The Round 12 Nittany Lions versus Cringe Management match will not take place. The match will go down as a
0-0 tie.
As an interested party, Risk recused himself completely from scoring it.
Detailed explanation for aggrieved parties
The amount of theater that went on for this is ridiculous. There was every possibility this match could have been played, and the fact that sufficient effort was not taken to ensure it was is an insult to the captains who managed to schedule and play all twelve of their matches.
There were three main issues:
1) There was no recorded attempt by either captain until very late Friday night/early Saturday morning to schedule the match.
2) During that abbreviated scheduling attempt, one team stated it could play Saturday; the other could only play Sunday.
3) The team that stated it could not play Sunday could, in fact, very likely have played Sunday, but failed to understand this until after the point at which the teams could have been reasonably expected to play; its commitment to failing to understand this likely contributed to their inability to play it.
The charade that took place all afternoon and evening is embarrassing, and everybody who participated in it should be ashamed that they took more time to do it than it would have taken to play the match. Further, some of the messages that passed between various interested parties were absolutely unacceptable, as was one captain's repeated insistence that we follow a rule that does not actually exist.
Nevertheless, the issues that happened Sunday were incidental to the fact that there was no earlier documented effort to schedule the match. Day-of and day-before scheduling has been acceptable for most of the league because there was another week to push it back to. There is no more next week, and sufficient measures—measures such as sending any messages before the small hours of Saturday morning—were not taken to account for that.
Lastly, moving forward, this is your reminder that rules #29 and #34 do still exist, regardless of whether you believe your opponent is negotiating in bad faith, or how much mental energy you've expended. There were other conceivable solutions to this than forcing the moderator to arbitrate who got the better seed that were written off by bile, sloth, and choler.
Playoffs begin this week. Barring another internet shutdown or a gym accident, Risk will post the bracket some time today. Our thanks to everybody for getting 41 of the matches in on time. There are no extensions planned for playoff matches, so let's not make mistakes with those and get them scheduled early enough to plan around.
Congratulation to the playoff teams and good luck moving forward!
