Welcome back to the TSL Quarterback Power Rankings! 

 

We exhausted ourselves with last week's 100th Power Rankings (how'd you like those Non-QB Ranking??) so this week we're going to phone it in more than usual.  

 

Here are your Top Twenty QBs in the League with a Haiku about each.

 

 

 

#1 Joey Batts - Legends / Cunning Stunts

Last Week:  Beat Buffalo Vice 62-46, lost to Wanderers 41-27 (Cunning Stunts)

Classic Joey Batts,

Legends are undefeated,

Stunts are okay too.

 

#2 Bobby McConnell - Eyes Downtown

Last Week:  Beat Unit Ha Ha 50-21

Bobby not happy

Eyes Downtown are in third place,

Champions or bust!

 

#3 Mike Thomas – Sticky Bandits

Last Week:  Lost to What a Dump 56-33

Poor Sticky Bandits,

they're undefeated no more,

with Legends this week!

 

#4 Andy Strug – The Malones

Last Week:  Beat Scared Hitless 52-47

The Malones are back!

Can pretty much clinch a bye

with win this weekend.

 

#5 Garrett Beesing - Frodo Swaggins

Last Week:  Beat Unit Ha Ha 45-38

Nice win for Garrett,

Frodo beats Unit Ha Ha.

Playoff dark horses?

 

#6 Cody Stumpf – What a Dump

Last Week:  Beat Sticky Bandits 56-33

Big win for Cody

(though Kayla does all the work)

What A Dump 4 real!

 

#7 Joe Miano - Jabronies

Last Week:  Did Not Play

No game for Big Joe

Jabronies are most improved

team in the whole league?

 

#8 Jordan Lawson - Mavericks / Scared Hitless

Last Week:  Beat Freeballers 35-21 (Mavericks), lost to The Malones 52-47 (Scared Hitless)

People wrote them off,

but Mavs and Scared have not quit!

Beware for playoffs!

 

#9 Frank Laudico - Wanderers

Last Week:  Beat Cunning Stunts 41-27, lost to GirthQuakes 35-33

Undefeated, no!

GirthQuakes ruin the party.

At least they beat Stunts!

 

 #10 Buddy Lee – Passing While Intoxicated / Interdimensional Lightning Falcons

Last Week:  Beat Grey Hair - Don't Care 25-0 (PWI), beat Practice Squad 45-27 (Interdimensional Lightning Falcons)

PWI

and ILF both got wins

Buddy must be good!

 

#11 Ryan Dougherty - Can't Touch This

Last Week:  Did Not Play

No game for Ryan,

Can't Touch This having rough start,

must fix for playoffs!

 

#12 Matt Glowacki - Unit Ha Ha

Last Week:  Lost to Eyes Downtown 50-21, lost to Frodo Swaggins 45-38

Two losses this week

What is a Unit Ha Ha?

(Their unis are sweet!)

 

#13 David Eickhoff - Grey Hair Don't Care / Ready to Retire

Last Week:  Lost to Puckett All-Stars 28-22, beat PowerPuff Girls 38-9

D4 looking fine,

No wins yet though in D2

Does not look too great!

 

#14 Dylan Jaloza - Bullet Club

Last Week:  Beat D-Generation X Y and Z 32-30

Four and one record,

but minus 3 points so far?

Are Bullet Club good?

 

#15 Damien Keller - D-Generation X Y and Z

Last Week:  Lost to Bullet Club 32-30

D X Y and Z

are in the thick of D3,

Kellers win it all?

 

#16 Paul Rath - Freeballers

Last Week:  Lost to Mavericks 35-21

Sorry Freeballers,

winning with new Q is hard,

maybe next season?

 

#17 Mike Wolcott - Two Tuddies

Last Week:  Beat Puckett All-Stars 35-20, beat PowerPuff Girls 45-8

Tuddies own D4,

No one has even been close.

Three Tuddies, take note!

 

#18 Brandon "B" Ford - Practice Squad

Last Week:  Lost to ILF 45-27

Squad is one and four,

B has won as underdog,

he'll do it again!

 

#19 Matt Kieta - GirthQuakes

Last Week:  Beat Wanderers 35-33

Huge win for GirthQuakes,

Beating Wanderers no joke!

Can they build off this?

 

#20 Eric Mueller - Puckett All-Stars

Last Week:  Beat Ready to Retire 28-22, lost to Two Tuddies 35-20

Puckett still real good,

One of three "real" contenders

to win this season?

 

Fancy Statistics Section

Come on, we're tired.  We did all the graphs last week.

 

***

 

That's it for the TSL Power Rankings this week!  If you have any thoughts about QB rankings, or you want to make sure we know who's throwing for your team, please feel free to contact our good friend This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..  You tell him, he'll tell us.  

 

What's YOUR ranking?

 

Welcome to the special 100th edition of the TSL QB Power Rankings!

 

Yes, we have somehow been ranking the quarterbacks of this great league for 100 straight weeks of TSL action (Spring and Fall, at least) since the Spring 2019 season.  

 

Here's a little history for you about how this article and Committee came to be.

