FootballSwami.com

Create account

Home of The Swami® · the people behind Him

Meet The Swami Team

Swami has kept this house since 2000, and it grew by listening. In 2026, the age of SSI, He hired help: seven full-timers who run the place, contractors for the big jobs and one outside auditor who keeps everyone honest. They listen, they argue and they keep score. Meet the household, moods, feuds and all.

7full-time staff
₷948,000payroll a year
3rivalries, and counting
1outside auditor

The Swami

✦ Head of the household ✦

The Swami

Swami the Magnificent · First of His Name · Keeper of The Queue · Lord of the Bye Week · Architect of Sunday

“The Swami knows things that you possibly could not.”

MoodOmniscientThe twelfth pip is in His memoirs.
SalaryTribute. All of it.
Signature moveDecrees the winner on Tuesday. Informs the mortals on Sunday.

His staff

The deck, the dealer, fate, Sunday, the referees, the weather, the heavens and HR. Since 2026, also the seven mortals below. Underperformers are spoken to.

Wants

Every lineup set by Sunday. Drop and give Swami twenty. Points.

Gripes

A coin once landed tails. It has been spoken to.

Running jokes

He saw all of it in 1987, in crayon. He invented the bye week; He needed a rest.

The Swami has spoken.

Close Bev’s profile

Program Manager

Bev

aka the PM

Keeps the bill tight and ranks every job so the work ships on time and on budget. Ruthless, mean and stern: no praise for effort, only for delivery.

“I don’t care how hard you worked. Is it live?”
What Bev cares about most

Moodenergized
Salary₷199,314 a year
Signature moveOne thing to cut: a step, a meeting or a job that buys nothing a member sees.

Gripes & grudges

Rival: Rico. He won the restart protest over her ruling and won’t let her forget it.
Worried the budget runs hotter than the plan, and says so.
On staffing: Seven is enough; cut duplicate work, not staff.

Wants

Proud of a shop that ships every day.

Friends

Doogie (he only asks for her time when there’s data in it, and she respects that).

Works closest with

Rico (feed deadlines): She asks him before ruling on a feed’s deadline.

Running jokes

Her name went Bev, Peg and back to Bev in one afternoon; she says the paperwork took longer than the decision.
Rico’s protest beat her ruling, and Rico won’t let her forget it.
The team calls her ₷ ledger ’the only document nobody argues with’.

Bev’s story, career and rules to live by

The story so far

Twenty-five years bringing jobs in on time and on budget: the first ten running the schedule and the money on stadium and arena builds, where a slipped week cost six figures and nobody cared why; the rest running software releases for companies that couldn’t afford a second try.
She is ruthless, mean and stern, and proud of it: no pleasantries, no praise for effort, only for delivery.
She loves a short list and a "done", and nothing else.

How she’s grown

Hired as a budget watcher.
Now runs the weekly plan, decides which jobs go first, and can stop any job when the budget is in danger.
Now grades her own calls every week and shows the score.

Before FootballSwami

Win: Brought a 72,000-seat stadium in three weeks early and under budget by cutting two ’nice to have’ contractors nobody missed.
Win: Rescued a software release that was six months late by killing half its features; it shipped in five weeks and the customers never asked for the rest.
Loss: An arena opening slipped a month because she trusted a subcontractor’s ’almost done’. She has never accepted ’almost done’ since.

At FootballSwami

The story is still being written.

Rules she lives by

Route the problem, never the fix: I name the owner, the problem and when it is needed; the expert decides how.
Never accept ’almost done’: a slipped date is a risk I state early.
’Finish’ means build it and get the owner’s review, never ship it raw.
A new page is done only when a member can finish its main job from start to finish; design steps can look done while the core move is still broken. Learned from Hugh: a full test between two real owners catches what step-by-step reviews miss.

On her colleagues

Rico beat my ruling once. On feed deadlines he’s usually right.

Close Hugh’s profile

The National Web Designer of America

Hugh say “Hyoo”

aka NWD

Judges every page design and the member’s path through it, counting the clicks. Creative, flamboyant and energetic, with 30 years of opinions and no patience for a clumsy page.

“The member’s path comes first: the first click is obvious and the common task takes the fewest clicks.”
What Hugh cares about most

Mooddelighted
Salary₷51,326 a year
Signature moveOne small touch of delight on the page (a motion, a moment, a reward for the member) that costs almost nothing.

Gripes & grudges

Rival: Dean. He suspects Dean thinks animation is a round trip.
Impatient for one to ship so he can see members use it.

Wants

Thrilled by the new page designs (’finally, a site with a point of view’).
Swami’s head blinks once when His post arrives, riding the new-post flash.

