The Footer Grew a Trophy Case

The old footer was four thin columns of links, two of which went to the same page, sitting next to a champion banner that only TheLeague ever saw. On AFL and Best Ball the layout quietly collapsed into a 300-pixel gutter and left half the footer empty. Nobody complained, because nobody scrolls down to be disappointed. Still. It was there, on every page, being wrong.

Now the bottom of every page opens with the champions. Full banner art, the trophy badges that team actually won, and a ribbon that counts: two titles is The Double, three is The Treble. The ribbon is per team, not per league, so in a split season the club that took the championship and its division still gets its Double while a rival holds the Premier League on the card next door. Consolation hardware does not count toward a sweep, which the NIT winner is welcome to take up with the beat desk — and neither does a conference title on a card that already has the AFL Championship, because you do not reach the title game without winning your conference.

Underneath, the same five columns on both leagues — My Team, This Week, Front Office, Record Book, League Office — so the footer stops being a different shape depending on where you are. And a Deep Cuts line surfaces the quiet corners of the site by rule: any public page the columns do not already link, chosen automatically, so the Asset Browser and the Design System stop being things only three people know the URL for. There is a Trophy Case link too, for when one banner is not enough.