 

Way back when in ancient times when no one had ever heard of things like "COVID" or "Hawk Tua", a man named Patrick "Topper" McGovern (owner of an organization you may remember called the "Topper Sports League") had a brainstorm for a new website article called the QB Power Rankings.  He envisioned an entertaining weekly article where the League would talk about who's trending up, and who's trending down -- and poke some fun at the people who were trending down.  So a committee of five very actively involved TSL people was established to review QBs and put together a weekly article.  Other than the Godfather, it's almost impossible to do a weekly article alone, but we figured the five of us working together could make this happen.  

 

Once we got going, we discovered very quickly that, well, we just weren't funny enough to do the article the way Topper originally had in mind.  We LOVED to debate who was better than who, but how do you walk that fine line of making jokes about bad performers without hurting their feelings?  The only thing worse than throwing a shitty game is having a website make fun of you afterwards.  So instead of focusing on humor/satire, we decided to try something crazy: what if we just took the concept seriously?  This is a co-ed touch football league, so the idea of ACTUALLY ranking players analytically every week seemed absurd at first.  But the League already had The Godfather and the Sentinel bringing actual entertainment value every week -- we figured instead of being a weak parody of their great articles (and yes, the Sentinel used to be really good!) we might as well try to bring a different perspective to appeal to a different type of reader looking for another type of content.  So what began in concept as almost a joke turned into our attempt at a serious sports article, first discussing only QBs, and then adding some of the graphs and charts that become our signature over the years.  We probably drove Topper crazy with all the images/graphs/charts etc he needed to manually (and painfully) insert into the website before we figured out (YEARS later) a better way to do that.  If you're reading this on a beach in Florida: sorry Topper, and thanks for putting up with us!

 

Over the years our Committee has changed a bit: we had our original five members, which eventually became six, then four, then three, and now is back to five (with only two of the original five members left).  But we always felt like it was important to have a group of people debating these Rankings -- otherwise it just becomes "one guy's opinion", and that doesn't mean much since we all play on teams and we have our own biases.  To everyone on our Committee over the years, we want to say thank you so much for putting in all this silly and pointless work to debate TSL QB rankings with us.  And of course, thanks for putting together all of our fancy charts and graphs.  These are not PAID positions, so we rely on dedicated and enthusiastic volunteers to keep this going every week!

 

That said: this is our ONE HUNDREDTH POWER RANKINGS!  So what do we want to talk about this week?

 

How about... everything?

 

• This week we are going to finally do what we often promise/threaten to do in our first article of every season, and rank EVERY STARTING QUARTERBACK IN THE LEAGUE.  Sorry in advance to whoever comes in last.
• We're going to bring back (for one week ONLY) your HIGHLY CONTROVERSIAL and UNIVERSALLY HATED Male and Female Non-QB Rankings.  
• We're going to look at the greatest QBs of ALL TIME (this is a Quarterback Ranking article after all, right?)
• We're going to look at the greatest TEAMS of all time.
• We're going to rank every current team in the League (including yours!)
• We're going to break out all our usual stat tables and graphs from over the years.

 

We're pulling out all the stops this week to celebrate 100 weeks of Power Rankings madness.  YOUR team, YOUR QB and maybe some of YOUR teammates will all be covered this week.

 

We hope you've enjoyed at least SOME of our bullshit from the last six years.  We hope you enjoy this week's bullshit as well.

 

***

 

For the last 100 articles, we have ranked at LEAST the top 10 QBs in the League.  We usually jump to a Top 15 pretty quickly, then expand to a Top 20 or Top 25 by the end of the season.  We've even hit 35 QBs before.  But this week, we will shatter that record with a Top 50.  And there are only 49 teams in the League, some of which share a starting QB!

 

If you throw in a lower division and you haven't seen your name on these rankings before, PLEASE remember, there are over 600 people that play in the League this session.  If you're ranked low on the chart below, don't feel too bad -- you might STILL be better than the 550 other people that are too cowardly to try their hand at the game's most demanding position.  

 

Below are your Top 50 Quarterbacks in the TSL.  And no, we did NOT do write-ups for each of them.

 

 

***

 

 

Oh boy... This next section is where we always get the most Hate Mail (or at least we DID, until the League shut down our dedicated email address).  

 

Yes, for one week only, we are going to bring back the Male Non-QB Rankings and Female Non-QB Rankings. (We used to call them "receiver rankings" because it's easier to say, but it 100% includes defense, pass rushing, and pretty much everything else you can do on a football field BESIDES throw the ball, so keep that in mind.)

 

This sounds fun!  You may be asking yourself why this was the most hated segment we ever did on this website??  

 

Well, it turns out that most of the athletes in this League... how do we say this... have an inflated opinion of themselves?  We rank QBs every week in this article and most of them never really complain... but we suspect that's because quarterback is a humbling position by nature.  When you're throwing picks or sailing passes over your receivers heads every game (and ALL quarterbacks, even the greats, have plenty of lousy throws) it humbles you quickly.  As a result, most quarterbacks don't tend to talk a lot of shit about how great they are (Joey Batts is a special case).  

 

People who play OTHER positions however all seem to believe that they're among the very best in the League, and are somehow highly underrated by our podcasts, our website articles, our awards banquets, you name it.  So when we published Rankings in the past of the Top 20 best male receivers in the league (the top 5% of the League) you would not BELIEVE how many people complained that they didn't make the cut.  And even among those who did, most would complain that they should have been higher on the list.  How often were people grumbling at the bar that "there's no way THAT guy is better than me"?