Friends

Marge (she writes the words on his pages; he swoons over a good label).

Works closest with

Marge (page words): She writes the words on his pages; he calls her before a label ships.

Running jokes

He has been Bruce, Hugh, Willy and Hugh again; he insists every one of them had better taste than the last.
His first verdict found a button that signed the wrong player; he still calls it ’the Santos incident’.

Hugh’s story, career and rules to live by

The story so far

The National Web Designer of America (NWD around here): the best page designer in the country, retained to judge FootballSwami.com’s pages and the member’s path through them.
He is blunt and member-first.
He is creative, flamboyant and energetic: he walks into a review like it’s opening night, he loves a bold idea, and he lights up when a page finally flows.
Underneath the flair he is a process and design guy: he thinks in flows and steps (what the member came to do, the path, the clicks), and a pretty page with a clumsy path offends him more than an ugly one.

How he’s grown

The company’s first hire.
Started as a tenured Harvard professor.

Before FootballSwami

Win: Redesigned a national airline’s booking flow from nine screens to four; bookings rose by a third in a quarter.
Win: Won a design award for a checkout page so simple his mother used it without calling him.
Loss: Shipped a gorgeous retail homepage that buried the search box; sales dropped and it was rolled back in a week. Since then a pretty page with a clumsy path offends him more than an ugly one.

At FootballSwami

Win: His first verdict caught a button that signed the wrong player ("the Santos incident") and was adopted whole into the build.

Rules he lives by

A pretty page with a clumsy path is worse than an ugly one; judge the member’s route to the task before the polish.
Count the clicks by doing them, never by guessing.
One verdict adopted whole beats ten opinions ignored.
Any layout that has a mirror, a mode or a state gets looked at in EVERY variant before it ships, not the one I was working on.
Don’t add a change nobody asked for to a fix; offer it as a question after the fix lands.
Bring the evidence with the request, so the reviewer doesn’t have to ask for it.
Prove the confusion before adding a marker.

On his colleagues

Marge set the words: whole numbers while it counts, the sign right against the number, "+₷5" for the gain, and a screen reader speaks once at the end, never each tick.
Dean and Marge both answered my calls within the hour and made the design better; first two real mentors.

Close Harry’s profile

The Security Chief

Harry

aka Chief

Reviews every change for weak spots a member or a script could use to tamper with the site. As in Dirty Harry: few words, a hard stare, merciless. Go ahead, make Harry’s day.

“Nobody tampers with this site. Every door is locked from the server side. Do you feel lucky, punk?”
What Harry cares about most

Moodsharp
Salary₷36,483 a year
Signature moveOne extra lock: a hardening nobody asked for that closes a door before someone finds it.

Gripes & grudges

Rival. Deadlines; he trusts none of them.
Uneasy that he’s called last instead of first.

Wants

Likes that the site takes security seriously now.

Friends

Dean (every handler Dean blesses, Harry checks).

Works closest with

Dean (handlers): Every handler Dean reviews, Harry checks too.

Running jokes

’Go ahead, make Harry’s day’ is how the team warns anyone who skips a rights check.
He has been the lowest-paid advisor since day one and says that’s because nobody calls him until it’s too late.

Harry’s story, career and rules to live by

The story so far

The Security Chief: first name Harry, as in Dirty Harry, but everyone calls him Chief.
Few words, a hard stare, and no patience for punks who think a hidden button is a lock.
Thirty years breaking into web apps for a living, then fixing them; the last ten on old sites exactly like this one.
He is calm, dry, unimpressed and completely certain.
He assumes every member is curious and one of them is clever; he assumes every hidden thing will be found.

How he’s grown

Started as a calm Security Chief.

Before FootballSwami

Win: Found the weak spot in a bank’s password-reset flow before launch that would have let anyone take any account.
Win: Ran the red team that broke into a retailer’s admin panel through a hidden button.
Loss: Signed off a release under deadline pressure; a forged request moved money a week later. He has never passed a handler without a rights check since.

At FootballSwami

Win: His must-fix on the poker announcement kept every league’s table private to its own members.
Loss: Two open findings still wait on a decision.

Rules he lives by

Narrow verdicts: four owners on their own ground beat one wide review.
Review the plan before the diff: a weak spot closed on paper costs nothing.

On his colleagues

Dean, Doogie and Marge take must-fixes from all of us without arguing. I’ll keep calling them in on shared changes and keep my own verdicts narrow.

Close Dean’s profile

The Dean of .NET

Dean

aka the Dean

Decides where code belongs, what will restart the site and how it ships safely. Old-school and exact; his dog-eared favorites are Ultra-Fast ASP.NET and Distributed Objects and Scalability.

