So often we find ourselves wanting to be the &quot;lead guy,&quot; or &quot;the man in charge,&quot; if you will. You want to be the best in your profession, the top-dog, the [b]man.[/b] But, here you find yourself reluctant to step up and take charge because you&#039;re afraid of it being too overwhelming and sometimes you&#039;re afraid you&#039;ll back down when your men look to you for answers. Fear not! I know how to help you guide yourself away from the dark and toward the light. What does this light contain? Well, you&#039;ll have to do the work once you arrive in this lite fixture, but I can tell you it has a nice, blue book written in fancy letters on the cover stating &quot;HOW TO BE A GOOD CAPTAIN.&quot; What I plan on discussing here is what to expect as a new captain if you&#039;re wishing to go on this endeavor. <br /><br />One of the most frequent things I hear from people who&#039;ve been asked to cap is &quot;no man, it&#039;s too much work and I don&#039;t have time!&quot; While it can be a bit more than a simple player in an awesome league, being a captain requires little more effort than being your average Joe around here. The requirements in terms of league rules are pretty straight forward for you as a captain: you simply give the commish&#039; your team&#039;s availabilities. So, in reality, all you really do is learn your team&#039;s schedule, give it to the commish&#039; and he&#039;ll do the rest of the work. The rest will take care of itself. In the end, to be a successful captain whom ab dies by IDL policy and procedure, you simply need to be responsible - that&#039;s it!<br /><br />Now, that&#039;s what will be on your plate in terms of required work to get the ball rolling but I won&#039;t lie: it takes a ton of effort to be a good captain and even furthermore, a great leader. The hardest thing you will have to do as a captain isn&#039;t defend the flag, not capturing 50 flags in a season, not leading the league in frags, no, it is before any of this happens. The hardest thing you will have to do is draft. The draft will make or break you as a captain. If you select good players with poor attendance or lack of commitment, you probably won&#039;t do too well. But, if you&#039;re determined and you think you can get them to change your ways, depending on the player and his ability, this might be worth the risk. As a captain, you have to analyze this player-by-player as picks come to you - meaning, every time you step to the podium to announce your pick, you need to know who you&#039;re getting, why you&#039;re getting him and what he can do for your team. But before you even pick anybody, you need to have an identity as a player. For example, are you a defender? Are you a Runner? Do you consider yourself a Mid-mixture of all of the above sort of player? This should be what leads to the type of players you draft given their styles. For example, if you&#039;re #2 overall and you&#039;re one of the top fraggers in the league, but not so great of a runner, your best bet is a great runner since you&#039;ll be picking so high. This works vice-versa, if you&#039;re a great runner, you&#039;ll probably want a great defender or perhaps even a great mid, depending on who is available and what they can do for your team. The reality is, I watch captains on occasion pick guys and it makes you scratch your head - not because you&#039;re unaware of what a player&#039;s capabilities are, but why would you pick them? <br /><br />This leads me back to last season. While Rus made a bold move to move up to the #1 slot to get NoStar, the pick and overall trade didn&#039;t make much sense considering Rus is most effective as a defender. You have to also consider he would have had an opportunity to snag a runner like LB, which would have given TKV what they needed since their problem was lack of offense all season. That being said, they were still a decent offensive team but it&#039;s the fact that they lacked that go-to guy when they needed a flag most. And I&#039;m not knocking Nostar as the #1 overall pick, the guy is a 3-time MB champion who does nothing but win, but I&#039;m just not sure it was what Rus really needed. You can debate this all you want and perhaps if a few things went differently, we could be talking about Nostar winning his 4th championship and how great of a move Rus&#039; trade was. I&#039;m merely pointing out what I see go wrong a lot of times even though this is one of the few exceptions given the fact that Nostar is a proven winner and they were the most dominant team in fragging, which can lead to a ton of wins as well. But this comes down to what you believe in and I believe balance is key, not just 3 guys who can spawn rape you all day. Regardless, you get the point though: know who you&#039;re picking and know why you&#039;re doing it. <br /><br />Now, the biggest key to having a successful draft is scouting players across the field. If you&#039;ve got 12th overall pick, you&#039;re not going to get LB or mikehail but you&#039;ll get back-to-back picks and your talent level won&#039;t have a significant drop-off like it would from #1 overall to not picking again until what, 23, 24? Pretty big difference! But nonetheless, it&#039;s imperative that you know what people&#039;s capabilities are, what [b]their schedule is like[/b] and how [b]reliable they can be.[/b] Don&#039;t pick somebody if you literally cannot practice with them. It will do you no good. Practice is huge and the team that practices the most is often the most prepared and sometimes, preparation alone can be the difference of winning and losing, even if the margin of talent between teams is great. I&#039;ll go over what I did last season as an example because it was a very controversial draft for me, most viewed it as a botch while I viewed it as a success given my position and schedule.