A Curious Poll

I was wandering the Internet, once again looking for love in all the wrong places, when I came across a poll on the Birmingham Salvo's website. I'm not sure how long it'll be up so I'll include a screenshot of the results, as well.

Basically, the poll asks which Region 1 GM had the best draft strategy at the recently-completed Combine in Austin, Texas.

Mind you, this is different than asking who had the best draft. They just want to know who had the best strategy.

At the time of this writing, the results were nothing short of baffling, even for the Internet. Moto led the poll at 39%, with Jason Lake a distant second at 25%. Alex "Jax" Conroy, doing his best impression of Ron Paul, brought up the rear with a measly 2% of votes.

Frankly, I'm not convinced people read the poll correctly. We don't have to look any further than the recent holiday, Saint Patrick's Day, to understand the root of the confusion. After all, Patrick is the patron saint of Drunk Polling*.

* - Also the patron saint of Drunken Mischief, Drunken Drinking, and Drunken Puking.

With that in mind, perhaps they thought the question was about raft strategies. This makes more sense, as noted shipwrights Dave "moto" Geffon and Jason "1" Lake would naturally win such a poll in a sea-slide.

Or, with alcohol on the brain (read: alcohol in the brain), maybe they mistook "draft strategies" to mean draft (draught) beer. Again, Jax would lose this in a landslide, as his drinking motto is "CHUG CHUG CHUG". And by this I don't mean he drinks alcohol quickly, I mean that he acts like a passenger train when he gets drunk. Trust me, you haven't truly lived until you've seen Alex Conroy try to give a piggy-back ride to ten people at once while providing sound effects and imploring people to hop on board the the Jax Money Train.

Barring these alcohol-induced misunderstandings, I can't make sense of the results.

Jax had the worst team in the league last season. He brought in five new players, including arguably the best Forza player and best DoA Female player in the draft. He made two savvy Source pickups on guys that should come in and immediately mesh with the existing team. And he picked up a FIFA player with the last pick, not bothering to use a higher choice in a game worth few points.

Apparently, all that isn't enough to crack the elusive 5% barrier. He even drafted sWooZie onto his Taxi Team. You'd think he'd get the Adande Bump (cousin to the Colbert Bump), but no.  Clearly, the fans think his draft strategy of "improving the team" was a step in the wrong direction.

Of course, that leads us directly to Dave "moto" Geffon, Captain of the good ship Desire, Discipline, Dedication. He followed a similar draft strategy and is currently dominating the poll, playing the role of Barack Obama to Jax's Ron Paul.

Both GM's put a priority on Forza, and waited until the last round to pick up the player that would have the smallest impact -- for Moto, this was DoA 4 Male, where everybody else had a player secured. In the middle, they addressed their needs in Source.

These similarities are good for a 37% margin of victory for Moto. Even the resident draft homers (Carolina, Chicago, and Los Angeles, who all returned a majority of their players from last season) are beating Conroy by a wide margin.

Based on these results, I can only conclude that, for the community, the hierarchy of draft strategies goes:

1. Improving the team
2. Returning old members

10. Improving the team

As a last resort, GMs should clearly focus on improving the team, but only if returning the old members and improving the team aren't viable options.

For me, the only way this would get more entertaining is JaX making a blog post titled "I love fanboys", where he rants about moto's Source picks, calls Pandemic online, and insinuates all the other GMs are complete idiots.