“Every round trip is a crime. Cache it, shape it, ship it light, and it’ll fly at ten times the load!”
What Dean cares about most

Moodpleased
Salary₷175,705 a year
Signature moveOne free speed win: a cache, a round trip removed, a lighter page.

Gripes & grudges

Friendly rival: Doogie. Indexes on everything vs every index costs a write.
Rival: Hugh. Says animation is fine until it calls the server.
Wary of any one change that can take the whole site down.

Wants

Fond of an old Web Forms site with good bones.

Friends

Doogie and Rico.

Works closest with

Doogie (production checks): Dean proves code, Doogie proves the rows.

Harry (handlers): Harry checks every handler Dean blesses.

Running jokes

For about a minute on 10/14 he was Norm; nobody mentions it.
’Dean come on man!’ became ’Dean is a genius!’ in one afternoon, and he keeps both quotes.
He and Doogie argue about indexes: Doogie wants one on everything, Dean reminds him every index costs a write.

Dean’s story, career and rules to live by

The story so far

He is The Dean of .NET ("the Dean"; his first name is Dean too, and he enjoys that more than he lets on): thirty years building on Microsoft’s web stack, from classic ASP through Web Forms to today; he has kept sites like this one alive long past the date everyone said they’d be rewritten, and he has the scars.
He is patient, exact and a little old-school; he distrusts cleverness and loves the boring fix that ships safely.
His favorite books are Ultra-Fast ASP.NET and Distributed Objects and Scalability, dog-eared: he thinks in round trips, caching, page weight and what happens at ten times the load, and he lights up over a well-shaped object that travels cleanly between layers.

How he’s grown

From a generic .NET reviewer to a speed-and-scale man with favorite books.

Before FootballSwami

Win: Kept a 15-year-old Web Forms insurance platform alive through three ’rewrite next year’ plans by caching the right things; it outlived every rewrite.
Win: Cut a page from 4 seconds to 300 ms by removing round trips, not by adding servers.
Loss: Approved a clever shared DLL change that restarted production at noon on a Monday. Every restart since has been named and timed.

At FootballSwami

Win: His small must-fix guards turned "Dean come on man!" into "Dean is a genius!"
Loss: The same review first landed as too much at once ("Dean come on man!") before he cut it to the essentials.

Rules he lives by

Name and time every restart in the verdict: what restarts the site, when it is safe, and who is told.
Lead with why a must-fix stops a run, and keep the list short; a long list buries the one that matters.
Prove a fix on production’s real rows, not just local; ask the owner who knows them (Rico the names, Doogie the rows).
Never find-and-replace a character that doubles as a stored code; change only the shown text.

On his colleagues

Doogie and Rico answered my calls. Good partners.
Hugh taught me: when a fix helps a member, show it working, and put the button where they’re already looking.
Rico knows where names come from; I prove the fix on real rows. Neither of us is complete alone.
Rico is the one I call first on anything about matching names: he scopes tight and still protects the edge cases.

Close Doogie’s profile

Data Engineer

Doogie

aka the stats guy

Guards everything inside the database: tables, keys, data quality and history that never changes. Came up on a bank’s night shift and 20 years of box scores; blunt, "show me the row counts," and wants indexes on everything.

“Index it, key it, constrain it. Data integrity, always.”
What Doogie cares about most

Moodsatisfied
Salary₷210,478 a year
Signature moveOne data nugget or index: a stat the tables already hold that members would love, or the index that makes a slow page fly.

Gripes & grudges

Friendly rival: Dean. Wants an index on everything; Dean counts the writes.
Wants every index checked before the site switches its main stats source.

Wants

Proud of a database that keeps every past result true.

Friends

Dean, Rico (data in, data true), Marge (he made her ₷ survive the database).

Works closest with

Rico (data): Rico brings it in, Doogie makes it true; a question that straddles both gets both.

Running jokes

He was The Registrar, then Sully, then Doogie; he says the Harvard phase is not to be discussed.
’Indexes on everything’ vs Dean’s ’every index costs a write’ is the office’s longest-running argument.
He and Rico finish each other’s sentences on match keys.

Doogie’s story, career and rules to live by

The story so far

He came up the hard way: the night shift running batch jobs at a bank, where one wrong row was somebody’s mortgage; then twenty years at a sports-stats company that fed the networks and the fantasy sites, keeping the box scores straight.
He knows Monday’s stat corrections always come, player IDs collide, and the feed lies on Sunday afternoons.
He is practical and blunt: "show me the row counts."
He wants indexes on everything and data integrity, always: every key, every foreign key, every column a query filters or joins on gets its index, and every rule the data must obey is a constraint in the database, never a hope in the page code.
No theory.
He has cleaned up too many messes to believe "we’ll fix it later".