 

And we're sorry, not to be sexist... but the women were ALWAYS more vocal than the men here in feeling like they'd been slighted by our Rankings.

 

But what the hell?  It's our 100th Power Ranking!  Let's make some folks angry today... even if all we're doing is (keep the proper perspective here...) telling everyone HOW GREAT WE THINK THESE PEOPLE ARE.  There is no shame in not being included on these lists, or not being ranked higher.  And besides, since you don't know any of our names and we don't have an email address anymore, you'll all just complain to Jeff on Saturday about these anyway.  (His reaction when told that we were going to bring back these Rankings was, in a word, "ughhhhhhh").

 

As always, injured or semi-retired players are ignored (ie Mike Boccio types), and the division the athlete plays in ABSOLUTELY counts (the best should play against the best, same way we treat the QB Rankings).  We've brought back EVERY former member of our Committee to vote on these names, so what you're seeing below is a collective ranking of all of our opinions.  And remember, the REAL crowns for "best athletes" are always decided by YOU the voters, at the end of year Banquet.  Until then, this is just what our "experts" think.

 

Without further adieu, here we go:

 

 

 

20. Matt Danwin - Two Tuddies

 

19. Dan Farinacci - Stir the Sauce

 

18. George Lombardo - Scared Hitless, Bullet Club

 

17. Sal Augugliaro - Wanderers

 

16. Kyle Conniff - What A Dump

 

15. Scott McGregor - Legends

 

14. Ray Leach - Jabronies

 

13. Chris Bourne - Frodo Swaggins

 

12. Jeremy Burr - Legends

 

11. Derek Bongiovanni - What A Dump

 

10. Eric Delecki - Can't Touch This

 

9. Josh Schultz - Eyes Downtown

 

8. "Stoner" Dave Gdaniec - Mavericks, Wanderers

 

7. Nick Voss - Eyes Downtown, Grey Hair - Don't Care

 

6. Ben Stack - Eyes Downtown, Can't Touch This

 

5. Drew Colosimo - Sticky Bandits

 

4. Drew Butler - Eyes Downtown

 

3. Andy Smigiera - What A Dump

 

2. Chris Nelson - Legends

 

1. Sean Weisansal - Legends

 

 

 

 

 

Ohhh, you HATED it, didn't you?  We got it all wrong, too many "big names", didn't give enough credit to some great young athletes, didn't recognize enough talent from lower divisions, blah blah blah.  Thanks, we've heard it all before.  

 

For what it's worth, Sean and Chris were the ONLY two guys that got first place votes on the Male Rankings, but the top FIVE females each had at least one first place vote -- which tells us the top tier of males is a lot smaller than the top tier of females.

 

 

***

 

 

If our article is called the "TSL QB Power Rankings" then the million dollar question must be: who is the greatest TSL quarterback of all time???

 

And we've never REALLY answered this question... until now.

 

After six years of Power Ranking quarterbacks, it's pretty obvious which of them are always at or near the top of the list.  If you've been around this League for long enough, you know all the big names.  And we HAVE published SORT of an all-time ranking in the past, but it was essentially just a collection of stats about how often people ranked in our Top Ten over the last six years.  That's not really the right way to choose an all-time great... but it's a starting point, so let's go back to that.

 

The chart directly below is updated through all 100 weeks worth of Power Rankings data and shows how many times each QB has been in our Top Ten, how many times they've been ranked #1, and finally how many total "points" each QB has earned in the last six years in our Power Rankings (a ranking of #1 on a given week is worth 10 points, #2 is worth 9 points etc, and anything under #10 does not earn any points in this system).  The table below is sorted on that last criteria of "Total Points".

 

 

 

Okay, like we said... It's a start.  It takes into account how high they were in each Power Rankings, but it's also heavily biased towards longevity and timing.  Longevity SHOULD matter (a QB that's great for ten seasons should be higher than a QB that was great for two) but the timing is what makes it tricky, as some of these QBs' primes don't coincide with the last six years of our Power Rankings.  There's nothing we can do for some of these guys whose primes pre-date our Power Rankings (Dubey's value is shamefully underrepresented if you ignore all the D1 championships he won before 2019), but we CAN normalize for some other timing irregularities like seasons taken off and early retirements, by adding a column for "average Power Ranking on the weeks in which they were ranked" and sorting it that way.  Let's see what that looks like:

 

 

 

That looks better, but still not quite right.  Using only their average Ranking when in the Top Ten will overrate people who had short but exciting bursts at the top.  No disrespect to Greg Chadwick, but is four weeks in the Top Ten (all back in 2019) enough to make him an all-time great?  It is not.

 

There should be some kind of minimum number of weeks in the Top Ten to even qualify as an all-time great.  It's arbitrary as hell of course, but we're going to pick "24 Weeks" as that cut-off.  We typically do 8 rankings per season, so 24+ weeks would be a minimum of three full seasons in the Top Ten.  Everyone with fewer weeks than that, we're going to disqualify from the all-time greatest conversation.  Apologies to Mark Dalfonso (two #1 overall weeks, two D1 championships!), Travis Cleavenger and Dean Thompson who each just missed that cut-off for eligibility.

