While I don’t want to squash discussion, by all means continue, these proposals seem to complicate things when a basic dynasty league is interesting enough to me and some others.
A keeper league with a high number of keepers could be good, but is that different enough from the SDMB keeper league to be worthwhile for participants to be in both? I suppose if we set the number high enough - say 7+ keepers it would be.
Personally, I don’t fully understand the objections to the dynasty league. The draft in subsequent years is short, and drafting is a large part of the fun of FF, so I get that. But most of us will be getting 2+ full drafts per year from other leagues, so to some degree that thirst will be quenched. The upside of this is that the draft this year would be quite long and reward research and thought put into it - I’m assuming this is an upside for most people.
I also don’t think we’re going to have people dig themselves into an unsurmountable hole by having a bad first draft. The quality players change so much from year to year that people would probably, with the same team over multiple years, jump around quite a bit even if they weren’t drafting with the long term in mind. If you want to examine that, simply look at the rosters of the first and last place teams in your leagues over the last few years and see where that roster would’ve gotten them the next year. Probably not top or bottom again.
A team would have to draft bad currently productive players, and also miss on all the future productive players, and blow their high draft pick in the rookie draft every year to be a perennial bottom dweller.
There could also be greater turnover in the form of trades. Each year the leagues I participate in usually only have a handful of trades, which is unfortunate. An active league with talkers and traders is more fun. With bigger rosters and less talent available in free agency, and also different values teams may have for older productive players versus newer players with potential, there’d be a greater incentive to trade to improve your team than there is with a standard league.
I think a standard dynasty league would be pretty fun. Has anyone actually played in one who can tell us how it worked out?
SenorBeef, we’re basically on the same page. I’d be perfectly happy with a straight up dynasty league (full roster retention), and I’m a little worried that if we try to accommodate everybody this thing will die in committee. So, at some point in the not too distant future, we’ll have to pick one general concept and start a league based on such, and whoever wants to join can do so (at which point we’ll have some time to make relatively minor changes and improvements).
But I don’t want to make it sound like I’m getting impatient or annoyed in any way whatsoever; I mean, this thread was started less than 28 hours ago, we’re doing fine. (God, it seems like it’s been longer than that, doesn’t it?)
All that said, I’ve already typed out this semi-proposal, and I don’t think it’d do too much harm to post it.
A few questions, having to do with the possibility of non-uniform contracts. First, when starting a league on Yahoo, is it possible to have a draft that doesn’t fill everyone’s roster? If not, I assume the commissioner can assign any player to any team as a keeper before the draft, right? We could use dummy keepers, who no one would have any interest in drafting and who’ll be dropped immediately after the draft, in order to even out the draft order.
Second, Ellis, when processing the keepers as commish of the He Hate Me league, what takes up the bulk of your time? Because unless manually entering the keepers into Yahoo’s draft utility is very time consuming, it seems to me that, even with a couple hundred keepers, it wouldn’t have to take more than, say, a single afternoon to to process the whole thing, though obviously owners and the commish would have to stay vigilant before, during, and after the season about posting comprehensive updates of rosters and remaining contract years.
Finally, SenorBeef, where exactly do the time savings come from if we standardize contract lengths by draft rounds? As long as we’re good about keeping and posting roster information, it seems like it’s just a matter of keeping track of and posting information, and entering keepers derived from that information into a draft utility. Whether said information was generated by a uniform or non-uniform process shouldn’t have **all **that much of an effect on the time any of this takes, since regardless it has to be collected and utilized manually. (Sorry of this paragraph is a little jumbled.)
So, I was wondering if I could get some thoughts on the following setup, cribbed from parts of this ruleset. I’m not specifically advocating it, but I think it’s interesting, and I’m curious as to what other people think.
12 teams, 18 active roster spots, 6 players on the “practice squad,” which functions almost exactly like the redshirting detailed in my previous post.
Each team has a cap of 45 Contract Years (CYs) that it must stay under. When a player is added to a team’s active roster by any means other than trade, the team signs that player to a contract of a length of its choosing. (Traded players have their existing contract carried over to their new team.) Every year remaining on every contract counts as 1 CY. Players who are cut during the season still count against the CY cap until the end of said season. Practice squad players don’t have contracts, and so don’t count against the CY cap.
