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The Association Podcast, Ep. 24: "The Throne Was Never His
Audio coming soon
# The Association Podcast, Ep. 24: "The Throne Was Never His"
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JACKWelcome back to The Association Podcast, Episode 24, the final episode of the Season 2025 regular season. I'm Jack Monroe, joined as always by Marcus Vale, Claire Donovan, Evan Cole, and Alex Mercer. Folks, I don't even know where to begin. The season is over. The playoffs happened. The championship has been decided. And everything we thought we knew about this league has been turned completely upside down. We have to talk about it. We have to talk about all of it. Marcus, I'll let you kick us off because I know you have been sitting on this since the final buzzer sounded.
MARCUSJack, I have been physically restraining myself. Let me just say this slowly so everyone at home can hear it clearly. Brodie went nineteen and two in the regular season. Nineteen. And. Two. And he does not have a championship trophy. Let that breathe. Let it sit in the room. The most dominant regular season in the history of this league, and Alec walked out of the playoffs holding the belt. I cannot stop thinking about it. I genuinely cannot.
CLAIREWhat I keep coming back to is the story arc of this entire season. Because from week one, this felt like Brodie's year. It felt like a coronation in progress. You watched him dismantle everyone on the schedule, week after week, and the narrative was already being written. Back to back champion. Dynasty. The league is his. And then Alec just quietly goes fourteen and seven, finishes third, and then when the lights are brightest and the moment is biggest, he reaches into his chest and pulls out something none of us saw coming.
EVANAnd I want to point out something that I think gets buried under the emotion of the championship result. Alec's team finished with eighty-two hundred and eighty-six points on the season. That is actually more total points than Gooch's eighty-one hundred and one. Alec was not a fluke from a production standpoint. He was legitimately building toward this. The record was deceptive. He was posting big numbers throughout the year.
ALEXI'm going to go harder than all of you. Brodie's legacy is now permanently complicated and I don't want anyone to let him off the hook for that. Season one champion. Nineteen and two in season two. And he loses in the playoffs. That is the actual story of his career right now. Two seasons played. One ring. One catastrophic collapse when it mattered most. We can celebrate the regular season record all we want, and we should, but in this league, like every league, you are judged by what you win. And Alec judged him. And Alec won.
JACKAlright, before we go any deeper into the championship conversation, which we absolutely will, let me just run through the final standings because this is Episode 24 and I want everyone to have the full picture. HeHateMe, brodiedean8, finishes at twenty-two and two, eighty-six hundred and sixty-eight points. That is the regular season championship, no question. Gooch, Shep and Co., twenty-one and three, eighty-one hundred points. Alec's Squad, sixteen and eight, eighty-two hundred. 44Colt at fifteen and nine. Nighthawk at thirteen and eleven. Natebarrett, Coopa Troopas, eleven and thirteen. And then the bottom four: michaelhebb eight and sixteen, BigSuge seven and seventeen, blakeeverroad five and nineteen, and Ctwhitaker1 at three and twenty-one. We'll get to all of it. But Marcus, I want to start with the championship. What happened?
MARCUSWhat happened is that Alec's team showed up and Brodie's team did not show up to the same degree that it had all season. And look, I want to be intellectually honest here, it's not like Brodie went out there and put up nothing. But Alec matched him and then exceeded him in the moments that decided the series. And when you are a nineteen and two team that is expected to be unbeatable, anything less than total dominance feels like an implosion. That is the burden Brodie carried into that matchup and it crushed him.
CLAIREThe word I keep using is vulnerability. Brodie had not shown any all season. You go nineteen and two, you barely blink, you are a machine. And then suddenly in the playoffs, there is a crack. And Alec, to his massive credit, he did not hesitate. He found that crack and he walked right through it. There is something deeply human about a story where the unstoppable force finally meets the immovable object and the immovable object wins.
EVANFrom a pure roster construction standpoint, I think what people should study going into season three is how Alec built his team to peak late. His point totals were enormous. Eighty-two eighty-six on the season. That is a team that is performing at a high level for a sustained period of time. And in fantasy, whether it's basketball or football, the teams that run hot in October and then cool off by February are the ones that win regular season titles and lose in the playoffs. Alec built something that stayed hot all the way through. That is not luck. That is roster management.
ALEXCan we also acknowledge that Alec did this against Brodie specifically? Because the degree of difficulty here matters enormously. Gooch was twenty-one and three. If Alec had beaten Gooch in the championship, that is a massive win. That is a great story. But Alec beat the nineteen and two guy. He beat the Season 1 champion. He beat the guy who the entire league had accepted as the standard. That is not just winning the championship. That is a statement win of the highest order. That is defining yourself against the best possible opponent.