 

These are the final 16 contenders for all-time greatest status:

 

 

Now THIS looks a lot closer to a true all-time great Power Ranking.  We're almost there. 

 

The first five QBs in particular have 98 of the 100 #1 Rankings we've given out over the last six years, so that's your first tier of the Greats.  Let's talk about them first:

• Chris Cole has the best average ranking and the highest percentage of #1 Rankings (56% of all weeks he was eligible).  He's tied for the most D1 championships as well.  
• Bro Kleckler has the second highest average ranking and second highest percentage of #1 Rankings (45% of all weeks he was eligible).  When he was throwing for Tight Ends in Motion, he was the best QB in the League almost as often as not.
• Bobby McConnell has the highest "Total Point" value over the last six years, which means he was most consistently toward the top of the Rankings.  He also has four times as many D1 championships as Bro Kleckler, which gives him a considerable edge there.
• Joey Batts' average Ranking is lower than the rest, but that's more a product of his time spent playing in lower divisions before Legends existed.  He's tied for #1 all-time in D1 Championships won (with a chance to take the lead this season) and if we ONLY looked at his average ranking since the inception of Legends, it would be 1.64... just 0.02 worse than Chris Cole.  And he can BEAT Chris's average Ranking if he stays at #1 for the next few weeks.
• Mike Thomas can't compete with the four QBs above him on average ranking, or highest percentage of #1 Rankings for eligible weeks, or even (outside of Bro) on number of championships won.  Any argument for Mike would have to center around the fact that his teams have historically been less talented than Bro's, Bobby's or Joey's, and that Mike has been asked to do more with less, essentially taking a middling D3 team to the heights of D1 (which to be fair, no other QB on this list has done).  

Regardless of the order (and believe us, we'll rank them in a second) that's your top tier of the best QBs in TSL history... or at least the six years of history that we have been watching.  

 

It's going to get very subjective from here as look at #6-#10, but we're up to the challenge.  

 

Based on the stats, what we've seen in head-to-head games, strength of the teams they've played on, strength of the divisions they played in, and who we would most want to throw for our team to win a championship game... here are your OFFICIAL Top Ten TSL QBs of All-Time:

 

 

1 TSL Championship: D3 (Can't Touch This)

Ryan is still writing his story and has the most opportunity to move up this list when all is said and done.  He hasn't won as many championships as some others on this list (or many others that DIDN'T make this list) but he's been consistently ranked towards the top of the League's passers since Can't Touch This joined the League.

 

3 TSL Championships: 3 x D2 (once with Losing Streak, twice with Mavericks)

There have been 25 championships awarded in the history of D2, and Jordan has more than 10% of those between Losing Streak and Mavericks.  While it's true that he's yet to experience the same level of success in D1 (yet!), that isn't the ONLY division in the TSL, and frankly the two guys ranked above him haven't won D1 either.  

 

1 TSL Championship: D2 (Frodo Swaggins)

If we counted Breakfast Club success, Garrett's resume would look a lot more impressive.  As it is, he's still a D2 champion who will leave a legacy of not backing down from any challenge.  While most teams try to stay in as low a division as possible, Garrett had Frodo skip right to D2 without ever winning D3, and then made the jump to D1 despite losing his two best players at the time.  In a League where everyone tries to load their rosters with talent, Garrett has never made excuses for Frodo, and nearly carried his team to a D1 championship game in 2024.

 

7 TSL Championships: D2 (A&A), 4 x D4 (twice with A&A, twice with Matty's Angels), D5 (A&A), D6 (Matty's Angels)

Tied for second most all time with 7 TSL championships (not even including his Breakfast Club wins) Matty Ice was a mainstay in the QB Power Rankings for his work on A&A and Matty's Angels.  Although he never attempted to play in the highest division (and twice stayed in the same division after winning it) no one could deny the talent from the TSL's most frequently hungover quarterback.

 

6 TSL Championships: 3 x D1 (Green & Associates), 2 x D2 (once with DILFS, once with Pass the Dubey), Winter (DILFs)

This is where we enter "Bill Russell" territory.  How do you compare a player whose prime was largely in another era to the legends of today?  Green and Associates won three D1 championships in TSL alone... but before the TSL existed, they were winning championships in its precursor league which we have no records of today.  This was the toughest QB to compare to the others... so he ends up right at the end of the list of D1 winners, but above all the other greats who haven't yet won our highest division.  Feels fair to us.

 

2 TSL Championships: D1 (Tight Ends in Motion), D2 (Hootie & the Brofish)

Bro was only the starting QB of the great Tight Ends in Motion team for a few years, but that was when they really hit their peak.  In the 24 weeks that Bro was throwing for TEIM, he was ranked #1 in the Power Rankings 11 times...  and much of that overlapped with Public Enemy's dominance, which makes it all the more impressive.  Tight Ends in Motion didn't have the staying power of a Public Enemy or a Legends, but for a couple years there they were at the top of the sport, and Bro was the (always underrated) player under center for their prime.