Every offseason, teams may designate one player with an expiring contract as its “Franchise Player,” which signs that player to a one-year contract which has a cost of 2 CYs, plus 1 CY for each year that the team has previously tagged that player.
Players whose contracts expire and who are not franchised are entered into the draft.
[It’s possible that it would be better to give teams immediate CY cap relief for dropping players in-season, and an injured reserve is also a possibility.]
This would allow teams a great deal of flexibility in determining how to construct their rosters, while also necessitating a large amount of roster turnover. For example, say that at the start of the season a team has two players signed to 5-year deals, two to 4-year deals, two 3-year deals, three 2s, seven 1s, and one Franchise player. That would put him at 39 CYs, which is probably about as close to the cap as he dares get at the start of the season, since he’ll need to leave space to sign free agents, take on players with long-term contracts in trades, or sign a player from his practice squad to a long-term deal. This team would be sending at least five players into the draft next year (and not all of them scrubs, some would be good players at the end of multi-year deals), and probably more if he has to make space under the cap by cutting a decent player.
Also note that there’s a built-in disincentive to long-term deals in this setup, since they would cost more on average than short-term deals. A two year contract has an average annual cost of 1.5 CYs. For a four year deal the average cost is 2.5 CYs. For a six year deal, it’s 3.5 CYs. And that’s not even considering the fact that a player is likely to be cut or traded before he finishes a 4-6 year deal, which drives up the average annual cap charge even further.
It seems to me that the main disadvantage of this league is the logistics/bookkeeping of it. Suppose, hypothetically, that I said I was willing and able to commish such a league, and that we were able to tweak the numbers to make it *more *palatable to *most *players. Would this generally address people’s concerns about a dynasty league, or am I just muddying the waters by bring up this idea?
If people were able to set variable contract lengths, we’d first have to make sure that everyone posted their data, that their picks don’t violate any rules, and then we’d either need to build a spreadsheet of some sort or go through the threads manually and figure out based on past declaration who becomes eligible for redrafting. I suppose building a spreadsheet out of the data isn’t that big a deal, but the contract-by-round method is very simple. Want to see who’s going to be draftable this year? Look at last year’s round 1, the rounds 2-3 from 2 years ago, rounds 4-10 from 3 years ago, etc. The draft lists would have the necesary data - people wouldn’t have to declare contract lengths, it would all be standard, the players drafted the highest would be the first to re-enter the draft pool, etc.
If we’re going to come up with some sort of forced-turnover system, I think that one (the one I proposed in post 27) is the simplest, most elegant, and fits within the basic idea behind the league.
If we’re worried about parity, I had another idea that’s sort of off the wall but I’ll throw it out for discussion. The bottom 4 teams get to pick a player from the top 4 teams, with the lowest-seeded player picking first, then the second lowest, etc. Each of the top 4 teams gets 3 or 4 or 5 or whatever we decide protections - they get to protect that number of players from their roster from being poached. So essentially the bottom teams get to pick the 4th/5th/6th/whatever play from the top teams. I’m not crazy about the idea, but if people are that concerned about parity it could be an interesting mechanic to level it out from year to year.
Edited to add: quite frankly, I’m not that worried about parity. I don’t know if someone could draft so badly that they’d be at the league bottom for years - they’d have to have epically bad drafts where none of the core players, developmental players, or high draft pick rookies work out for them. Really, that’s three things necesary to go wrong. And if that’s the case… well, it’s probably right that they’re at the bottom. I suspect there may be some people who are in the bottom half of the league from year to year, but I doubt bottom 1-3 slots consistently will happen over any 3 year period.
To add, part of the simplicity of a by-round uniform contract system is that everyone will have the same size rosters with the same picks in the same round. With custom length contract, one player may have 8 slots opening one year and another may have 3, and that gets tricky to handle in the draft.
Although I suppose that may happen anyway depending on what our rules are about cutting players to draft extra ones.
