Pretty much anyone who's gambled in the IFA market has been caught holding the bag at least once.

One of the owners in my current world plays HBD entirely through the IFA market.  I realized it as soon as I joined up because his budget looks nothing like anyone else's.  In the past 20 seasons he's never drafted any lower than 26th, and his roster is young and cheap, so he has tons of unused cash just sitting around, and he plays just to get the one huge IFA strike every season.  So it would seem he's been left holding the bag a few times, but obviously his philosophy is that getting one monster player at a time is all that matters.  It's a lottery ticket approach to player acquisition, but what I am saying is that I have seen an owner commit to it completely.

I guess part of my frustration though is I didn't necessarily make a conscious choice to have this much cash. I have $30M in unused payroll, and not because I said "hey, I think I'll wait for that stud IFA". I had nowhere else to put the money and no big FA needs. I tried for a couple guys I didn't get, but that was it. Maybe more so than retooling the IFA process, I'd like to see more flexibility with that money. If I had the choice earlier in the season, I'd have allotted it to various scouting and medical/training, but due to the $4M limit in increments, I couldn't do anything else with it.