I think we're making good progress here.

I think we can probably beat this into the ground until we are blue in the fingers. Bottom line is we need to recruit owners who want to follow the rules and who have a history of doing so in other Worlds. If you have 20 on your 40 man and put in a claim and are awarded the player, you'll have 20+1. If someone happens to see that minutes after the cycle runs and posts a complaint, should we punish the owner? I'm not saying this discussion is not good. It's just we may need to sort of dive in the first year and see how things go and adjust from there. Without systematic controls it may never be 100% perfect. Or it will only be as perfect as the collection of owners make it. 

I will say this...Ford has never had this much discussion about it in the Forums since it's inception. Kinda what JFF did for the Browns. 

On any day you can see who was claimed (and awarded to a team) off the wavers and see if they were assigned or not, that just takes a few minutes. But what should we do with that extra player if that happens? I would think he should be released and put into FA, since a lot of other teams may have had claims on him and lost him because of some ones error, either that or we would have to go up the ladder to see if anyone else should or could have had claims on him.

Maybe we need a coach in each division to monitor the teams in his (or another) division to keep a watch for mistakes like that.

btw, sometimes a mistake does happen and I wouldn't want to be too hard on someone on his first mistake.

Posted by wcrebel on 1/7/2015 1:00:00 PM (view original):
Maybe we need a coach in each division to monitor the teams in his (or another) division to keep a watch for mistakes like that.

It's going to be tough to get 8 watchdogs.  Might be better with either 2 (one for each league) or 4 (two for each league, two divisions each).

It should be set up so that nobody is assigned their own team to monitor, to avoid any conflict of interest.

tec is right on his scenario, and there's probably at least a dozen more that haven't even been thought of yet that could occur, all which will be extremely time intensive in monitoring and determining intent.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the spirit of the league is to set it up similar to a perpetual fantasy baseball league where each team has 20 keepers.  Free agents signed in the preseason are not keepers - so why is it a problem if they are unassigned?   Say I signed 10 offseason free agents to multiyear deals unassigned and still had 20 on my 40 man roster.  Next season I will only have 20 keepers, since only 20 are allowed on the 40 man roster at R5 time, I will have to waive some of those signed players the following season, or others that I felt were valuable enough to keep in my 20 the season before.

A hard and fast rule that you can have 20 on your 40 man at the time of the R5 draft without restrictions on unassigned players, eliminates the seemingly enormous task of monitoring and determining intent of those with unassigned players.  Plus it lessens the huge advantage for anyone who is able to log on right after the R5 draft is complete, as free agent signings at that time are immediate.   Given the constraints of the game, I think that may be the best path.

Now, one potential loophole in what I described above is trades - two teams could trade players and stash them on unassigned, and as far as I know there's nothing automated to prevent tradebacks, so they could easily take that step as well.   Preseason trading may have to be banned to make it work.  

You can also designate long-term players(without waivers) if they have options and they won't be on your 40 or on the R5 lists.    It's a loophole.   I used it many times in the past.    And, there's also a timing issue.    You can sign players to 1 year deals late in FA and they are not on the R5. 

If you don't have rules to close loopholes, someone will exploit them to gain an advantage.   

Posted by foulballz on 1/7/2015 10:24:00 AM (view original):
I've been gooning this thread since its freezing out and i'm bored. Anyhow, here's an idea i had a while back to inflict punishments without having to boot people (since kicking owners out of worlds is not optimal in this day and age) First i thought a ban on signing IFA's and draft picks for a year or two, but that doesn't affect everybody since not all want in on the prospects. You need to hit the salary cap. Preferably in the same season, but it may not always be possible if the money is already spent. So it may have to take effect the next season. But what you would do is force the naughty party to transfer funds back in forth until it disappears. I.E. they have $20 mil in prospect and your penalty for breaking the law is a reduction of $10 mil. So they'd have to transfer funds until prospect is at $10 mil. Say payroll is $80 mil and prospect budget is $20 mil for a total of $100 mil between the two. Transfer $12 mil from prospect to payroll ($6 mil transaction cost) to payroll so you got $86 mil payroll and $8 mil prospect. ($94 mil total between the two) Transfer $6 mil from payroll to prospect ($3 mil cost) so you got $80 mil payroll and $11 mil prospect. Then transfer $2 mil ($1 mil transaction cost) from prospect to payroll and you're left with $81 mil in payroll and $9 mil in prospect. A total of $90 mil in budget between the two and $10 mil in transaction cost paid as the penalty. Now naturally, some more thought/math could be put into this and maybe a different penalty number is needed to dissuade breaking the law yet be more amicable then expulsion. Hopefully some seeds of thought have been sown.