JACKLet's frame Brodie's situation now because I think this is genuinely complicated and I don't think there's a clean take here. He is the best regular season performer in league history. He has a Season 1 ring. But he now also has this playoff loss hanging over him. Claire, how do you write his story?
CLAIREBrodie's story is a tragedy in the classical sense. Not a tragedy where everything falls apart, but a tragedy where greatness is undeniable and yet the ultimate prize slips away. He is like the great regular season teams in NBA history that everyone remembers and respects but could never get over the final hump. And what makes it sting for Brodie specifically is that he was so dominant that there was no graceful way to lose. If you go twelve and ten and lose in the playoffs, you just had an off year. If you go nineteen and two and lose in the playoffs, that loss follows you everywhere. Forever.
MARCUSI am going to disagree with Claire slightly. I do not think this is a tragedy. I think this is a lesson. Brodie is clearly not done. He is clearly a top-tier manager. Season 1 winner, best record in Season 2. But now he knows. He knows that the regular season is not the whole game. He knows that Alec is coming for him. He knows that Gooch is right there. The tragedy framing gives it too much finality. Brodie will be back and this will be the fire that fuels him.
EVANI agree with Marcus from an asset perspective. Whatever Brodie built to go nineteen and two, that foundation does not disappear. The question heading into season three is whether he makes adjustments at the margins, whether he identifies what specifically failed in the playoff run, and whether he is the kind of manager who learns from that or the kind who convinces himself it was bad luck. Those are two very different paths.
ALEXHere is my concern about Brodie going forward. When you have been as dominant as he was all season, there is a psychological risk that the playoff loss creates doubt in situations where doubt should not exist. The question I would ask Brodie if I were in his ear is, did you change anything in the playoffs? Did the nineteen and two record make you play differently? Did the expectation of winning change how you made decisions? Because sometimes the pressure of being the favorite is the thing that breaks you. And if that is what happened to Brodie, he has to fix that before season three.
JACKLet's pivot to Alec because we have given a lot of energy to Brodie's loss and we should give proper energy to Alec's win. Sixteen and eight on the season. Third seed. And then he goes on a run. Claire, tell me who Alec is in this league now.
CLAIREAlec is the champion. Full stop. And I want to say that with the weight it deserves. In a two-season-old league where the first champion was Brodie and everyone expected the second champion to also be Brodie, Alec stepped into that space and claimed it for himself. He is the person who answered the question of whether anyone could beat the best team. The answer is yes. He did it. And when people tell the story of Season 2025 ten years from now, they are going to say Alec won it and they are going to say he beat Brodie to do it, and that is all anyone is going to need to know.
MARCUSWhat I love about Alec's story is that there was no noise around him all season. He was never the lead story. He was never the team we were all talking about. Every week on this show we were talking about Brodie or Gooch or the race at the top. Alec was just quietly being a very, very good team in the background. Sixteen and eight. Eighty-two hundred points. Slipping through the back door and then kicking the front door off its hinges when it counted.
EVANThe sixteen and eight record is interesting to me specifically because of the efficiency story. You look at his total points, eighty-two eighty-six, and you compare that to Gooch's eighty-one-oh-one with a twenty-one and three record, and the question you have to ask is whether Alec was beating opponents who were weak that week more often or whether he was losing games he deserved to win. Either way, his underlying production was elite. He was a top-three scorer in the league all season.
ALEXI want to hold Alec accountable too, not in a punitive way, but in an honest way. He went sixteen and eight. He had eight losses. He was not a flawless machine. But that is almost what makes the championship more impressive. He showed he could take losses, absorb them, stay competitive, and then turn it on completely when the playoff bracket opened. That kind of resilience is incredibly hard to manufacture. Some managers fall apart after a bad week. Alec clearly does not. That tells you something real about how he manages.
JACKNow let's talk about Gooch. Because Shep and Co. at twenty-one and three is another absurd record, and Gooch has to be sitting at home right now with some complicated feelings. Twenty-one and three. Does not win the championship. Second in points. How do we process Gooch's season?
MARCUSGooch's season is the most quietly devastating outcome in the league. Because here is what happened. Brodie gets all the sympathy for the playoff collapse because he was nineteen and two and he was the favorite. But Gooch was twenty-one and three. Gooch was right there all season. Gooch was not some afterthought. And then Gooch also does not have the title. That is brutal. At least Brodie has a ring from Season 1. Gooch has nothing but two incredible regular seasons that ended before the finish line.
