This is a new league that will start at the beginning of the NFL/AFL merger, which was 1970. We will progress 2 seasons at a time to provide more depth. Season 1 will be 1970-71, season 2 will be 1972-73, etc. Any player with a season in either or both years is eligible. There are no clones so players with a season in both years can only be used once.
We will start with an inaugural draft held in the forums. Each owner will draft 18 position players (QB, RB, WR, & TE), a K, a P, and a single franchise that will cover their defense, o-line, and special teams. Owners have the rights to their individual players and units until they are dropped, traded, or retire.
There aren't enough position players to completely fill all 24 teams' rosters so we will throw in the position players from 1941 who are minimum salary players ($325,000). Each team will need 1-2 of these players to fill out their roster. These players will be thrown away each off-season and a new crop will be generated. Future seasons will use $325K players from 1943, 1945, etc.
Draft order for the inaugural draft will be randomly generated and will snake back and forth with the following exception, Rd 3 will be the same order as Rd 2 (aka 3rd round reversal--popular feature in a lot of fantasy drafts).
Once the draft is finished, we will randomly determine league alignment. This will stay the same until we start a new decade. There will be a completely new alignment at the start of each decade just to mix it up.
Draft Lottery - The 4 worst teams by record (plus ties) will all be eligible for the draft lottery, subject to a win floor to discourage tanking. Each team eligible for the lottery will have an equally-weighted chance. The lottery draft order only applies to the first round.
Win Floor - Each team must win at least 2 games to be eligible for the lottery. Teams that miss the win floor will draft after the lottery teams but before the other teams. New owners taking over a team are exempt from this rule in their first draft.
Draft order for future drafts will be worst to first in all rounds (excluding the lottery results in round 1) based on regular season win % and playoff success. The Win Floor Rule won't affect round 2 or later draft orders. Tiebreakers for draft order will be as follows: #1-H2H if two way tie only, #2-Scoring differential, #3-Yardage differential, #4-coin flip