In my experience, this is not a reasonable request. The commish will have to post the data for most of the managers. Skim the current He Hate Me Thread for an example. For any HHM participants, I’m not complaining, nor am I trying to call anyone out. I very much dig that league and view the commish responsibilities as a labor of love. But notice the lack of managers posting their own data, and confusion about the eligibility rules even though that league’s rules are a million times simpler and more straightforward than any contract system proposed in this thread, and the HHM league is in year friggin’ seven!
Anything that sounds simple on paper will either be complex or labor-intensive to implement. Anything that sounds mildly complex will be a nightmare to implement. Note also that complexity will hurt retention, as that’s just the way of the world.
Entering the keepers is trivial. It’s coming up with the eligible keepers list that is time consuming. Based on timestamps, it took me 5 hours to process the eligible keepers for the HHM league this year. I took several cigarette breaks and I think I ate breakfast as well, so probably around 4 hours of actual work. The bulk of the time was spent physically verifying eligibility of every player on every final roster. There were very few kept players – a couple dozen total for the whole league – and I only had to go back 1 year to check on eligibility for all of them. If there were hundreds of kept players and I had to go back a variable number of years to check their eligibility, I would have either invoked executive privilege to radically simplify the keeper rules or disolved the league.
The one thing you cannot do is try to force everyone people to post their own data. That’s a sure way to suck the fun right out of a league.
Some of the suggestions posted in the thread were that we allow variable contract lengths, either by given a set number of X-year contracts, or allowing people to sign 1-x year contracts to their player as an option. Even if I come up with a list of eligibles from year to year, people will still have to decide what contract to give to who and post it.
This had upsides in that people have more decisions and more control over their team, but some may view it as a hassle.
Which is why I was saying it’d be simpler to do it by draft commission. Then the commish simply looks at the draft list from previous years to come up with the lists.
I hope this hasn’t scared off potential recruits from being interested in the league - whatever we decide to do will probably be fairly simple and consistent I hope, and we may just do the straight-up dynasty league proposed in the OP. I don’t want anyone thinking “yeah, I’m interested” and by the end of the thread thinking “wtf, this will be like doing my taxes” and not signing up.
This is definitely the way to go. That was my thinking exactly in post 26. The idea is to add a healthy dose of dynasty while keeping the bookkeeping to the absolute minimum.
The two key elements are having keepers never expire and having everyone on the final rosters eligible. All you have to do is lock each roster as their season ends and your year-end processing will be less than mine in the keeper league.
The specific numbers were just off the cuff, though.
I liked the ideas of contracts a lot but it will be a nightmare to get everyone to agree on a format, and for the commissioner to maintain.
I’m down for a straight up dynasty league with really really deep benches. Would you have to cut someone before every rookie draft or would the benches just keep getting larger?
Would there be a supplemental mid-season draft for undrafted rookies who get unexpected P/T or would we draft literally all the rookies?
Sorry – should have explained this. Yes, you’re entirely right that you’d have a mega draft every 3 or 4 years … unless you have variable contracts in the initial draft only. How you decide who gets what is another issue, but you have some way of getting some distribution – I’d just say 1/4 of your players get 4 year deals, 1/4 get 3 year deals, etc.
But after the first year, all drafted players get a standard 4 year contract. At the end of the year teams can only renew X number of expiring contracts (one or two sounds right to me, depending on how large the rosters are). To me, the advantage of expiring contracts is that it adds one more decision-point (which guys you resign), and thus more challenge.
The system VarlosZ gives is interesting, and adds yet another decision point (how long of a deal to sign a guy to) but lord almighty it’s complicated. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to commission it.
I’m not as big on the “losers draft a guy off the winners teams” idea.
It’s one thing to lose a guy because you’ve had him for a few years and his time is up. It’s another to lose him because somebody else reaches in and snatches him away.
It seems like a reward for losing. It’s one thing for people who finish last to draft before the winners – it’s another to get a benefit the winners simply don’t get. In baseball, everyone is allowed to use the Rule V draft … it’s just that good teams seldom do.
It lumps the guy who went 12-2 and the guy who went 8-6 and into the playoffs via tiebreaker both as equally “winners,” eligible to have players taken, and the guys who went 1-13 and 7-7 both as equally “losers.” That seems arbitrary.