Yikes !  Catching upon all the discussion  and it's good.  I really like Foulz idea on a Cap hit to the prospect budget.  Maybe even transferring it to a place where it can't be used at all like the coaches salary after coaching hires have been made

Posted by alogman1 on 1/7/2015 1:29:00 PM (view original):
tec is right on his scenario, and there's probably at least a dozen more that haven't even been thought of yet that could occur, all which will be extremely time intensive in monitoring and determining intent.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the spirit of the league is to set it up similar to a perpetual fantasy baseball league where each team has 20 keepers.  Free agents signed in the preseason are not keepers - so why is it a problem if they are unassigned?   Say I signed 10 offseason free agents to multiyear deals unassigned and still had 20 on my 40 man roster.  Next season I will only have 20 keepers, since only 20 are allowed on the 40 man roster at R5 time, I will have to waive some of those signed players the following season, or others that I felt were valuable enough to keep in my 20 the season before.

A hard and fast rule that you can have 20 on your 40 man at the time of the R5 draft without restrictions on unassigned players, eliminates the seemingly enormous task of monitoring and determining intent of those with unassigned players.  Plus it lessens the huge advantage for anyone who is able to log on right after the R5 draft is complete, as free agent signings at that time are immediate.   Given the constraints of the game, I think that may be the best path.

Now, one potential loophole in what I described above is trades - two teams could trade players and stash them on unassigned, and as far as I know there's nothing automated to prevent tradebacks, so they could easily take that step as well.   Preseason trading may have to be banned to make it work.  

Alog raises some good points on the complexity of the rules.  It might be better to let it run one season and see how much abuse occurs.  I would be concerned about curtailing the pre season trading.  I enjoy building rather then sustaining and I enjoy the flury of trading that always occurs before and during arbitration. For me the trading is probably the most fun in the game.

We may be overthinking this and creating too much work for ourselves, most of these extra players are backups for the top teams anyway and will probably become keepers for the lower teams, but isn't that the goal of the league, balancing the teams. And since this 20 limit is there every season, sooner or later all teams will be unprotecting good players needed by other teams (hopefully)

I worry more about the tanking the first few years to get those early picks, these first years will be the years where the most good players can be picked up, after that it will become less and less tempting to tank.

ok, along with the cap hit idea of mine. I guess it would have to be for the following season. Owner can do it how they want, but have to waste $10 mil in transfers. ALSO, however many players they were over the 20 men allowed, would have to be demoted and spend the season in the minors. That way tankers don't get the the benefit of cleaning up on the errors of others. This league would already benefit the worst team/top pick in draft, rule 5 and WW priorioty. Theres probably already going to be a rush to the bottom/tanking at end of year and i wouldn't want to reward them any more. So, any owner in violation has to pay $10 mil in cap hit NEXT season, but also demote for the season any players over the 20 man THIS season (so owners going for one last hurrah still get punished and tankers don't get rewarded more) and there's no booting in this hard to recruit culture. It's possible some players won't have options and will need to clear waivers to get demoted. Either you have to only demote those with options (more penalties inflicted) or have a ban on claiming said players from offending team off WW (could be a loophole eploit possibility if owner wants a player in the minors who doesn't have options? but what sort of player without options would you WANT in the minors at this point?) So if a player is waived by offending owner in order to demote, you need the whole world to keep their hands off. Penalty for claiming resttricted player would be you get your birthdays taken away. If you're already receiving social security and have no need for birthdays, then the penalty is you get the Game Show Network taken away (because old people love GSN and life alert commercials)

Seems simple enough. APPROVED!!