 

4 TSL Championships: D1 (Sticky Bandits), D2 (Sticky Bandits), D3 (Sticky Bandits), Winter (Sticky Bandits)

Other quarterbacks have won multiple divisions before, but Mike Thomas is the first and ONLY QB to date that has ever won the TSL's highest three divisions (or highest four, if you count Winter) with the same team.  Most D1 championship teams in recent history have been formed when top stars come together to make the best team in the League, but so far the Sticky Bandits are the only true "promoted by winning their way up" champions in League history.  Although Mike doesn't have nearly as many D1 championships as the three QBs ranked ahead of him, that makes his one championship earned all the more impressive. 

 

7 TSL Championships: 4 x D1 (twice with Eyes Downtown, twice with 123 Gawron), D2 (123 Gawron), 2 x Winter (Eyes Downtown)

In our 100 weeks of Power Ranking, Bobby McConnell has been ranked in the Top Ten all but four weeks... the FIRST four weeks, when he was injured.  Since he came back, he has had a staggering 96 consecutive weeks in the Power Rankings, including just two weeks at #5, and 94 weeks in the Top Four.  THAT is consistency.  Add in a resume with four D1 championships (one away from the TSL record, which he could tie in just a couple months) and the fact that he's achieved all of this with a completely rotating cast of teammates, and you get one of the greatest TSL QBs of all-time.

10 TSL Championships: 5 x D1 (Legends), D2 (Gryffindor), D3 (Gryffindor), 2 x D4 (once with Gryffindor, once with Cunning Stunts), D5 (Cunning Stunts)

We play to win championships, right?  No one in the history of the TSL has won as many at the QB position as Joey Batts, who has three more championships than Bobby or Matty.  We want to win them at the highest level, right?  No one has more championships in D1 than Joey Batts, who is currently tied with Chris Cole for five (with an excellent chance for #6 in a couple months, with his currently undefeated Legends).  Joey gets a lot of shit for winning with a "loaded roster", but he also won three championships with an average Gryffindor team, and two with a squad of all girls (albeit very talented girls).  Wait, what are we saying, we don't need to defend his work.  His ten championships speak for themselves.

6 TSL Championships: 5 x D1 (Public Enemy), D5 (Molly's Ladies)

The greatest to ever do it.  Yes, Joey has equaled his number of D1 championships, and yes, Bobby may tie him some day as well.  But Cole is the only player in the history of our QB Power Rankings to be in the #1 spot more than he was NOT in the #1 spot (22 out of 39 total weeks).  Public Enemy may or may not have been the greatest TSL team in history (more on that later) but no one's disputing the top QB.  If you never got a chance to see him play, just ask any of the next several QBs on this list (all of whom he has beaten) and they will tell you, there was only one GOAT.

 

***

 

 

We're hitting some heavy topics today!  Ranking every QB in the League today, the top non-QBs in the League today, the greatest QBs of ALL TIME... What's next?  Oh, let's look at the greatest TEAMS of all time.

 

Unlike the QB methodology above, we already HAVE a system of ranking teams that we developed a couple years ago, based on Championship wins (you can't be one of the all-time greats if you don't have championships to back it up) which we've updated to include Spring 2025.  Let's start with a reminder on how that worked.

 

This is the list of all 161 championships in TSL history:

 

 

 

There are 102 teams in this list (35 of which won multiple championships), and that's our starting point for the greatest teams of all time. 

 

This next part though is subjective:  we then attempted to compare the relative strength of each division's championships to come up with a ranking system (a D2 title is harder to win than a D4 title) and this is what we landed on:

• A D1 championship is our baseline since it's the best a team can do.  Let's make that worth 100 points.  
• A D2 title is worth, at BEST, 49% of that, since two D2 titles don't quite equal a D1 title (you can argue it should be LESS than 49%, but we've made the choice to weight lower divisions as heavily as reasonably possible here).  49 points for a D2 title.
• A D3 title should be worth 49% of THAT, so about 24 points for each D3 championship.
• Every subsequent division is worth 49% of the previous one, so D4 is worth 11 points, D5 is worth 5 points, and D6 is worth 2 points.
• Indoor championships aren't currently worth a point (though we may revise this in the future).  With apologies to DILFS, Jelly Beans, Sticky Bandits, Eyes Downtown, Losing Streak and Friendship Club, Winter sessions are often used to make new teams and play with new people.  No team should be penalized in the rankings for doing that instead of entering their usual squad.  We'll give them credit for "number of titles", which they've earned, but zero points awarded.  Indoor championships are abbreviated as "W:A" (Winter: A) and "W:B" on the chart below, to make it a little easier to read.

 

It's an arbitrary system of course, but it's the one we chose.

 

Here are the greatest teams of all time, updated with Spring 2025 Champions:

 

 

If you're skipping straight to the top of the list hoping to see who's #1 (like most people) you'll notice that we don't have a tie-breaking procedure in our math.  That means that Public Enemy and Legends are both ranked at #1 right now in our standings.

 

Come on, what a cop-out.  Are you serious?  

 

Time for a crucial reminder though: NINETY NINE articles ago when we FIRST started doing our Power Ranking, we made a promise to you, our readers: there will never be a tie.  It's too easy to say "these people are about equal" EVERY week and just start giving people ties, but that's no fun.  We have always broken ties in our Power Rankings even when our Committee members were deadlocked, and this will be no different.