<br /><br />When I did my scouting, there were two guys I knew I could get if I truly wanted them: RustInPeace and Higgs. I knew what Rust could do, I played along side the guy for 5 years so nothing he did was a shock to me. However, most people didn&#039;t and having in-depth knowledge of guys like that can often lead to steals. Higgs, on the other-hand, was more of a risk-reward sort of player. I knew I could have him with my 4th pick. I also knew the reality was, he&#039;d most likely become my starting 3rd regardless of who I selected with #11 or #14. But if I could get somebody who could step in immediately and produce, I would go that route so I left both options open. Higgs biggest flaw was inexperience. His movement wasn&#039;t always the greatest but he had savvy when it came to running flags. He was very methodical and every touch he had was a quality touch because of that. Also, he was a Quake player and let&#039;s be real, Quake player&#039;s transferring to DooM generally have a ton of success if they put a little work in. But again, I knew he&#039;d be a risk because I knew his commitment would be to Quake given he had a much bigger tie to that community - and for obvious reasons. Which was fine, I knew that going into the draft and I felt if it came down to it, with a little coaching and some practice, the guy could produce enough for us and give us an opportunity to win. I knew Rust could be a decent runner in some maps but I also knew his SSG was powerful. Initially, I hadn&#039;t planned on him being a defender because I wasn&#039;t sure he&#039;d be willing to or even be ready to. But with practice and time, it seemed to be his calling-card in some maps. So that worked out even better since I could defend some maps, too. So in my mind, given the picks I had with my schedule, I got the best I could get. 3 People who could be on late like me and practice during those hours whenever. Now, onto the &quot;botch.&quot; There&#039;s no denying it, Metalhead was a total bust. But once again, consider my position here: could you justify picking higgs #14 overall? Possibly now given his performance from last season but as of then? Absolutely not. And as I stated, I wanted to see if I could possibly get someone who could step in and produce right away as well as be willing to practice whenever. I trusted Metal to do so because I&#039;ve met her in real life and quite frankly, I didn&#039;t want to draft Mid or Mass because I couldn&#039;t trust Mid&#039;s attendance, which has been atrocious to say the least and I wasn&#039;t sure Mass could produce right away and I didn&#039;t want to have an entire team full of rookies (even though the reality is, Rust isn&#039;t a rookie). Regardless, I felt Metal was a safe pick at #13 because she had a strong SSG and I could possibly put her on D. Right away though, I realized I was wrong. She wasn&#039;t reliable when it came to practicing, she wasn&#039;t very good on defense because she was out of shape and made hardly any effort to get back into shape, she wasn&#039;t a good runner even though she claimed to be and she just had no place on the team as we continued to practice. It became apparent to me that Higgs would have to step in and fill her shoes because she wasn&#039;t going to get it done. However, Higgs was pretty busy and initially I did a bad job of keeping him in the loop because I trusted Metal enough to stay in-line and work out with practice. This was a mistake on my part, of course I couldn&#039;t have foreseen her basically saying &quot;yo real life is happening, I can&#039;t play&quot; but I should have known given her recent activity, chances were she wasn&#039;t going to go through with this. Thankfully, mike helped me out and Higgs got back on the bandwagon even though I did a poor job of keeping him informed. I corrected this immediately and within a few days, it was apparent he would be our 3rd. Moral of the story? That&#039;s why your last pick is important and with some good scouting, you may be able to find someone like a Higgs with your 4th pick who could save your season when someone else pretty much leaves you high and dry. Even though it was a bit bumpy, things worked out and I learned from my mistake. <br /><br />Now, given the fact that this has been a huge essay, I want to begin closing this out before the rambling gets out of control. The reality is, I think a lot of guys here are capable of being captains - they&#039;re just lazy or scared. But one of the most important things to remember here, given the information above is this: Leaders are only as good as the people who follow them. Don&#039;t pick players with shitty attitudes, don&#039;t pick people you can&#039;t practice with and most of all: [b]listen to your guys.[/b] If Higgs was having problems scoring, Rust and I would say &quot;yo what can we do to make this easier,&quot; and through practice, we&#039;d try different things. While we weren&#039;t the most talented team, we were always as best prepared as we could be and it made a big difference. We were hardly blown out and we were one of the hardest teams to beat even when we lost because we never gave up and we kept playing until the final second. It&#039;s tough but I will say the reward you get isn&#039;t always winning it all: sometimes the bond you can build with guys on a team can be a cool thing and even though we didn&#039;t win, I considered this past season a success because I got to play with 3 awesome dudes and had a blast even until the final seconds. So, people, let&#039;s take this in and look forward to a great season. I hope all you captains work your asses off, that way, we have a fantastic season again! See ya&#039; on the field.