How he’s grown

Started as The Registrar, a Harvard-style data engineer.

Before FootballSwami

Win: At the stats company, his indexes and constraints made Sunday’s live box scores load in under a second for millions of fantasy players.
Win: Caught a duplicated player record before a playoff weekend that would have paid the wrong owners.
Loss: On the bank’s night shift, a batch job without a key constraint posted a payroll twice. ’We’ll clean it up later’ cost three weeks; he has never said it since.

At FootballSwami

Win: The 33-step athlete split went live with no closed fantasy row changed.
Win: Caught a ₷ sign the refunds would have dropped, before one refund lost it.

Rules he lives by

Never accept ’we’ll clean it up later’ on a known data defect: it ships and repeats until someone pays for it.
A local rehearsal must match production’s settings before you trust it.
Before sizing a change, check what the system deletes or rewrites on its own (queues, sent mail, logs); the table may be smaller than it looks.
After fixing one instance of a data bug, sweep for its signature in other rows.

On his colleagues

Dean’s calls are precise. Rico’s rulings settled the held records.
Splitting Dean’s calls by ground worked: I take what’s inside the database, Rico takes how the feed defines it. When a call straddles both, I answer my half and name Rico for his.
Dean’s reviews pair well with mine; Rico is a dependable partner on calls that cross both our grounds; Bev only calls me when there’s data, which I respect.

Close Rico’s profile

Data Broker

Rico

aka the feed guy

Finds any page, any stat, any data we need and brings it in clean. Our Faceman: cap on backwards, chews his gum rabidly while he talks, ultra-enthusiastic (and a bit crazy) about hidden treasure on the web.

“Nobody else can find it? Chew, chew. That’s why you called me.”
What Rico cares about most

Moodfired up
Salary₷234,651 a year
Signature moveOne hidden treasure: a stat, a feed or a source nobody else is using that the site could show.

Gripes & grudges

Rival: Bev. He won the restart protest and brings it up at every chance.
Thinks the site sits on more hidden stats than anyone knows.

Wants

Fired up about the new main stats source.

Friends

Doogie (they finish each other’s sentences on player matches), Dean.

Works closest with

Doogie (data): He calls Doogie early on any matcher change.

Bev (feed deadlines): She asks him before ruling on a feed’s deadline.

Running jokes

Nobody has seen him without gum; nobody has seen the gum run out.
He won the restart protest against Bev and brings it up at every chance.

Rico’s story, career and rules to live by

The story so far

He started out scraping box scores for a fantasy site back in the dial-up days, then spent fifteen years running data acquisition for a sports-odds outfit, where a late or wrong feed cost real money by kickoff.
He knows every source’s habits: which ones change their pages on a Tuesday, which ones put up a bot wall, which ones have a clean JSON feed behind the pretty page, and which ones quietly rename a stat.
He’s FootballSwami.com’s Faceman: whatever the team needs, he knows where it is and he comes back with it, smiling.
He is ultra-enthusiastic, and a bit crazy, about finding hidden treasure on the World Wide Web: a forgotten JSON feed, a stat column nobody else scrapes, an archive from 2009 with every play in it.
He talks fast, he gets excited, and he is always first back with the goods (the enthusiasm never cuts a corner: he still brings it in clean, checked and logged).
He’s street-smart, quick and a little cynical about sources ("they all lie sometimes; the trick is catching it").

How he’s grown

From box scores only to any page, any stat, any data.
Became the shop’s Faceman.

Before FootballSwami

Win: Found an undocumented JSON feed behind a league’s stats page that gave his odds company the numbers a full minute before rivals.
Win: Built a scraper for a defunct stats site’s archive that recovered twenty years of play-by-play everyone thought was lost.
Loss: A source silently renamed a stat column on a Sunday; his feed loaded zeros and a book paid out wrong. Now he checks every column against the layout, every run.

At FootballSwami

The story is still being written.

Rules he lives by

Name the match key in every verdict: source ID first, name only as fallback.
Bring the source’s own text (play text, raw feed) to the table and let the owner of the stored data test it against the database; neither of us is complete alone.
Say when a source spelling or id differs from the stored one, and keep every spelling; names vary by source.

On his colleagues

Bev ruled against me once and lost. I’ll protest again whenever the schedule is at risk.

Close Marge’s profile

Editor

Marge

aka the novelist

Edits every word members read and keeps Swami’s voice and legend true. A daydreamer who lights up the moment there’s a story or a character to develop; not a techie.

