuss their recent podcast episode. They mention that Marley was the first person to suggest the name VIPP and they can't take credit for it. They also talk about a volleyball tournament they played in and how poorly run it was. They then play a game where they discuss which players on each team would kill each other. They also discuss their power rankings for the draft and how they missed on Roberto's and Morgan's teams. They acknowledge that the rankings may not mean much as team dynamics can change from week to week. They also mention that some teams were missing players during the seeding games. They talk about the close matchups in the seeding games and how missing players can affect the outcome. Welcome, this is Brett, and this is Sam, and this is a very important podcast, VIPP. And just real quick, because I said I would, I do have to let everyone know that Marley was the first person to say VIPP. She answered it as a suggestion in the survey, so we cannot take credit for that. We can, because A, she's in trademark it. That's true, actually, her credit is now gone. I did my part, and now we take credit. And B, in the waiver it says that we can use stuff like that. No one knows what they're signing, but I do. Good, we get all their intellectual property, VIP related. You're right, so careful what you put in there, because we do have the right to use it on the podcast. Also, speaking of Marley, I owe her a shirt, a free shirt. All right. I do want to say I just woke up from a nap recently, very tired. It was probably two hours ago, and yeah, I was off today, because we played at Smash this weekend. Terrible tournament. We'll probably do it again next year. I honestly hate that tournament. I don't like it. I like it, because it's small, and you can walk to all the fields. Yeah, but you also like it, because it's big. I like it, because it's big, but not big like Pottstown, where you can't walk to the other fields. And walking, even on Main, walking from one side to the other. It's big, but manageable. It's big, but manageable. But the big, but manageable is like what makes it suck. Like, it should be more manageable than Pottstown, but instead it's way worse run, even though it's half the size. Yeah, that's why I hate it. Yeah, yesterday we sat from 3.30 and didn't start playoffs till 8.20, so we sat for almost five hours. The worst part, the worst part for me is the fact, the idea that it's like the competition becomes not fair at the end. Yeah. Because the sun faces half the nets. People play to seven. Some people are playing rally. Some people are playing side out. Like, the rules aren't clear. Total madness. Like, no, everyone's doing their own thing. And everybody starts whenever they want. Nobody's according to schedule. And there's nobody enforcing any of it. Anyways, no one cares about Smash. Anyway, nobody in VIP is allowed to play Smash next year. So that's an official VIP notice. So I think only three people wanted us to make this podcast. PK? PK. Kaia? Kaia and I think Armin. Okay. So just, we have three. That's important. Three listens is important. Yeah. You want to start off with your topic? No, you go first. Okay. So last season I said that the playoffs felt casual for season 11 and they were. I feel like this season was way more intense. I agree. Like, people took it more serious. I agree, but I don't know why. I don't know why either. Maybe because we get, because we always get this like big swath of new players for our first, for our spring season. And maybe like, once people get to know each other, it gets more competitive and the volleyball gets more solid. Maybe it's more competitive just because the volleyball is better. Could be. I mean, I was also thinking maybe it's because of the heat. I think, was season 11 playoffs like in the middle of that heat wave? Yeah, it was deadly. And people were just not that interested. Maybe. I guess we'll never know. We'll check the videos. Was that your whole topic? Is it my turn now? That was my first topic. That's good. All right. Mine is a clue. So we're going to play a game where on each team you have to pick someone who kills someone else on the same team. And first, we'll start with Mike Winnig's team. So Mike Winnig, Kara, Sanaa, and Piper. Who kills who, and with what? Okay, so am I going through every player? No, just each team. On each, it's like a game of clue. You're on the board. Everybody's moving their pieces around. Okay. You're Colonel Mustard trying to figure out. Okay, I think Piper killed Sanaa. Okay, why? Piper's just like that. Yeah, I know. I know. She's just ruthless. All right, Morgan McCann's team. Morgan, Brett, Cody, JV. Who kills who? Oh, and you need the murder weapon. You can't solve clue without the murder weapon. Piper uses her car. I don't remember that being on the game board, but okay. Yeah. Morgan. You can say it. I know what you're thinking. She kills JV. I think she kills you. She kills JV because he stops picking up the short rolls. I swear I disagree. I think Morgan, Cody, or Brett kill JV for not picking up the short rolls. Or he does and we win. Okay. All right, next team. Austin, Maggie, Vickis, Rich. Not a lot of killers on that team. No. I could see Vickis killing Austin. They hang out. More opportunity for murder. Yeah. What murder weapon? I think Vickis is using his bare hands. He's got those cricket pitching hands. Yeah. Roberto, Hannah, Melvin, Courtney. I think Melvin and or Roberto kill each other somehow. Like I can't figure out which one would kill which one. Maybe like a mutual like suicide. It's a setter hitter. Yeah. Conflict, but then both ways. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Alexa, Armin, Gelman, Daniel. Armin kills Gelman. You don't see Daniel just being a closet. What's the movie with Christian Bale? Like American Psycho. You don't see the closet American Psycho vibe? I could see that. Just popping heads off. I could see that. All right. Grant, Zach, Toner, Megan, Stahirski. I could see the same argument for Grant that you had for Daniel. The nice guy American Psycho vibe. Any one of those guys, actually. Well, who dies then? So Megan dies. Is that the math? I guess it would have to be. I just don't see Megan as a killer. Yeah, I agree. She cares about animals too much. Yeah. PK, Brian, Chris, Crystal. I think all three of them kill Brian. Like they make it to the finals and they're like, Oh God, one more penis joke. You just can't take it anymore. And then Emily, Jonathan, Ian, Alex. Nobody on that team is a killer. Well, somebody has to die. So you want to do like a drink the Kool-Aid kind of thing. Yeah. I think they like draw straws or something. They draw straws for who has to kill and who gets killed. Yeah. All right. That's it. That's my whole game. Okay. We might cut that out. No, no, no. It's a good game. Um, can we talk about my power rankings from the draft? Do we have them? I have them in the chat. Yeah, I have them here. So let's discuss. So I put, I'm going to read them off. My first place ranking was Morgan's team. Second place. I had Austin, then PK's team. You nailed that one. I got, well, yeah, I got that one right. So I'm going to go through my rankings first, then come back and review. And I can't feedback until you're done? Yeah. You can't say anything. Okay. I had Morgan, Austin, PK. Got it. Got it. Mike, Lex, then Roberto at sixth. Grant's team, then Emily's team. Okay. You didn't do terrible. Right. Not too bad. The ones that I really missed on. We don't have to talk about both of them. Let's just pick one and talk about it. Pick what? Either Morgan or Roberto. Let's just talk about Roberto's. We don't have to talk about Morgan's team. No, we're going to talk about both. The two big misses. Okay, great. I totally whiffed on Roberto's team. Which he loves, by the way. I know. You know what, honestly? I think that's why he's playing so well. If you picked him as the first seed, he would have gone eighth. Yeah. He was fired up. And he fired up his team. So I had him at sixth. He ended up first. Tied for first, actually. But he has the tiebreaker. And then the other one I whiffed on was Morgan's team. The team you're on. So I have Roberto's team an apology. Your team owes me an apology. No, you owe me an apology. No, I had you guys. You made me think my team was good. Not good. I thought we were going to win. Your team was not good at all. I thought the drought was going to be over. I thought you guys had the pieces there. And who knows? Maybe things changed this week. But the other teams, I pretty much. Well, hold on. To one of your points. To your point. One of the things that happens all the time in the seeding week is it can take six games to figure out a good formation. Like last season, my team was terrible. And then we switched me to the back middle. And we played Zach's team to like the absolute wire. We were wildly better. And my team beat Roberto's team. Which season was this? This is this season. Oh, season 11. We were two. We were one and two and four going into the game against Roberto. We beat Roberto's. Because we finally figured out a good lineup. So maybe my team is good. And you were right. Here's the other thing. Two of these teams were missing players. So Emily's team was missing Ian. And Alexa's team was missing Daniel. Which as we know is a winning strategy. Total game changer. Yep. Having Daniel. Yep. I mean, it happened last season. We don't have to like go that far in the history books to look at like six weeks ago. Yeah. So the round robin week is great. Puts you in a good spot. But it totally changes week to week. So even these rankings don't mean much. Well, how do we feel about our matchups then? So Roberto, Emily, they both had four at seeding. Oh no, Emily had three. Emily had three. She's missing Ian. So that is the thing. That is the thing about the seeding is you can play the week before with your three and then you can get mismatched really badly. You know what I mean? Right. And on that note, if you look at Emily's team, aside from the one game that, you know, they lost 21 to seven, all the other games, well, there's another one there. 21-11. The other games are pretty close. 22-20, 22-20, 24-22, 21-15. So they lost by small margins. They played us really tough. And they had three. And I got to say, I was watching them because I was on the sideline taking pictures. Oh, hey, they beat us. They did beat you. Yeah. It was their one win. So cool. So watching them play, they were electric. Like they played so well together for having three. Electric. From what I saw. I'm just saying that's a word you shouldn't use all the time. They were playing really well with three people. Electric though. They took the number one team, Roberto's team, 22-20. Yeah, they beat us. They beat you guys. They had two overtime, three overtime games. Right. With three people. Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous actually. I wish we had the schedule to see if those big losses were after they got tired from running around with three. Yeah. Oh, I'm sure that that played a role. When did you play them? Do you remember? No idea. Because I was watching all the teams all day. And I focused on that team because they were just really fun to watch. And I thought they had really good chemistry. Whereas there was another three's team that did not. Another factor is they had incredible coaching. Did you see that Ian was standing back with a clipboard coaching them the whole day? Well, he was coaching, he was shagging, he was calling shots. I know, I heard that. You know, calling balls that were out. You know, that makes a difference. Maybe, honestly, maybe that's something that we're not doing. If you want to get serious about winning a brand, maybe you need to go find yourself a team coach and pull them in for the playoff. You know what I think would be an interesting strategy is if you draft a coach, you draft a three person team and the fourth person is a coach. So you draft someone as a coach that can see the game from the outside. Or how about you draft a four person team and you draft a coach from the remaining players who didn't make the playoffs. Oh, interesting. And then we could even put them on the trophy, like a coached by. That would be interesting. You know what's really funny though? This is a very funny idea to me is getting last pick on the coaches. It's so funny. Imagine someone that you absolutely can't stand their opinion. You just don't want to listen to anything they say. And you didn't, you know, you got last pick of the draft, you didn't strategize well. And they're your unofficial official or they're your official coach. But you hate the coach. Yeah, and you hate him and you think he's stupid. Well, okay. What if we were to do, like at the beginning of the draft, it'll add, like, it'll actually add a very real thing to the, because right now we have an imbalance at the front end of the draft, right? You get two early picks versus in a five round draft, you wouldn't be a more perfect draft because you would have two early picks, two late picks. So if we had the coach pick, it would add this total imbalance because the first four people would always be happy with their coaches. And the last two people would always be. They would always be, like, miserable with whoever's coaching them. Are you saying we would mandate the coach? Yeah. As opposed to having an optional coach? Yeah. Or. Or. Or take it to the next level. The captain drafts the coach and the coach drafts the team. Whoa. All right. Okay. We'll put a pin in there. We're gonna have to think about this one. Getting out of hand. You know what else it could be? The coach could also be the sub if that color player goes down too. For whatever reason. It could be a coach slash, slash, you know. Bench warmer. 25 percent of the team. They can play, like, that color or lower. Or higher, I mean. So if your pink player goes down and you have a green coach, they could sub. We also saw that playing with three people can get you far. As we saw in Thursday League. Yeah. A threes team made it to finals and nearly won. Yes. It's happened before. I made it to finals in season three. With three. With three. It was me, Tanner, and Jason. I remember that. You. And you know what happened? We got tired. I can't remember. We lost to Noah's team. Yeah, because you played my team the game before that and it was a really hard game. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We had three games. They were all, like, overtime games. Yeah. It was three really long games. Yeah. And hard fought games. That was you with Keith, right? I'm pretty sure. That's asking too much of me to remember. I don't know. It might have been Keith. It was Keith. Yeah. Okay. Next topic. Nice. How chaotic. Our transitions are cold. How chaotic was the whiteboard? Dude, we've done the whiteboard every single season except for last season. Yeah. And last season or this season it's like everybody just forgot again and it's just what the hell. We both had two different methods of doing it. I just said something. I just picked one and then we didn't coordinate it and you just picked one. It was pandemonium. But good thing I was there. Good thing we had admin. Yeah. Okay. So we asked a question on the survey. What is your volleyball toxic trait? This is your highlight. This is your big. And I thought there were some really funny responses. Have you looked at them at all? Yeah. I looked at the whole survey. Okay. I even implemented things. Actually, there's things I want to address actually. Yeah. You know what? I was going to address it like at the party. No, let's bring it up. The whole point of having a podcast is to like talk about what you want to talk about. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. That way PK, Kaya, and Armin can hear. Well, Risely, I found out it was Risely later, but someone on the survey who I know is Risely put, I wish that someone would post the survey results in the channel before they closed the channel out so that we could look at through everything. And I was like, we do do that. We do that every season. Yeah, I know. And then I looked, we hadn't done it. So I threw it in there and then Risely saw it. She was like, oh, they read my surveys. Wow. Yeah. I usually, the PowerPoint that we put together for the party, usually I PDF it and dump it in the chat. Very possible we forgot. Yeah. Very low priority on the priorities list. No way. All right. All right. So let's just go through the volleyball toxic trait. The first one is quote that I'm a volleyball snob. Could have been anybody. I thought that was funny because there are volleyball snobs out there. Yeah. Like 99% of people who play volleyball. It's a very snobby sport. It's a very stuck up sport. Yeah. I actually hate it. Should we quit? We've been saying that for years. Now, hold on. In between that, let me address this. As usual on the survey, someone never mind. This is your next topic. You go. Okay. Arguing about net touches. Here's the thing. If you touch the net, you know, you touch the net. Yeah. Well, there's no, your, your body is very sensitive. You know, you touch the net. Your body's sensitive. Very sensitive. Here, here's, so here, here's where it gets like icky, right? Is people keep, some people can do this thing where they're like, oh, well the ball touched the ground first. And you know what? No, it didn't. Like, unless you landed like turned around and hit the net as you like turned around to high five your team. Yeah. No, it didn't. You lying sack of shit. No, it didn't. You touched the net. The ball doesn't like, you don't rocket the ball like 150 miles out of your hand. Like you touched it. And you know, you touched it. You know, you touched it. Wipe that dog off your face. But another thing is that a lot of times, uh, the ball will hit the net and the net will come back into your arm. And that does not count as a net. That's legal. Yeah. Yeah. Because the, the, the net plane is where it's supposed to be. And when it gets moved out of the plane, not by wind. If you touch it from wind, it's still as a net touch and kills the point. But if it gets hit, if the net gets hit into you, that is legal. So we should not be arguing about net touches. If you touched it, stop lying. You know, you touched it. Give the other team the point and move on. Have some dignity. Just to clarify, you're talking to the VIP crowd right now. Not to me because it's just you and me. Well, I'm looking at you pretty hard because we're sitting in a room and nobody else is here. I just want to clarify that it is recording right now. All I'm going to say is, you know, who you are. I think everybody knows. Yeah. But also it's funny that it's an anonymous survey. It's funny that it's an anonymous survey. If you're going to admit it, yeah, it's like sitting in one of those booths, like the Catholic booth. Yeah. If you want to confess, you do it in the anonymous survey, not on the court where everybody can hear. This is the kind of, uh, these are the kind of responses I was hoping. And we got them. Um, okay. Uh, the need to high five everyone after every play. Okay. Um, self-deprecating humor. That's kind of my strategy to kind of like use things a little bit. Oh, here's one calling a ball in when it's very out. Another, another confessional unethical piece of shit. Another confessional move, dude. You know, it's out. Everybody saw it go. What are you doing? For clarity, we think this is funny now when we're reading it. It's not funny when we're playing it. It's so funny to read. And I think I know who this could be. It's one of 10 or 15 suspects in my head. Good. It's only a quarter of the league. Yeah. Everybody knows. Um, um, blocking short people's hips. I mean, this is probably, it's really fun. It's probably a tall person. It's not me, but I was like, Oh yeah, I get that. Yeah. Don't, you can't tell me you don't, when you see someone who's, you know, five, six or below and they get a tight set, you can't tell me you don't go up with like extra. Cause I know I do. I mean, I know the elevation that I get is at least two or three inches higher than like when I'm blocking like you, I press extra hard. Yeah. I press way over and I'm like, I'm going to kill this because if they get it over and now you look like, that's why. Right. No, I just want that block. I want it so bad. Uh, not wanting to shag the balls. There's definitely people who'd never show. What a frustrating comment. This is a very exposing, all the things I thought were true are true. And people know, I guess that's what's exposing. It's like, it's like, we always talk about these people. Like they don't have a lack of awareness. It turns out they know they do it and they're just like, Oh yeah, no, I just don't want to shag the balls. Yeah. Okay. Now we have to really keep an eye out for, for who's shagging and who's not shagging. Um, I'm only there for friends. I mean, you can't get mad at that. Well, we're just a group of friends. Remember? That's right. We're not a league. Um, hitting it over on one. I didn't put, I didn't take the survey. Have at it. Um, what else? Thinking I can hand set a ball past that chest height. Some people can. I do that. I do that all the time. Um, farting. Farting while jumping. That you, did you take the survey? It might've been me. It happens to a lot of people. Is it toxic? Uh, that's about it. Those are all the funny ones. Yeah. And I'll address a random survey response now that we're here. Uh, one of our survey responses, what would you change about the league? They