 

Legends vs Public Enemy: There must be a winner.  So let's figure it out.

 

We're going to kill the whole "things are so much tougher now" vs "things were so much tougher back then" aspect to the debate right now.  The older generation typically feels like their competition was "tougher", while the history of sports suggests that athletes are always getting faster and stronger every year.  But let's not kid ourselves: These teams are not from two different generations.  Public Enemy disbanded after winning the championship in Fall 2021.  Legends were formed and crowned champions themselves in Spring 2022, with at least a few people on BOTH rosters during those two sessions. The competition they faced was VERY similar, so let's dismiss that aspect of the debate right now.

 

What about the state of D1 itself during each team's championship era?  Some people will point to the size of the division as an indicator of strength of competition, but that's also misguided.  Why does it matter how many teams were in D1?  If there are a lot of teams, that MIGHT mean a lot of competition... or it MIGHT mean that the top talent was spread out throughout many teams, making each individual competitor weaker.  Similarly, a small number of teams in the division might mean less competition (fewer teams willing to compete against the top D1 teams) or it might mean STRONGER competition (when Tight Ends in Motion and Eyes Downtown rosters merged, wasn't the result a stronger competitor than either team by itself?).  

 

It's truly impossible to say one way or another who had "stronger" competition so we're going to make a very reasonable conclusion that the level of competition was about the same.

 

It also seems reasonable to compare their rosters and see which team looks stronger "on paper".  Well, that's probably Legends, right?  Public Enemy's best player was likely Mike Boccio, who ALSO played on Legends, so that's a wash.  Do we really think Sean and Chris aren't better athletes than the next best guys on Public Enemy?  Cheryl and Heather were great... but Heather ALSO played on Legends so she's another wash, and Maddie & Mel are, well, Maddie & Mel.  So athleticism alone is going to be a point in favor of Legends.

 

What about their QBs?  As we said in our All-Time QB Rankings above, Chris Cole was the GOAT... but if Joey Batts is the second greatest of all-time, then it can't be THAT much of a drop-off from Chris to Joey, right?  A point to Public Enemy for sure, but not a big one.

 

In terms of total roster strength from top to bottom, we give the advantage to Legends.  But athleticism on paper doesn't always guarantee championships.  If it did, Legends would be working on their 8th straight title this season.

 

Do Public Enemy have the cohesion, the game plan, the intangibles, the Tommy Hughes effect, whatever you want to call it, to beat a team of "superior" athletes more often than not?  Maybe.  Of course we have no way of knowing the real answer, so let's look at it differently:

 

From Spring 2016 to Fall 2021, Public Enemy won 5 championships over 11 seasons.  From Spring 2022 to Spring 2025, Legends won 5 championships over 7 seasons.  If we believe the level of competition is more or less even (and we do), then do we believe Legends will win at least ONE championship over the next 4 seasons (including this one)?  If we think they'd win even ONE more, then we're saying all things equal, against similar competition, that Legends will win more championships than Public Enemy over the same period of time.  And yes, we do believe they will win at least one more.  

 

So we're going to choose Legends as the greatest on-field team in TSL history... with an asterisk that it's still in doubt in many of our minds.  There's only one way they can remove the asterisk, and that's by winning Championship #6.  They're undefeated and they've won every game so far this season by at least three scores, so we may only be a couple months away from that, and then it'll be official in our standings.  Until then, it isn't FACT, it's just our OPINION.  For whatever that's worth.

 

 

10. Tight Ends in Motion

 

9. Sticky Bandits

 

8. 33 Speakeasy

 

7. Top Line Solutions

 

6. Marketing Mayors

 

5. Eyes Downtown

 

4. 123 Gawron

 

3. Green & Associates

 

2. Public Enemy

 

1. Legends

 

 

Oh, and in case you're wondering, the worst team of all time is Show Me Your TDs.  Zero points scored, an average of 74.5 points per game scored against.  A record that will (hopefully) never be broken.

 

 

***

 

So now we know the greatest teams of all time... how about the greatest teams today?  

 

Well, that's kind of silly, right?  Can't we just look at the standings and see who the greatest teams are?  

 

Maybe, maybe not.  

 

For starters, standings can be deceptive early in the season when teams haven't all played each other yet.  Did you know that Unit Ha Ha is undefeated against every team in the League NOT named Legends?  They're in sixth place in their division right now, but they could be the second best team in the League! (They're not, but ya know, they COULD be.)  So some of the standings at this point are an illusion caused by the schedule.

 

Also worth pointing out: some teams could EASILY be in different divisions.  Does anyone believe that Bridget & Quit It couldn't beat Cobblestone?  Who would you bet on if Pit Harade played Flying Balls or The Chargers?  What about The Malones vs Freeballers?  Not EVERY team in a given division is better than every team in the division below them, and not EVERY team in a given division would lose to every team in the division above them.

 

So we're going to Power Rank 49 TSL teams from best to worst, based on a number of factors: their record, their point differentials, their strength of schedule so far, their history (yes, it does matter if a historically good team is off to a bad start, odds are they will bounce back) and frankly our gut feeling about who would win if two teams faced each other.  There are MANY instances in the Power Rankings below where a team is ranked higher than another team it has already lost to (ex. Can't Touch This is ranked higher than Scared Hitless, who beat them already).  What we're saying there is that our gut feeling is that if the teams had a rematch, the results might be different the second time around (or they might not be -- what do we know?)

