EFLIPPING THE EFL

The Commissioner’s Office issued the following statement Tuesday afternoon:

The 2019 season is at the quarter-way point, and a crisis is evident.  As of  this morning, with 1/4 of the season’s games played, only 1/4 of the EFL is above .500.  That means we have….umm, just a sec…. 3/4 of our league UNDER .500.

The league as a whole is only two games under .500. Normally we here in the league front office would celebrate the remarkable competitive balance between the EFL and MLB.  But  3/4 of our league under 500, that means there are … hold on… NINE EFL teams under .500 as of Tuesday morning.

That is a record, my friends, and not a glorious one.

We here in the front office don’t think you nine laggards should be embarrassed about this. No, of course not. No one wants to be embarrassed, and we’re too classy to embarrass anyone.  No, the proper response is shame. Or mortification, if you prefer.

The Commissioners Office is here to help. Our first step is to motivate you by reminding you that none of the world’s most admired people — no Noble Prize Winners, no Persons of the Year, not a single Catholic saint or Mennonite martyr, no Medal of Freedom winner, no President, Senator, Representative, or dog catcher, let alone Hollywood celebrity, not even Doris Day — has ever had a losing record in the EFL. Well, there was one interim president of GFU who, after he retired from that post, had a losing record in the EFL, but that’s it!  Not one person more revered than him has EVER had a losing record in the EFL.  When you die, do you want people at your funeral asking each other “Who was this guy? Are we at the right funeral?” Or do you want them sobbing in their pews to think you’re gone?

OK, now that you are all properly motivated, the EFL Front Office is ready to help. I gather some of you are skeptical whether the EFL Front Office  knows how to help teams get better.  We certainly do.  We have been studying the work of the GFU Office of Employee Empowerment. We have identified their favorite tool of employee empowerment, their killer app, so to speak.  And, after painstaking development work which took us more than five minutes, we have produced our own version of the EE killer technology:  a form. The longer and more inexplicable the better.

That’s right! We have joined the Empowerment Through Forms movement.  Some of you seem skeptical.  But consider this: you’ve probably heard a British sports announcer comment at length about whether a cricket or soccer team is “in form.”  They are discussing whether the team in question has filed an improvement plan form, and whether they are in compliance with it.  If they are, they invariably win their match and/or are moving up the table and/or make the most gorgeous shots clank off the crossbar.

So, to keep up with the Europeans, we here in the EFL front office developed the EFLIP.  You don’t know what an EFLIP is?  Well.  That explains a lot. An EFLIP is an EFL Improvement Plan, a plan showing how you will EFLIP your team (bring it up to snuff) ASAP.

Here is what the EFLIP form looks like:

Team: _______  Daily result: ____________  Stats:______________

What is wrong with your team, based on today’s evidence?

How will you fix this by tomorrow?

If you can’t fix this by tomorrow, how would you prefer to be further empowered?

assault                         harassment             obesity                       vivisection

battery                         insulting                   pillaging                   waterboarding

collusion                      jail                            quarantine                 x-raying

defamation                  kidnapping               rubbing it in               yelling

excommunication        laceration                 shame                       zealotry

flagellation                  mortification              torture

garroting                     neglect                      upbraiding                 surprise me!

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Well, now it’s Wednesday. Let’s see how the EFLIP worked out on its first day.

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