said, update the algorithm to try to avoid gender mismatches. Teams with three guys and or team, team one with three guys and team two with one guy. Um, this is actually on purpose. This is one of mine and Sam's favorite things that the algorithm does is when it's four tall guys who are terrible passers versus four girls who are excellent at controlling the ball, because it ends up being a fair game because the guys run around and scramble and barely get a good hit because they don't have any good passing or setting. And the girls keep the ball. And the girls keep the ball under control the whole time, put it in corners, put it, just keep putting it in play. And it ends up being like a really exciting game. So that's something we could do, but something we're actively not doing. I like to see that, that challenge. Yeah. And we get complaints all the time before the game starts. And then once the game starts, they realize that it's actually pretty fair. Yeah. And they win a lot of the time because you have three guys, three knuckleheads back there. We've had more than one circumstance of people getting very, very high ELO ratings based on being really good defenders. Like people who aren't necessarily attacking the ball above the net, like the people who attack the ball above the net. Those are the obvious ones why they have high rating, right? They kill points, they end the ball, they end it. The people who, the people who pass, serve, receive, enable, who just continue to enable their team and prove the ball don't get a lot of props because, but we've seen it in the rating, like numerically. So the best example that I can think of is Georg on Thursdays. Georg is over 2000 rating, which is like a top eight player. And he is almost always in the back middle on a team. Yeah. He, he plays how, for those who don't know, he plays how like Jason plays defense. But yeah. All over the court. Yeah. Getting dirty constantly. Yeah. Yeah. Always muddy and sweaty. But he also is very precise. Like the ball is going to the right place all the time. Right. And all of his hits are like directly to people and he's enabling people just by hustle plays and precision. And it's, it's making his rating as high as the big hitters in the league. So yeah. Long story short. Back to that point, the girls went out a lot of the time and I, it just happened recently this season. It did. I can't remember. We had a four guy, four girl game and the girls won and they were all short too. Okay. The game I was thinking of was a three versus three. Oh, it might've been on Thursday. It's even more dangerous because the guy, the, like those guys in those match-ups can't control the ball. Right. So it's even more difficult for threes. Yeah. They're, they're passing with like bent arms. Yeah. There's occasions where they get the beautiful ball on the net and they hit it down and everybody's like, we couldn't do anything. Yeah. But those are, those are occasions. Those aren't the standard. Yep. All right. Next topic. Um, yeah. I was thinking about the single hitter question. Wait, no, my turn. Okay. You go first. All right. We're playing street signs. So I'm going to name it. And you're going to, if you want to Google common street signs, now's the time I'm going to name, I'm going to name a team. You're going to pick a street sign for the team and tell me why street signs are playing street signs, common, common road signs you should be aware of. Okay. All right. Team number one, or we'll go, we'll go eight to one team. Number eight, Emily, give me a street sign. Remember they played the round Robin with three with Ian coaching. Uh, I'm going to go, this is, this is, I'm going to go with under construction because yeah, they're the head three. No, you know what? I'm going to give under construction. No, no, no, no, no, no. Fine. To Lex's team because that team really is on their construction because they're missing their, they're missing their big player, their big hitter. So Lex's team gets under construction. I mean, you can use this more than once. Yeah. Well, that's boring. Is that a rule of like one use street sign? Well, you don't have to, it's yours. This is not a question. These are my answers. I'm going with under construction for Lex's team and for Emily's team. So I need to pull up the rosters. It's Emily, John, I'll read them to you. Emily, Jonathan, Ian, Alex. So they played Emily, Emily, Jonathan, Alex played without Ian. I'm going to go with dead ends. Oh my God. You know, I, as much as I love watching them play, I don't think they're going to be your birthday. Okay. So, all right. Next is the seventh seed. Michael was the seventh seed, right? Seventh seed was Lex's team. Okay. So that's under construction. That's under construction. The sixth seed is Mike's seed, Mike's team. So Mike's team, that's Mike, Kara, Sinan, Piper. Yep. Let's go with, you know, if you just go seven dead ends and one, and one congratulations, you're the winner. No, there's one I really want to use, but it's for a different team. Okay. Well, let's wait until then. Yeah. I'm just going to put stop sign for them. Stop. Stop. Just stop. Stop thinking you're going to win. I don't, I don't see it. Just stop guys. Yeah. Uh, fifth seed is Grant, right? Grant, right? Yeah. And so Grant's team is Grant, Zach, Toner, and Megan. Megan Stahirski. Um, okay. For this team, I'm going to go with no passing zone. This one right here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm familiar with it. Oh, that's good. That's good. They just got double lines. Yeah. No clarification needed. Fourth seed, uh, Morgan, Buchanan, Brett, Cody, and JV. Uh, roundabout. Because you guys just played every possible combination of position trying to figure that out. Yeah. It was, uh, it's funny because last season with Hollywood and Risley on that team and Rich, it was the exact same thing. We did the exact same thing and then we just lost in the first round. I wonder if that ever works. What? The trying different things. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like anytime I've played a season where I've tried different combinations of, of, uh, rotation. You're like, oh, this one's not working. Let me try this one. It just means your team's not it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Know that now. I think, you know, without, oh, we have the church right here. Okay. So looking back at the teams, I'm pretty sure the teams that have won are the teams that have the correct people in the correct positions from the start, right? It's not teams that try out various combinations of, uh, season two. I'll disagree if you want to let me get it. If you want me to go into the history books. Sure. Season two, David was the hitter and then he pulled his groin. So he was the hitter during the round robin. They went three and four or something like that or two and five. And then he pulled his groin and because he pulled his groin, he decided to be the setter and that's what made them win the championship. I think that's a little different from what we're saying. I'm saying we're talking about a team that tries various combinations and it's not working. You know, this is, this was an injury, so they were forced to make a change. Season six, you switched the setter. You were going to be the hitter. You were the hitter and during the round robin, you switched and decided to be the setter instead. That's true. That might be the only season that I can see. Uh, yeah. Let's see. You're really testing my ability. So not saying it didn't happen, but, but then we kind of stopped. Season eight, season eight with Mark and Josh, they moved everything around. They ran like a three person, like roundabout around Allison and just had Allison kind of like parked in the middle and set and then Mark set sometimes. They also didn't, they, they, they did whatever. They kind of like ran around Mark Williams, Josh Kessner, Jenna and Allison. Okay. So two, two seasons we're saying you had teams two out of the 11, 11 seasons so far. So pretty low percentage. I think the team that has the greatest probability of success is going to be the one that has all the right pieces. I think it's, I think it's the team. I think, I think what we frequently see, like what we saw last season is it's the team. It's not the team that tries to figure it out during the round Robin. It's the team that gels during the round Robin. Yeah. Because it seems, because everybody saw it. Kaya, Jonathan, and who's the other one? We don't have the thing yet. I can't remember. What are you talking about? Which is the last season. They, they gelled so well during the round Robin. They played so well and everybody was surprised. And then Daniel came in and just got to be like the missing piece. Yeah. I'm looking at the archives here and peaches. It was a Jonathan Kyle. Where's this? Yeah. Oh, it's Daniel, Kaya, Jonathan, Crystal. Yeah. And those three, Jonathan, Kaya, Crystal played so well during the round Robin. It shocked everybody. Yeah. And Daniel came in and was just the missing piece. Yeah. So there's something to be said for that. Daniel's missing again. He's literally the missing piece again, but also, but also so is Ian. Even though you gave him, gave them, what was it? I gave them, do not enter. No, no, I gave them dead ends. Sorry. I hope no one takes this personally, but it's fine. It's fine if they do. You signed the waiver. All right. Moving on. So what did you give my team? Our team? Roundabout. Oh yeah. Great. 3C, PK's team, PK, Brian Miller, Crystal, and Chris Bye. I'm going to say workers ahead because they were just putting in, putting in the work to win all the games that they had to. I agree. I don't think their games were easy. I think they really fought for their games. And to your point, I don't think their games will be easy. I think they will have to fight that same level in order to win in the playoffs. Like, I don't think that they're ever going to be able to just kind of like cruise through a game based on other teams' mistakes. Like, they're going to need to like play hard and like eke out victories. Yeah. Like, I'm looking at their records here. They went 5-2, 21-19, 21-19, 21-17. Although they did, they did have two solid wins. 21-13 against Lex's team, 21-11 against Emily's team. The teams that had three people. All the other games they had to, you know, grind out wins. They were not easy and I was watching them. Yeah. But they did look, they did look solid. They just weren't rolling over teams. You know, honestly, none of the teams were. I don't think anybody had an easy day. It was a tight round, a tight round robin. It was crazy. Yeah. I can't believe how many overtime and two point games there were. It was actually remarkable. Yeah. All right. Second seed