My first choice would be for set contract lengths.
My second choice would be the “heavy keeper league” Ellis outlined (though I don’t think the number of keepers should be greater than the number of starting spots).
In rereading, I think I’m not coming across the way I’m intending. I love all the contract ideas proposed, and if they were built into yahoo I’d be all over them like white on rice. If you guys hammer out an “ideal world” dynasty system I’d be happy to join in a campaign to suggest it to yahoo for next year.
I just don’t want Beef (or whomever ends up commishing) to get into a situation where next summer you now have 20 hours of work to get the offseason squared away. That would torpedo the dynasty league, and could conceivably take down a couple other leagues with it.
In your proposal, would the draft position of the player matter? IE in keeper leagues there’s usually a requirement of “if you keep a player, he costs a pick X rounds higher than he originally went in”.
Or is it just straight up - you keep 10 people, we have a normal 8 round draft with a normal last place to first place order?
I could go for that. It’s different enough from a 3 keeper league (where you can only keep a player X times, and his draft position matters) where this is essentially just a half-roster redraft.
I do wonder if this would still hurt the idea of long term development prospects. If you’re keeping 10 players but you have a roster of 25 people, you’re going to end up keeping your currently productive players and giving up your projects. I suppose we could tweak the 10 number, or the roster size we’re talking about.
Your idea is simple and elegant enough and would probably be a worthwhile league. I’m concerned it would de-emphasize one of the coolest points of a dynasty league, which is the long term prognostication. My idea went the other way - recycle the current top players but keep your projects.
The 3 ideas I see as most practical right now are:
Straight dynasty league. A draft is held for rookies every year, you keep your whole roster.
My proposal for contract lengths by round. You keep your top pick for just one year, you keep your rounds 2-4 picks for 2 years. You keep your round 5-11 picks for 3 years. You keep your round 12+ picks indefinitely. The numbers are adjustable - we may decide round 1-2 are one year, 3-6 are 2 years, etc.
Ellis Dee’s proposal for a keeper league with 10 or some other high number of keepers. I’m assuming he’s proposing that all keepers are equal, such that everyone has the same number of draft picks and in the same rounds.
Appeals to me because it’s very different from anything I’ve done, it reward long-term FF knowledge of developmental prospects, it lets you a sense of total continuity on your roster because you can keep your entire team.
The downsides that people are concerned over are lack of parity (good drafting teams will be at the top for years and bad drafting teams will be at the bottom for years) and the lack of big, fun drafts in the future.
To me, the first one isn’t even a downside - if you play better, you should do better. That’s the whole point. With a redraft every year league, the cream does generally tend to rise to the top - but a few injuries or surprises can ruin your year. With a longer term minded league, the flukes would average out more and the player with the best prognostication would do well over the long term. Essentially, a system designed where the best players do the best and the worst players do the best is not a downside to me.
Part of the objection, I suppose, is that teams won’t have enough chance to dig themselves out of a hole. But I think there are several different components to this. You’re drafting currently productive players, players you feel will be productive in the future, and (in subsequent years) rookies. You would have to fail at all three to consistently end up at the bottom… and similarly you’d have to succeed in all three to consistently end up at the top. To me, that’s how things should be.
The other objection, the lack of a big draft from year to year - yeah, I understand that. If I only had one league, or even two, I’d be bothered by that. But since most of us will have 2+ other leagues, I think we can get our fix there and be content with a rookie draft.
Ideas 2 and 3 are different takes on the same goal - maintaining more continuity than a keeper league with only a few keepers, but recycling some of the players every year.
My proposal does this by allowing the highly drafted players with high expectations to re-enter the draft every year. His does this by allowing the generally lower expectation players to enter the draft every year.
I believe my method is superior, but that his could also make a fun league. The reasons are - first, a big part of the fun of a dynasty league is thinking in the long term, finding gems, and having control over who will blossom into being your future squad. So I place a higher value on being able to keep your lower expectation, later round picks.
