(Art made in 2014)

How to begin this tale? I kinda cringe at my mindset from half a decade ago but it took my years in the sports leagues to grow and mature as a person.

I first heard about the Furry Basketball Association through the artwork associated with  furry-basketball and  BuckHopper back when I was a Freshman in High School browsing Furaffinity in 2010. I thought the idea was pretty neat but didn't know much about it and left it that way for approximately 4 years.

It was in 2014,( I think it was from a journal by  pythos_cheetah or  KetchtheDonkey ) that I learned a new league was coming out, the United Furry Football League. A sports game league where you create your own character and participate in the world with others, making stories, artworks, podcasts, etc.,
I was excited but, truthfully (hindsight 20/20), initially I didn't join for the right reasons. I was a pretty naive, depressed, and insecure art student (this would of been a little after my Freshman year in art college) and my only escape to find self-worth was through attention and admiration online (pathetic right?).

Initially my goal was to use the UFFL to get connected with the FBA so I could get connected with  BuckHopper who was the lead sound guy for 2k at the time (before moving to lead mocap). I wanted to learn skills from him and, through my own content and leadership, make both leagues very successful and known through the fandom. Not a completely bad goal- I was creating artwork to improve, interacting with others, writing stories and experimenting, learning sound design, and having fun - BUT my expectation vs reality were two very different things.

To start, this is my main character Coby Carson and I originally molded his character from Jason from True Blood (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2VusH023o8 ) and Nathan from Misfits ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow1soirVxd0 )
I didn't know much about Football back then, only the basics, but I knew I wanted a cocky cornerback like Richard Sherman (Who was superbowl bound at the time) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiI6eUjDBGY

Coby's character went through changes during my time in the league do to a multitude of reasons we'll get into later, but describing his character season 1....fun as hell. The Fennec was fairly well received the first year due to how unique he was and how the league's game simulator worked. Through the interactions with other players, the Skype chat, Twitterverse, etc., The character essentially took on a life of his own.