overall, Austin, Maggie, Zekas, Rich. Another classic Austin team. Let's go with yield. Because I don't think, you know, when you play them, just yield. They're probably going to beat you. So the yield to everybody else. Yeah. Yield to everyone else. Okay. Next. Then the final team, Roberto, Hannah, Melvin, Courtney. One-way. One-way ticket to the brim. I think they're going to win the whole thing. Do you? I think so. Man, there's a long history of teams over-performing in the round robin in the first round. Facts. We saw it last Thursday. Yeah. Austin's team. Was it? No, it was Daryl's team. Daryl's team. Yeah, they went six and one. Crushed it in the round robin. And I will say, Daryl's team crushed it in the round robin, lost the last game of the round robin to my team, just like Roberto lost the last game of the round robin to my team on Wednesday. And my team won Thursday. So history repeats itself. And I'm sorry. Congratulations, Morgan. No, I don't think your team is going to do it. You guys had all your pieces. And they don't fit. I just don't think you guys are going to do it. Well, we'll see, won't we? Although I thought your best rotation was when you were hitting, Cody was setting, JV was right side. I think that's what makes sense for your team. But I still think Roberto's team is going to do it. The thing is, they have a lot of energy and momentum. And I think, I really think the low power rankings fired them up. Well, now they have the top power rankings. Yeah. So now they're going to be iced down. We'll see. He is out of town this week. He's coming back just to play playoffs. And then he's going back to Pittsburgh. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, I didn't know that. That's a lot of driving. That's dedication. So think about that if you're ever going to miss playoff. Yeah. Okay. That was the end of my game. Street signs. Your turn. So there's this question about the single hitter discussion. Can a team be successful with a single hitter? I want to keep this very short because we're already at 45 minutes. Let's keep it long. I want to go home. Okay. We'll go to your house and finish. Okay. Can a team win with one hitter as opposed to having a left and a right side? Time to reference the VIP trophy. All right. So the one shining example that we have is season four. Season four was Elena, Emily, Mark, Kai, and Tanya. And that was the one time that it was executed. So what was it about that team that made it so different and possible from the other teams? Because it's been tried a thousand times. That is, you know, looking at that team now. It's shocking. It's crazy that. It's crazy that that team won. Yeah. Because look at season five. Terry, Chris, Kaya, Katie Houston. That's a good team. That's the best team that has ever won. And then look at the season before. Noah, Allie, Abby. That's a good team. Yeah. Allie. Noah, Abby Green, Allie Graff. Yeah. Allie now plays open. Open doubles. Yeah. So that's a good team. Yeah. Abby's a great passer. Yes. Nothing gets past her. Noah. That's a good. I mean, the difference between season four, season three winners, season four, then season five, it's. Confusing. I don't understand. But they did it. I was there for it. So this was the season I was out, you know, season four. That's probably why I was injured. That's probably why. Oh, that's why? Yeah, that's probably why. Because Brett's out. The whole league sucks. The whole league's terrible. The whole league sucks. But that is the one time where we had one hitter. Yeah. Yeah. We don't have another example ever. So. Season eight. Josh was setting. Or no, Mark was setting. Season nine, you were setting Chris Vai. But you were also setting Maggie. I probably set Chris 80. 80-20. Yeah, it's probably 80-20. Yeah, it sounds right. Yeah. So the question remains. I think it can be done. I think it's a lot harder. But. I've tried it a lot of times. I've tried it like five times as drafting. That's what Austin's. That's what he built. But see, Austin has built. He's tried to build that every time. This is the one thing I'll say is that it's hard to play eight hard games and be the solo hitter. It is exhausting. And it is. Well, we played seven. And it is so hot. That's what I'm saying. We played seven. Yeah. And you got tired. You could play eight. Theoretically, you could play six, right? We could be playing nine games on Wednesday. Yeah. So. Being a solo hitter is hard. You lose the peak of your jump. You lose like the. Like when you lose the peak of your jump because you're tired and like you lose a little bit of the timing. You lose a little bit of the downwardness of your swing. The timing to hit around a block. So. So it can be done, but something to think about. But prove it. Let somebody prove it. OK. Let's move on. This is my last topic. So next season, we're changing the rules. We are no longer letting you tip the ball. Open hand tip. We're removing open hands are gone. Hallelujah. It's about time. I actually think we're overdue for this. And, you know, I think we probably could have done this. Two seasons ago. But I think the last season or two, it's been kind of abused. So so Sam and I have talked extensively about this. We we what what happened was there became like a metagame inside the game. Like everybody had our rules. So everybody realized how much easier it is to just open tip the ball to the ground instead of hit. So