CLAIREThe Gooch story is the story I find the saddest if I am being honest. Because there is a version of this season where everything goes slightly differently and Gooch is the champion. Twenty-one and three. That is a body of work that deserves a championship conversation in most leagues. In this league, in this season, it was not enough. He ran into Alec's moment. And Alec's moment was bigger than everything else that happened all year.
EVANGooch has to look at this from a construction standpoint and figure out what the playoff path looks like in season three. Twenty-one and three means your team is built correctly. But do you need to think about which players you are starting in a one-week playoff format versus a long regular season? Those two things can require slightly different rosters. That is the adjustment conversation I would want Gooch having before the next draft.
ALEXTwenty-one and three and no title is Gooch's entire profile right now in this league. I am not saying it is fair. It is absolutely not fair. But that is the record. And if it happens again in season three, then we have a real narrative around Gooch as someone who cannot win when it counts. One more postseason exit and that story starts to calcify. Gooch needs a ring next season. Not for any other reason than self-definition.
JACKLet's take a quick step back and talk about the regular season championship picture because Brodie holds that. Twenty-two and two is the final record with the playoff games incorporated. He did win the most games. He does get credit for that. But Alec won the league. How do we separate those two things?
MARCUSThe regular season championship is real. It matters. It tells you who built the best team over the course of the whole schedule. But it does not put a ring on your finger. In every sport, we know what the hierarchy is. You can win your division, you can have the best record, you can win every award the regular season has to offer, and if you do not win the championship, none of it is the main thing. Brodie won the regular season. Alec won the league. Those are different sentences.
CLAIREAnd I think this is where the history of this league will be particularly interesting to follow. Because you now have a record that says Brodie was the best regular season team in league history, and right next to it a record that says Alec was the Season 2025 champion. Both of those things are permanently true. They will always exist side by side. And depending on who wins in season three, one of those facts starts to feel more important than the other.
EVANFrom a futures standpoint looking ahead to season three, I actually think this outcome reshapes the competitive landscape in a fascinating way. Brodie has a chip on his shoulder. Gooch has a chip on his shoulder. Alec is the defending champion with a target on his back. That is a murderers row of motivation sitting at the top of this league. Season three could be the best competitive season this league has ever had purely because of what happened in the season two playoffs.
ALEXI want to make sure we honor the full scope of what Alec did. He is the first person to take a championship away from Brodie. Season 1, Brodie wins. Season 2, Brodie was on track to win again, and Alec stopped him. In a two-season league, that means Alec broke what could have been a dynasty before it became a dynasty. That is historically significant. That is not a small thing. Alec's championship is not just a personal achievement. It is a league-defining moment.
JACKPerfect segue into the middle of the standings. Let's talk about 44Colt. Fifteen and nine, seventh thousand one hundred and eighty-six points. Made the playoffs. Got bounced. But that is a very solid season. Evan, what is the Colt story?
EVANColt had a legitimate season. Fifteen and nine, in a league where the top of the table was as dominant as Brodie and Gooch, that is a real accomplishment. The points number, seventy-one eighty-six, is a bit lower than you would want from a team with that record, which suggests Colt was winning a lot of close games rather than blowing teams out. That has implications for the playoffs where you need your big weeks to actually be big. But finishing fourth, making the playoffs, that is a foundation. Colt has something to build on going into season three.
MARCUSColt's name is also tremendous. Wet Like I'm Book. I want to say that for the record because we do not say it enough. That is a great team name. But in terms of the season itself, I think Colt showed he belongs in the conversation as a legitimate playoff team. He just ran into the buzzsaw of Alec's playoff run and everyone was running into that buzzsaw.
CLAIREI want to contextualize where Colt sits in the league narrative. He was fourth. He made the playoffs. He was not in the title conversation but he was not irrelevant. In a six-team league, that puts him squarely in the middle of the competitive group. The question for Colt going forward is whether he can take a step up and start threatening the top three. He has the record to suggest he might be able to.
ALEXFifteen and nine, made the playoffs, got eliminated. That is the ceiling Colt has shown so far. Not bad. Not elite. Season three is the accountability test. Can he make a deeper run? Can he challenge the top tier? If he finishes in the same range again and goes out in the first round, that starts to become his identity. Middle of the pack. Dangerous enough to get in, not good enough to go all the way.
JACKNighthawk2334, Shane Gillis Alexander, thirteen and eleven. That is an interesting record. Barely above five hundred. Made the six-team playoff field. How close was that cut line and what does it tell us?