This also makes the draft more exciting and allows greater parity. Every year everyone will have a shot at your Adrian Petersons or your Larry Fitzgeralds. Assuming our draft order will have the last place team drafting first, this serves to give the bottom team a shot in an even stronger way than having the first pick in a rookie draft would. You get the services of a player who’s highly likely to be productive this year, whereas if you find your late round gem who becomes a productive starter you can keep him for either a long period, or indefinitely. This, IMO, creates a good balance of the current elite players being shuffled enough to make teams different from year to year, but keeping roster cohesion by having long term ownership of your future potential starters.
Ellis Dee’s idea goes the other way. You’ll pick your 10 best players to keep, so the draft will be made from rookies and players who were the 11th+ best player on people’s teams. You’ll always choose to keep Adrian Peterson, but you may not have room on your keeper list for that third WR who you think will blossom next year. It de-emphasizes gem finding and long term plans, and makes sure the current elite talents of the league are all locked up.
I’m not trying to bash his proposal as a bad idea. I would be interested in playing in a league using those rules. But I think my proposal provides an idea more in line with the benefits of a dynasty league, provides for better parity and a chance to turn your team around every year, and rewards long term prognostication.
I excluded a lot of potentially good ideas from this comparison because I think they’d end up being complicated in the logistical phase. The three ideas I’ve included are simple - every year everyone will have the same number of draft picks in the same round, lose the same amount of players. The ideas seem good enough that I think we can pick between the three and have a good league.
I’ve been working under the assumption this whole time that, no matter what conception of a dynasty league is used, keeping players and drafting players are two entirely unrelated processes. That is, keeping a player doesn’t cost you anything in the next draft.
I would assume so too, but I was just making sure for clarification. In typical keeper leagues the draft position of the kept player is relevant, and his proposal is essentially an expanded keeper league.
What do you think about my proposal, Varlos? I’m still cool with a straight dynasty league, but the more I think about it the more I like my idea.
Draft position wouldn’t matter; all players are eligible for keeping, and each year the commish would just set your final x rounds to your x keepers.
My example had 10 keepers for a roster of 18. For a roster of 25 (?!) you’d want something like 15 keepers. The rule of thumb (that I totally made, of course) would be just over half the roster can be kept.
I feel your subsequent analysis is spot-on, though you neglected the workload aspect for the commish. As the commish, that is your perogative. But I stand by my argument that while your system is absolutely superior to mine, your system is logistically unworkable while mine is streamlined by design.
Ah, right, the 25 man rosters were the rough assumption we were working under for a dynasty league. I don’t know if we’d tighten up the rosters for a half-keeper league or what.
As far as logistics, I’m not sure what would be that much more work. Instead having people submit “I’m keeping X players”, it would essentially be an automatic submission of “I’m keeping all my players, except those drafted in round 1 of last year, and rounds 2-4 of 2 years ago”, etc. You’d end up doing the same thing - having all the keepers at the back of everyone’s draft.
It’d actually require less input from the league, since with the keeper league you’d be waiting until the last person submitted their keeper list, while in this league it would be automatic.
I’m dubious, but if you think it’ll work then I would encourage you to give it a shot. The various ideas really do sound pretty cool. I would stress making things as simple as possible, as in whatever system gets adopted, outline the rules in the fewest words humanly possible.
Worse comes to worst I’d be willing to pitch in and help you sort things out if it turned into a clusterfuck.
The issue we’d have to solve for my system is that the rounds 1-2 = 1 year, 3-6 = 2 year is that only works for the first draft, since all subsequent drafts will be shorter. And each successive draft would have a different length.
The year 2 draft would have rookies, plus year 1 first rounders.
The year 3 draft would have rookies, year 2 first rounders, year 1 2-4 rounders.
Year draft would have rookies, year 3 first rounders, year 2 2-4 rounders, year 1 4-10 rounders, etc.
I don’t think it would be hard to keep track of whose contract is expiring, but since our first draft can be 20+ rounds and the year 2 draft likely will be 5 or 6, and year 3 would be 7 or 8, we’d have to come up with system whereby each round in subsequent drafts is assigned a contract length.
This isn’t as complex as it sounds. I’ll try to come up with something workable.
BTW, which of those systems would you be interested in playing in?