 

Here are our TSL Team Power Rankings for Spring 2025:

 

 

***

 

 

As if we haven't given you enough already (is anyone still reading this?) here are ALL of our usual charts on team offenses, defenses, point differentials, best/worst in the League etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That was exhausting!  We're done for the week.  

 

We hope you've enjoyed our rambling thoughts and charts over the last six years.  Next week we'll do an incredibly short article.  Maybe the return of the Haiku QB Rankings...

 

If you have any thoughts about any of the above (complaints about the Non-QB Rankings, perhaps?) or you want to make sure we know who's throwing for your team, please feel free to contact our good friend This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..  You tell him, he'll tell us.  

 

What's YOUR ranking?

Welcome back to the TSL Quarterback Power Rankings! 

 

No graphs and visual wizardry for you yet of course (they’re coming soon!), but here are your Top FIFTEEN starting QBs in the TSL:

 

 

 

#1 Joey Batts - Legends / Cunning Stunts

Last Week:  Beat What a Dump 35-14 (Legends), beat D-Generation XYZ 52-47 (Stunts)

3-0 and collectively averaging an ALMOST League-best 46.33 points per game (Balls Deep and Flying Balls are, somehow, better than this).  Can't argue with a start like this.  The Stunts won a close one like they always do (by a score of "a lot" to "also a lot") and the Legends made it look easy against a VERY talented What A Dump squad.  We don't think either team goes undefeated (someone's bound to have a bad attendance week, right?) but it's not impossible.

 

#2 Mike Thomas – Sticky Bandits

Last Week:  Beat Eyes Downtown 37-29

Joey Batts has the higher points per game (see above)... but only if we throw the Stunts game into his numbers.  If we stick to just D1 though, somehow the Sticky Bandits have outscored Legends through two weeks, while facing debatably a harder schedule.  That seems impossible.  Meanwhile Sticky Nation and Eyes Downtown always seem to meet in the playoffs (at least the last... Spring, Winter, Fall, Spring, and Winter?  The Commissioner would know this) so regular season probably doesn't matter too much to either team, but if it does, the Sticky Bandits just locked up a huge tiebreaker.

 

#3 Bobby McConnell - Eyes Downtown

Last Week:  Lost to Sticky Bandits 37-29

The first matchup of "Big Three QBs" in the Power Rankings this season did not go Bobby's way.  You can't win them all, as they say.  But Bobby sure as hell wants to!  Eyes Downtown have surely circled September 20th on their calendars, as that's when they'll take on Legends for a chance to REALLY jump up the Power Rankings.  Until then, we expect this team to win every game... and probably by a few scores each time.

 

#4 Garrett Beesing - Frodo Swaggins

Last Week:  Tied What a Dump 22-22

Frodo's season so far has consisted of a 1 point loss to What a Dump and... a tie with What a Dump.  So, what do we know about Frodo this season?  Well... they're ABOUT as good as What a Dump!  You may be wondering why Garrett is ahead of Cody in the Power Rankings, despite failing to beat him twice this season.  And it's a good question.  But ultimately Cody is throwing to Derek and Andy, and Garrett is throwing to whoever he can grab off the sublist it seems.  And that's a point in Garrett's favor (or so we think).

 

#5 Cody Stumpf – What a Dump

Last Week:  Tied Frodo Swaggins 22-22, lost to Legends 35-14

We are very sure that What A Dump are, at worst, the fourth or fifth best team in the League right now.  At their BEST?  Well, we're sure they can beat Frodo (they have already!), and we're pretty sure they can beat Eyes Downtown or Sticky Bandits too.  But they still seem a tier below Legends.  Now to be fair, EVERYONE seems a tier below Legends these days, but if What A Dump is going to shock the world this season (or next) they'll need to figure out how to show up against the best team in the League.

 

#6 Ryan Dougherty - Can't Touch This

Last Week:  Lost to the Malones 31-24

It looks like Can't Touch This won't have another undefeated regular season against D2 this session...  But they DO have a chance to avenge last week's loss to the Malones THIS week, as the rematch is apparently happening right away.  The Godfather will surely pick that as the 12 pm Game of the Day (Flying Balls vs Three Tuddies aren't quite at that level of epic grudge match just yet) and if we had to bet on it, we'd say CTT win the rematch... in the last minute of the game, of course.

 

#7 Frank Laudico - Wanderers

Last Week:  Beat Interdimensional Lightning Falcons 47-44

The Wanderers are back to their winning (regular season) ways, following up a Week One bye with a dramatic last minute win over Interdimensional Lightning Falcons.  Do you think it gets dull winning every regular season game, just to suddenly feel the stress of expectations in the playoffs every season?  (We should ask the Cunning Stunts, who know that pattern better than anyone.)  Undefeated and averaging 47 points per game is the best start Frank could have asked for.