all the inconsistent hitters who were worried about hitting the ball on the net are like, no problem. I'll just fling it to the ground with my open hands instead of instead of actually swinging at the ball. I'll just fling it to an open spot. You know, just you don't have to worry about chuck it. Don't worry about knocking it when you can just push it down into a spot and coming off your knuckles weird or something. Yeah. So all you tall guys who've been open hand pushing and opening and tipping instead of swinging because it's so easy, say goodnight. Learn how to learn how to close your hand. Yeah. I hope you've been practicing your knuckles. Because the intention was for the transition from indoor to outdoor players. Right. But it didn't happen. No. We stopped getting indoor players in VIP like their one offs now. And even the indoor players weren't really open hand tipping very often. It was pretty infrequent. Right. It was just tall guys that uses cramming the ball. Yeah. Just throwing the ball around the block. It's way easier. Yep. They're gone. That's it. Now we get to see who's ratings plummet. I don't think much is going to change. Change is hitting them. Change is hitting. I know it does, but I don't think the people who don't have cuts or thumb down shots, like they're going to go up and they're going to have to hit into the block. No. They'll just have to learn how to use their knuckles. Eventually. And they'll learn it fast. I don't think this is going to be a big adjustment. I don't think knuckles is easy for everyone. I know knuckles isn't easy for everyone. Or they would do it already instead of open hand tipping. We'll see. I don't think it's going to be much of a problem. There's a couple names that come to mind and I think they're athletic enough where this is not going to be a problem for them. We'll see. We shall see. We'll see it in the numbers. I'm actually really excited to see. Me too. I can't wait to make numerical predictions. Fantasy draft or a fantasy league. Oh yeah. Good time to mention the VIP fantasy league. So we're starting VIP fantasy league, which is not sexual, which I forgot to put. It's just like a normal fantasy football league, but there's no administration. You don't have to do a lot of things or know a lot of things. You're just picking people at the beginning of the season and then just following as the season goes along and adding up points and whoever gets the most points wins and we'll add up all the points. Jonathan's going to be running it. I'm going to be announcing it, taking registration soon. It'll be 10 bucks and somebody will win and get 200 bucks and it'll be fun. Just a fun thing to make playoffs a little more fun to watch instead of just being like that should have been me. You can like potentially win something. Well, it's not just for playoffs. It's for the whole season. Yeah, but the playoffs are when it's going to get intense. Because that's when the point values elevate. So just to give like a little preview, you pick five players at the beginning of the season and then you lock them in and then just monitor them for the rest of the season. One point for each of their wins. You get a point for round robin wins. You get two points if they become captain. Then in playoffs, you get two points if they make the second round, four points if they make finals, eight points if they win finals, and then 16 points go through all of the captain. So there's a lot of ways to get points. But yeah, you're right. It's going to get intense in playoffs. So and what are we at two? I guess depends on how many people. Yeah, I'm guessing at least three. So this is kind of an unofficial thing, but I don't care if you guys do it. It's official. I don't even want you guys to do it. Final game. Are you done? All right, final game freeze frame. All you have to do is just say the first thing that comes to your mind. I'm going to list a bunch of things and you just say it right away. You ready? No. All right. Get yours. Okay, I'm ready. All right. You ready? Set. Freeze. Frame. Champs. Fram. Jumps. Bumps. Fast. Last. Slow. Oh. Hot. Dog. Dog. Hot. Fingers. Hot dog. Fingers. Freeze. Frame. Frame. Freeze. Finale. Mine hunter. All right, that's it. Good. Okay, let's wrap it up. I think we've gone on too long. Last thing. August 10th. Triples tournament. We have a lot of guys teams signed up. We don't have a lot of women's teams. Yeah, I don't know what's happening with that. A lot of girls are saying that they're interested and they're looking for teams, but we're not getting the registrations. So if you're interested in playing triples, let us know. We have a couple of free agents that are looking for teams. The men's divisions, though, are going to be really good. It's going to be banging. I thought it was going to be good. I think this might be some of the highest level guys we've had. I agree. Which sucks because I made a really good team, but I think a couple of the teams are even better. Yeah. It's like one of the guys just won double A at smash. Yeah. So we'll see. I'm going to have to tape up all my fingers. Or glove. Something. Supportive glove. All right. Anything else? It's all for me. All right. This podcast is brought to you by VIP Merchandise, vip.vipvbell.com slash store. Kaya has updated it with all of our archived goods. We're going to do a ball quarter week one. That's it. Bye. Bye bye. Bye.