“World Surf League Fantasy is even worse. It’s more confused than a homeless man on house arrest.”
Ho Stevie and BeachGrit sponsored Surfival League offers joy-seekers a chance at real life PRIZES and some actual fun – something Fantasy Surfer and World Surf League Fantasy would never dream of doing.
Fantasy Surfer appears to be completely defunct. I tried to recover the password to my old account several times but they never sent the email. No surprises there as the once great mag is now run by a grad student in the Catskills or a lumberer in Appalachia, or was it a hiker in East Tennessee?
Even if Fantasy Surfer was still alive and kicking, that party was dead a long time ago.
Format was all stymy with the salary cap nonsense that just doesn’t work in surfing. Then, it required you to make trades with other participants throughout the year if you were going to have a chance at winning.
And if you were to have the best “team” at the end of the season, which doesn’t compute for the run-and-gun lone wolf style of an individual sport like surfing, you don’t win anything…from them, at least.
It’s a crock.
World Surf League Fantasy is even worse. It’s more confused than a homeless man on house arrest.
Here’s from their site:
“If a surfer on your team scores 15.05 in a heat, you’ll get 15.05 fantasy points. Your total is the combined score of all athletes on your team.
That’s it in a nutshell, but there are limits on who you can pick. Surfers are categorized into “Tiers” based on their current rank.
If that sounds confusing, just play. Tiers are set automatically so you have nothing to worry about. Remember, you’ll need to pick a new team for each event as rankings will adjust athlete tiers.
Round 1 is a non-elimination round. If a surfer places 1st or 2nd in their Round 1 heat, they advance directly to Round 3. They won’t get 0.00 fantasy points for Round 2, but rather the top score earned by another surfer. If the best heat score from Round 2 is a 10.56, all athletes who placed 1st or 2nd in Round 1 will also receive 10.56.
If a surfer is injured in a heat, they will still receive any points they earned as a heat score. If a surfer is injured outside of competition, they will receive 0.00 points for the next heat they were supposed to surf and their opponent will be awarded 10.00 points.”
You get any of that?
They also don’t jive with prizes for their elite. Last year, a man from Berlin chose 10 of 11 event winners and won absolutely nada. Zilch.
Surfival League don’t play like that. They feel you should win something at the end of a long year besting your opponents.
They also believe that fantasy surfing should only add to the drama of watching a contest.
In Surfival League, you’re going to have someone to root for and against every contest. The stakes are elevated because the RULES are as simple as Jack. Just the way we like ’em.
You hitch your cart to one surfer each contest, then pray to the Surfival Gods above that your cart doesn’t fall into a ditch.
The RULES!
Pick one surfer at each event to make it past the round of 32.
If your surfer advances, you advance.
Once you’ve picked a surfer, you cannot pick them again.
Last person standing wins a 3 board quiver from Panda Surfboards, $5k from BeachGrit, and a fresh Ho Stevie wetsuit.
$20 USD to play.
The first half of the season was such a bloodbath that the Surfival Gods decided to start a Second Chance League or Losers’ Lair.
Another $20 USD to come back to life.
Same Rules.
Winner gets one board from PANDA, $1k from BeachGrit, and a Ho Stevie wetsuit.
After El Salvador only 8% of the Original Surfival League is alive, while only 37% of the Second Chance League remains. Getting down the nitty gritty!
From Surfival League instagram:
“We had some heavy hitters go down today in El Salvador and lost 35% of both the OG Surfival League and Second Chance League today.
Joao Chianca (15%), Ethan Ewing (9%), Yago Dora (5%) and Jack Robinson (3%) all went down before the quarterfinals.”
The top pick in El Salvador was current yellow jersey holder Griffin Colapinto at 38% setting the table for the infamous Colapinto Curse to strike once again.
What’s the Colapinto Curse?
We’ll let Old Surf Dad and Surfival League CEO and Founder Taylor Lobdell explain.
It’s just some good ol’ fun with a possible pot of gold at the end of it, just what fantasy surfing should be. More than we can say about the Surf City El Salvador Pro. Congrats Filipe. Congrats Caroline Marks.
Who had them on their World Surf League Fantasy squad? Did you appoint them your ‘Power Surfer’ so that their points are worth 2.2x as much as the next surfer whose scores are only worth 1.3x of their original points, unless the heat restarts twice in which case every surfer gets 1 point added to their third best score of the event and can be used at random in the next contest????
Just wondering.
Those might be the actual rules of World Surf League Fantasy.
The contest has just ended and already texts of discontent have been rolling in:
“Bro fk this El Salvador event. Dinky onshore rights”
“#boycottWSL”
“They basically just surf onshore beach break now so you might as well crown the winner of the US Open”
“They need barreling lefts…and rights…”
“Schedule’s fucked!”
“Keep dreaming. More realistically they’re gonna add Huntington and Myrtle Beach”
“Judges are scared. Throwing out 9’s to Felipe”
Woof. I don’t see the unrest softening any time soon.
The WSL is now 7 for 7 in lackluster events in shoddy waves. It has not been a good watch.
In times like these, we must be eternally grateful to the Surfival League for keeping the contests interesting up until the round of 32.
After the round of 32, it should be a cake walk for the WSL to bring it home, but they can’t.
We’re also grateful for the constant parade of gags coming from ELO and JMD, who have yet to surface after the Surf Ranch Pro judging controversy and being banned via social media from entering the entire country of Brazil.
Brazil is our next stop.
Who you picking for Surfival League???
What are the odds on ELO showing his face at that event!?!?! I want some action!