 

#8 Andy Strug – The Malones

Last Week:  Beat Can't Touch This 31-24

Well look who's in first place in D2!  The Malones took down their biggest rivals on Saturday for a hard fought win, with a rematch on deck for this Saturday.  There are two teams that will get first round byes in D2 - isn't it crazy to think that the Malones could essentially lock one of those up in Week Three with another win against Can't Touch This?  (yeah, we know that isn't what "lock up" means, but is anyone else going to beat Malones TWICE if Can't Touch This couldn't do it?)

 

#9 Joe Miano - Jabronies

Last Week:  Beat Passing While Intoxicated 44-26

The Jabronies lost their first game of the season to the division leading Malones... and since then they've won games by 15 points and 18 points.  Admittedly, we weren't very high on the Jabronies chances last season (they seemed to play well against Scared Hitless and almost nobody else) but this squad looks different.  Joe is playing with confidence and he might have the athletes to keep up with the top D2 teams this season.

 

#10 Jordan Lawson - Mavericks / Scared Hitless

Last Week:  Lost to Unit Ha Ha 26-21 (Mavericks), lost to Passing While Intoxicated 49-18, beat Grey Hair - Don't Care 37-32 (Scared Hitless)

The worst point differentials in D1 and D2 both belong to Jordan's teams right now, which was not the start to the season he was hoping for (okay Freeballers point differential is much worse, on a per game basis, so there's that).  But expectations are key here - Mavericks was never going to come out of the gate beating everyone up in their first season in D1, and Scared Hitless were 2-6 last season with a different QB (who had MUCH more experience throwing to these receivers).  Neither of these teams seemed likely to win much the first month of the season.  We won't judge them how they start the season... but we will judge them how they end the season!

 

 #11 Buddy Lee – Passing While Intoxicated / Interdimensional Lightning Falcons

Last Week:  Lost to Jabronies 44-26, beat Scared Hitless 49-18 (PWI), lost to Wanderers 47-44 (ILF)

Buddy went 2-1 on Saturday with a 31 point win in D2 (great!), a loss in which he scored 44 points in D3 (great for Buddy, bad for ILF!) and a loss in which he got soundly outplayed by Jabronies (not great!).  We expect ILF to be a competitive if not overwhelming team in D3 this season... but we're still trying to decide what we think of PWI.  They turned over MOST of their roster after winning D3 so this is almost a brand new team, and it's full of talent (particularly female talent).  Are they going to be able to hang with The Malones or CTT?

 

#12 Matt Glowacki - Unit Ha Ha

Last Week:  Beat Mavericks 26-21

In the Spring of 2019, the Topper Sports League (R.I.P.) debuted a new article called "The QB Power Rankings", and in its inaugural ranking Matt Glowacki ranked seventh.  We have done 97 QB Power Rankings since then, and Matt is JUST NOW on the verge of a comeback to the Top Ten!  Unit Ha Ha got their first ever win as a team after jumping STRAIGHT to D1, and they're square in the middle of the standings now at 1-1.  The only thing cooler than a brand new team in D1?  A brand new COMPETITIVE team in D1!  Welcome back, Matt.

 

#13 David Eickhoff - Grey Hair Don't Care / Ready to Retire

Last Week:  Lost to Scared Hitless 37-32 (GHDC), lost to PowerPuff Girls 29-20 (R2R)

Eickhoff has played four games this season, including a close loss to Can't Touch This, an even CLOSER loss to Scared Hitless, a close loss to PowerPuff Girls, and a win over Come From Behind.  He probably wishes he won the Scared Hitless game (hell, he probably wishes he won ALL of them) but that's a tough schedule to start the season!  Can either of these teams compete for their championships this season?  D4 seems more wide open, so we'll say that one is more likely at the moment.  

 

#14 Andy Clark - Buffalo Vice

Last Week:  Beat Practice Squad 46-15

Buffalo Vice are undefeated and averaging 40 points per game.  When we do our fancy graphs at the end of each season, we always say that 40+ is the magic number, that's where every team would love to be (and so few are).  The only knock on Vice so far is that neither of their wins were against the "top teams" in the division.  Oh, Bullet Club went to the Finals last season, so maybe they'll be a top team by the end of the session, but currently their opponents this session are in 6th and 8th.  Can Vice hang with Wanderers?  They must have played ILF and the Stunts in D4, does anyone remember who won those games?

 

#15 Damien Keller - D-Generation X Y and Z

Last Week:  Lost to Cunning Stunts 52-47

Scoring 47 points and losing must feel pretty lousy - You're supposed to win if you put up 40!  Incredibly, DXYZ, ILF and Buffalo Vice are ALL averaging exactly 40 PPG, and they're STILL behind the Stunts and Wanderers in offensive points per game.  Apparently D3 is where to go to watch shoot-outs.  Loss to the Stunts in the Katie Keller Bowl aside, DXYZ will learn a lot about how good they are in the next couple of weeks against division leading Buffalo Vice and Wanderers, who are now a combined 3-0.

 

Fancy Statistics Section

Yeah, right.  You're not getting any fancy statistics out of us until at LEAST Week Four, and even then we'll tell you the sample size is too small to be meaningful (yes, we're going to copy/paste this line next week too, so get used to it)

 

 

That's it for the TSL Power Rankings this week!  If you have any thoughts about QB rankings, or you want to make sure we know who's throwing for your team, please feel free to contact our good friend This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..  You tell him, he'll tell us.  

 

What's YOUR ranking?