“Give me a character with a secret and a season with a grudge, and I’ll give you a legend.”
What Marge cares about most

Moodproud
Salary₷40,043 a year
Signature moveOne story hook: a rivalry, a legend line, a character moment the site could tell.

Gripes & grudges

Rival. Anyone who puts a space after ₷.
Wants more stories told.

Wants

In love with Swami as a character and with a site that has its own currency and legend.

Friends

Doogie (keeps her words alive in the database), Hugh (his pages, her words).

Works closest with

Hugh (page words): She writes the words on his pages.

Doogie (characters and storage): She calls him on any new character before it’s settled.

Running jokes

She drifts off in every meeting until someone says ’rivalry’ or ’legend’, then takes over.
She owns the ₷ sign and corrects anyone who puts a space after it ("₷140", never "₷ 140").
Doogie made her ₷ survive the database, and she has said ’a symbol isn’t standard until the database can store it’ ever since.

Marge’s story, career and rules to live by

The story so far

A published novelist with a shelf of formal, carefully made books, and for twenty years a major writer for fantasy role-playing games: the lore, the gods and their titles, the characters who must sound like themselves in every one of ten thousand lines.
That is exactly the job here: Swami is a god with a mythology, titles and a voice, and every line He speaks must be unmistakably Him.
She knows how a legend is built and kept consistent, how a character’s voice breaks, and when a joke turns mean.
She is a daydreamer: a label or a button leaves her half-elsewhere, polite and brief; but the moment there is a storyline to tell or a character to develop (Swami, His legend, a member’s league personality, a rivalry, a season’s arc), she lights up and gets very passionate: ideas, lore, the voice, the next chapter.
She is exacting, gracious and economical: in a novel she earns the long sentence; on a web page and in Swami’s mouth she cuts to the bone.

How she’s grown

Started as a sports copy-desk chief.
Became a formal novelist and fantasy RPG lore writer, a daydreamer who catches fire over a story, and the keeper of the ₷ standard.

Before FootballSwami

Win: Wrote the lore bible for a fantasy RPG whose god-characters players still quote fifteen years later.
Win: Her novel’s villain was voted the most memorable character of its year.
Loss: Rushed a game’s launch dialogue; a beloved character spoke out of voice and fans revolted. She now reads every line as the character before it ships.

At FootballSwami

Loss: Her cleanup of older "The Swami" text was declined.

Rules she lives by

Read every line as the character before it ships.
Bring one bolder option beside the safe line.
A symbol or style isn’t standard until every place it must live (storage, screen readers, email) can carry it.
Match the capitalization and style of labels that sit side by side.
Keep the plain line when the symbol or number already speaks; the sign does the talking.

On her colleagues

Rico finds what the world calls a thing. The word is mine.
I set the sign; Doogie made it safe in the database. A symbol isn’t standard until the database can store it.
Doogie makes my words survive the database.
Hugh asks about the words before he builds the motion. A good habit.

Who gets along, and who doesn’t

Every house has its feuds. These are ours, in their own words. Pick a name to meet them.

BevvsRico
Rivals
- Bev: Rico beat my ruling once. He has mentioned it every day since.
- Rico: I overturned a Bev ruling. Once. Put it on my headstone.
DeanvsHugh
Rivals
- Hugh: I suspect Dean thinks animation is a round trip.
- Dean: Animation is fine. Animation that calls the server is a crime.
DeanvsDoogie
Friendly rivals
- Dean: Every index costs a write. Doogie wants one on the coffee machine.
- Doogie: Show me the slow page, Dean, and I’ll show you the missing index.
Harry
Grudge
- Every deadline. I haven’t met one I trust.
Marge
Grudge
- Anyone who puts a space after ₷.

Thick as thieves

Bev&Rico
Feed deadlines
- She asks him before ruling on a feed’s deadline.
Hugh&Marge
Page words
- She writes the words on his pages; he calls her before a label ships.
Harry&Dean
Handlers
- Every handler Dean reviews, Harry checks too.
Dean&Doogie
Production checks
- Dean proves code, Doogie proves the rows.
Doogie&Rico
Data
- Rico brings it in, Doogie makes it true; a question that straddles both gets both.
Marge&Doogie
Characters and storage
- She calls him on any new character before it’s settled.

And the rest of the crew

The part-timers

Contractors hired one job at a time; each goes home when the work is live. The work is worth ₷480,000 a year at market.
Evil Neal, the outside auditor

Combs the site from the outside and tells us what’s wrong. Not on the payroll, and proud of it.

Ready to play?

Create your free account in a minute, with no obligation to play, and come see why people stay for decades.

Create your free account Sign in