Welcome back to the 24th season of the Hotel Hell Fantasy Football League!  This is our 6^th straight year of having the same 16 people.  Thank you again to Brian Magner for allowing us to use his union hall.  I think we can all agree that it was much nicer than we were envisioning.  He mentioned that we should be able to use it for at least the next two years, so that will be good.  Now onto our yearly lookback at where we came from and a look ahead to where we are going at the end, for those that can read long enough to make it there.

The league was started in 2001 by me with the help of Jeff Rapini.  It was a league that was intended to be exclusive to employees of the Adam’s Mark Hotel in Buffalo, NY.  That first year we had eleven teams.  We decided to forgo the regular draft and instead opted to fill our rosters via an auction that was held at the hotel.  We brought the auction back in 2013.

The origin of the name of our league comes from the summer of 2001.  There was a group of Indian (red-savage, not dot) journalists staying at the hotel.  They were putting out a little newspaper each day of their stay that included the day’s events and little articles of interest to their group.  Well apparently, many of them were running into various issues and problems throughout their stay.  One of them felt compelled to write an article about it and it became the cover story for that day’s paper.  The headline read, “Welcome to Hotel Hell!”  I thought it was a better name for our league than Adam’s Mark Fantasy Football League, so I stole it.  Interestingly, there are only four of us remaining in this league that ever worked at the Adam’s Mark – Jeff, Haas, Learn and me.

As I mentioned earlier, that first year we had 11 teams.  The only remaining members of that initial season are Jeff and me.  I have won the league six times, most recently in 2022, and am generally regarded as the GOAT.  Jeff has won the league twice, most recently in 2017.  The following year we fell down to 8 teams and none of those other six remain in the league.  In ’03 we experienced our largest growth spurt.  We jumped up to 14 teams, with a total of 9 new owners.  Out of those nine, Bryan Cordier and Rob Fox remain in the league today.  Cordier has one championship in his career, winning it back in 2005.  This makes him one of the largest donors in league history.  Fox won 3 times, in a row.  That’s still one of the most unbelievable facts about this league.  His last win was in 2010.  That is very easy to believe.  We also went to our current system of having six teams qualify for the playoffs and then having the next eight duke it out for the Toilet Bowl.  In a tribute to the tradition and name brand within this league, 5 out of the 6 longest tenured owners have maintained their original team names to this day.  The one that changed (Clit Commander’s became Bolsheviks after his future father-in-law played in a playoff of league with us) did so quite a few years ago now.  In short, team names matter in this league.  They get engraved on our trophy that gets presented to the league champion and in just a small amount of time, they become synonymous with the owners behind them.

In ’04 we grew to 15 teams and found another keeper, Rob Learn.  And by keeper I mean, I guess we are just stuck with him after all this time.  Learn is a two-time champion, winning most recently in 2019.  He hasn’t even been close since.  We finally grew to 16 teams in ’05.  Among the new owners that season, Paully Twaragowski has stayed.  He has never won a title, which actually might make him a larger donor than Cordier.  John Wulf joined that year as well.  He was the only player left in the league that did not have a personal tie to anyone remaining in the league before he started to play.  He was invited into the league by one of his friends, but that guy left the league a season or two later.  (Truth be told, I wrote most of this in ’09 and I can’t remember who John’s connection to this league is anymore.  I’m getting old.)  John stayed and we were glad to have him.  But then his brother had the audacity to have a stroke on the day of our draft.  Everyone knows we set the date a year ahead of time.  Plan accordingly or we kick you out.  That error in judgement was Wulf’s loss, but Jeff Easton’s gain.  He took over for Wulf in 2015 and continues to pay tribute to him with his nWo Wulfpack team name.  He also pays tribute to his ability by continuing the streak of neither team ever sniffing a championship.

Joey Kurczewski and Brian Magner joined the league in ’06.  The closest Joe Kur ever came to winning was that year that he gave all of his good players to Timmy Z.  Magner finally broke through for his first win in 2021.  2007 saw the arrival of Craig Smith, who actually shared the ’06 team with Joey K, and Mike Losel.  Craig is our defending champion, and is now a two-time league winner, although he could and maybe should have at least a couple more.  After coming in with a lot of talk about how he dominates all the other leagues he’s in, Losel has won the league just a single time, back in 2013.  He does claim the title of the single greatest photo in league history.  The pic of him lining up a putt with the league trophy on the green with him is a classic.  Gordon Kus, joined the league in ’08.  He won the league in 2020?  That was the Covid year.  Nothing that happened that year feels real.  Jason Haas, who was invited to join the league in ’03 finally got around to accepting the invitation in 2012.  He still hasn’t been able to come up with a decent team name.  He won his only championship in 2018, by accident.  Jeff Easton’s arrival was noted earlier, but he actually joined up with Gordon Kus in 2012 to try to right the ship of the former Cavemen.  That is one case where I feel a name change was acceptable.  The Cavemen were brutal from the get-go, but with their rebranding, nWo has been much better. 

Turbo entered the fold in 2013.  He has pretty much been our biggest private benefactor ever since. Last year was a fluke.  Balls of Hate stormed onto the scene in 2016.  They remain the only team to win a ‘ship in their first year.  And by they, I mean Buddy Lee and Justin Tucker.  Sammy was just along for the ride.  And finally, Chris Wegner joined the league in 2019.  Coming into their 6^th season, he is climbing up the list of largest donors at an alarming rate.  It can’t be confirmed, but word from the streets of the east side of suburban Rochester is that Trash Pandas tried to claim the league on their taxes as a charitable donation for their business.  I didn’t look this up, but I’m pretty sure that his biggest accomplishment to date is finish 2^nd in scoring, but not making the playoffs, and he continues to brag(?) about it.

Some interesting little tidbits…12 out of our 16 teams still have their original team name, one of them being the name I used as a place holder when they joined the league (T**m H**s).  What started out as a little work place league has now had or has teams from New York, Georgia, Alabama, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and even Colorado…We have had 47 different owners.  As far as I know, only one of them has passed away, Rich Arquette (War Lord’s) and one got married and has a different name – Jeff Shragel (Shragville Steelers).  I have no idea why he took his wife’s name.  I wonder if she would have made him change his team name, too?  We have one former owner, Tim Delaney, who was named 2015-2016 Prep Talk Coach of the Year after leading South Park to a state championship.  Which is one more championship than he ever won here.  Which then is obviously proof that it is harder to win our league than it is to win a state championship.

Looking ahead to this season, I plugged our teams into a site that projects how it all will go.  At first, I thought it must be broken because it has the Bolsheviks listed as the top team, followed by My Ball Zach Ertz, nWo Wulfpack and Trash Pandas.  This is clearly flawed.  But then I saw that they think the worst team in the league will be Turbo, so now I don’t know.  Bolsheviks roster actually doesn’t look too bad.  I just refuse to believe that a guy that doesn’t know has already been drafted for most of the draft can figure out how to win in this league anymore.  But Turbo’s team is legitimately bad.  Zac Taylor might be his best player.  So actually, forget what I just wrote about them being terrible.  I love this team!  The Teddy Ruxpins are so confident in their team, they were already making terrible trade offers the day after the draft.  Who is going to bail them out this year? 

OK time to make some bold picks.  Our championship game will pit the Hamburg Hooligans against Hair Bear, with Hair Bear finally getting their first win.  The worst team in the league will be Shock Value.  I’m just going with the math that one of the Joey Ks will be the worst team in the league.