# SDMB All-Pro Fantasy Football league **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [August 2, 2009, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sdmb-all-pro-fantasy-football-league/505078 "2009-08-02T18:41:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 361
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sdmb-all-pro-fantasy-football-league/505078/361 "2009-11-20T18:23:57Z")
> [@Jules\_Andre](#): > > My problems with this were pretty simple. You’re the only person, as commissioner, who has the power to push through a trade an hour before kickoff. Nobody else gets that luxury for their own trades unless you happen to be online. And you’re basically saying that trade review doesn’t matter and we aren’t going to wait for it. Trade review matters when there might really be a controversy. Most trades are routine and no one has any reason to object. I don’t see the need to wait 2 full days for those. I thought this trade was one of those - it may look worse in retrospect because Williams put up 30 points, but it was essentially McCoy/Moats for Williams. Frosted Lightning likes McCoy, and reasonably so - there’s been a lot of talk of Westbrook missing the rest of the season with his concussions. Moats is a question mark - he got the start on a productive offense last week but it looks like a time share situation. Williams is good, but I myself wondered if his production would actually drop despite more carries because the defenses would be keying on him instead of Ronnie Brown. It seemed like a reasonable, uncontroversial trade for me so I pushed it through. If it had been one where I thought there was a significant chance of league veto, I would not have pushed it through like that. But yes, for the majority of our trades, I don’t feel that the review process (defined as letting it sit for 2 days) is that important. > [@](#): > > Now, if, as you said in your defense, you’re going to retroactively adjust the rosters to reflect all trades to the moment they were accepted then all of my concerns and complaints are moot and I’ll withdraw them. If someone makes their intent clear that they want to do something, but can’t, then I will honor it. If, as in your example, someone else completes a trade an hour before gametime and says “hey, you’re not around to do the trade, but we both agreed that we wanted to swap our players and start them in these spots”. Something sort of similar happened when someone e-mailed me monday morning saying their mobile device wasn’t setting the roster correctly but that they could e-mail me and tell me their intention of who to start. The e-mail was sent before the games started but I didn’t receive it until after the games - but given that their intentions were clearly stated, I was going to manually retroactively implement their wishes. But I guess they got their mobile device working, because their roster was set properly sometime between the e-mail and the start of the game. Not exactly the same thing, but it’s an example of implementing the intent of the owners even if I’m not around at that moment. As far as retroactively implementing trades back to the moment they happen - it hasn’t been an issue (that I recall) this year specifically because I have pushed through trades before gametime all year long. I don’t think any processing trade has sat through a gameday, correct me if I’m wrong. > [@](#): > > I was under the impression we were going to give people a chance to look at a trade before it goes through, and like every single other league I’ve ever been in, if your players’ games are during that review, tough shit. But what you’re essentially saying is that as soon as a trade is accepted it gets pushed through and all trade review is retroactive. That’s fine, but I’m sure you can see how this is going to look really fucked up when you don’t tell people about it beforehand. You act like this is the first time I’ve done this. I can see why it would see arbitrary and self-serving if that were the case. But I’ve done it like 8 times now, and you’ve even been involved in some, and had no objection. You were aware that I was doing this, and yet didn’t give any indication that you were against the practice. Suddenly, though, after it happened and coincidentally hurt your team then you decide to call shenanigans on the whole thing. Pretty much this exact scenario [happened before](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=11602571&postcount=124) this year in the auction league. Hamlet had Marion Barber, I had Felix Jones. Barber was a late scratch that week with injury, so I proposed a trade to get him Jones on Saturday. He didn’t check his trades until Sunday morning, like 2 hours before gametime, but he accepted. Because he clearly intended for the trade to happen that week (he needed Jones), and I didn’t think anyone would object, I approved it. I even said: > [@SDMB Fantasy Football Auction League](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sdmb-fantasy-football-auction-league/505304/124): > > I fast tracked a trade between Hamlet, where I gave up Felix Jones for Donald Driver. I hope no one minds this. It was a time sensitive trade (I proposed it yesterday and he accepted it this morning) because it’s meant for this week and I don’t think anyone would object, since it seems ordinary and fair to me. If it turns out there are objections to the trade, I’ll punish myself somehow. I had to make the call of pushing something through before gametime and making it useful, and risk people objecting to the non-standard procedure. I decided to push it through and that I would take some sort of punishment that the league deemed appropriate if I acted out of line. No one objected, no one even mentioned it. So I thought it was no big deal. I mean - it makes sense to me as comissioner that if two people come to an uncontroversial trade agreement before a game starts that the normal waiting period (which is very unlikely to result in any sort of objection) should be circumvented. So I did that there, and no one seemed to have any problem with it (including you - you were in the league and could’ve spoken up if you felt this was inappropriate). I did pretty much the exact same thing here - the only difference being that the player traded end up putting up a lot of points against you, so now the objections and accusations fly. > [@](#): > > It’s also a really terrible policy in a league where only three or four people actively post to a thread and a couple members only have time to