Posted by bk41129 on 7/5/2012 5:04:00 PM (view original):
I have a quick question.. Say Coach A and Coach B are in a battle but no one knows if they have spent a lot of money or not. Coach C (who isn't after the recruit at all) then says on the boards that Coach B has no shot at winning and his spent lots of money down the drain for no reason. Then Coach B gets poached after Coach C said what he said.
Is this against the rules??
IMO not against the rules, but definitely a situation where nothing should have been said, and if I was B I'd politely request such for the future.
As I see it, unless there's been more behind-the-scenes discussion than what is given here, Coach C has no way of knowing what A or B have or haven't spent, so his comment that B has "spent a lot of money" is simply speculation that could be right or could be wrong (maybe both parties got on the kid for the bare minimum and have done nothing since...). A person viewing that comment in a vacuum has no way of knowing what has or hasn't been spent on a recruit in terms of effort (by contrast, a comment along the lines of "Dude, you must have spent at least 30 SV's to get that guy considering you" would be over the line from where I sit because it gives hint of what exactly an opposing coach would need to do in order to get in the fray). Anyone acting on C's comment could just as easily find themselves being a victim of a false assumption by C and discover that A, B or both actually have a large chunk of bank remaining.
C's comments may or may not have led directly to B's being poached (we'd have to know what the poaching coach did or didn't know when making the action...they could have initiated it due to the chat or they may have just noticed there was the appearance of a battle going on in B's recruiting tab and acted solely on that information, a difference in prestige or any of a number of other reasons).
Like I said, I wouldn't say it's against the rules, but I'd make a polite request in coaches chat as B that in the future coaches not comment upon battles and possible budget implications of a battle until the coaches involved have signed all their players. After all, it's in the best interest of the league to avoid hamstringing other member coaches by not tipping their hands and exposing their potential vulnerabilities while other leagues might still be able to exploit them.
My two cents...