check their rosters once a week, typically on gameday or before. I post it to the thread as early as I can. In most cases, I let a trade sit for a day. If there’s time pressure, I push it through faster. In this particular case, while I did only give 2 hours for review, you (the person most likely to object) did not so do .. or at least did not seem to do so, so I figured.. well.. I declared my intentions on what I was going to do with an explanation, and at least Jules and Omni read it with no objections, and so now game time is rolling around so I’ll approve this trade. > [@](#): > > But I do want to get a couple things pretty clear. You started doing this on your own and didn’t tell anyone about it before the season started, in any league in which you’re the commish. In the case of this league, we’ve done it one way for 2 or 3 years, and you changed it and it wasn’t even mentioned. Changing league rules is fine when we all discuss it, and you were great about that when it came to scoring and waivers. You’re right, I should’ve expressed my intentions with this change more clearly. I thought I had, but after I go back and skim the early portions of the thread it appears that I didn’t. I did say this before the season started in the auction league: > [@SDMB Fantasy Football Auction League](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sdmb-fantasy-football-auction-league/505304/81): > > I turned trades to commission approval, by the way. Back when we had the Steven Jackson/David Carr incident a few years back, no one was willing to step up and object to that trade, and I doubt we’re going to get any trade offers more lopsided than that. So the vote feature seems unnecesary. That said, I’ll listen to discussion if anyone has objections to trade proposals, but any trade proposal made in good faith in an attempt by each owner to improve their own team, even if it’s misguided, should pass. But even though a lot of people are in the same leagues, I should’ve made specific mention of it in this league thread. I also didn’t specify that part of the point was for expediency. I did later post about that in the big league > [@SDMB Fantasy Football big league (league full)](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sdmb-fantasy-football-big-league-league-full/504313/254): > > See I’m not quite sure how the trade veto/approval process should work, quite frankly. I set all my leagues to commissioner approval this year rather than voting for two reasons. One - flexibility and expediency. If a trade is clearly valid and people make it late in a week and want it to be done this week, I like having the option of pushing it through before game time instead of always having to wait 2 days. I still bring every trade up for comment/objection/review so that if people feel strongly against it we can discuss it. And two - because people are loathe to vote against or veto a trade even if they feel that it’s bad or unfair, so then what’s the point? But still, I should’ve included a clear announcement in all leagues early on, including putting it into the commissioner notes within the league. I did at some point in all leagues express a willingness to push through trades intended by both players to take effect before gameday. > [@](#): > > But you did this for your own trades in a different league _first_ and were thus obligated to do it for everyone else’s trades, so don’t fucking accuse me of being a hypocrite about this because _you_ assumed I wanted it done for my trades (after you did it for yours). Since it hadn’t been done in this league (that I know of), I caused a stink when I saw I was going to get completely fucked by this. I was absolutely justified in that (and no, I don’t have to raise a stink in anyone else’s defense because it’s not my job to babysit everyone else, I’m only obligated to speak up when it affects me). Now you’re back to insulting me. You’re saying I enacted this policy to be self-serving, and only applied it to other people so that I could disguise the self-serving nature of it. No, I implemented the policy because I thought it was good for the the league - who wants to come to a deal on friday night or saturday afternoon and then say “oh well, we missed our window, the game is in less than 2 days, so we can’t get this deal done”? It’s an understandable restriction in public yahoo leagues full of strangers, but we don’t need that sort of inflexible restriction between us. The only possible downside to this policy is that a trade could go through in the name of expediency when, if it were to come under review, it would not pass. But you are not saying that’s what happened here. So what harm was done? Otherwise you are just trying to invoke technicalities as they suit you. “Sure, no one would have objected to that trade, but still, we have to stick to the sacred 2 day review period or shenanigans!!!” even though this has been something that’s happened several times before without objection from anyone. It would actually be the exception here if I didn’t push this trade through - all other trades this year that were made before the gametime of the players involved were pushed through before that game. Why should this one be the exception? Because you’re coincoidentally hurt by it? (And even then, like I said, if Ricky Williams had put up 3 points instead of 30, I wonder how strong the accusations would be). You seriously don’t get why not objecting to the process, despite many chances, and then suddenly when it coincidentally hurts you declaring it loudly to be unethical seems extremely self serving? > [@](#): > > I was too strong and harsh in saying it was cheating, and for that I’m sorry. Truly, I’m sorry. That all came out of hindsight when I saw I was indeed fucked and I was really angry about it. Well, thanks for that. I really do try hard to be a good commissioner and so accusations like this are something that really bother me. I am willing to put myself at the mercy of the league if they do feel that I acted inappropriately. I’m willing to void the trade or at least remove Williams from my gameday roster this week and void the points, if that’s what the league feels I should do. I don’t think that’s fair because I don’t think I did anything wrong - but it’s more important for me to maintain league integrity and a sense of fairness than to win. So again, if anyone else has anything to say about this issue, please do. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sdmb-all-pro-fantasy-football-league/505078)._