The Tale of the Guy Who Dumped his Team

For the final piece of our series on being a commissioner, I'd like to go over handling troublemaker owners and then add in some playoff tips. I hope you've all found these posts useful, if not today, then some day in the future when you look to run your own league. If you aren't currently satisfied with your league, I highly recommend going down this route. It's the only way to ensure you play in a fun and competitive environment.

In 2005 I ran into an issue that I truly hope none of you ever face. Looking back on it, I think it was a good experience to go through as I learned how to deal with a crisis, but at the time it was disastrous.

You see, my leagues get pretty competitive and people really trash talk each other, pretty non stop. We had this one guy in the league who trash talked more than everybody, constantly hammering the message boards. It was great! Every league needs at least one loud mouth (preferably like six or seven though) to provide that constant entertainment. Problem with this guy was, he never won anything in the leagues. Enter the 2005 season, and a couple of the league members discovered that he was real sensitive about his shortcomings. They went on the offensive, countering his every post with statements pointing out how bad he was in fantasy sports (I wouldn't have said bad, more like unlucky). Well anyways, apparently this guy was someone who could 'dish it' but not 'take it' and one day up and decided to DROP HIS WHOLE TEAM TO THE FA WIRE! This was before they had 'can't cut' lists too.

Pandemonium set in fast, people clamoring for his players, arguing over who gets who. This was a money league, these guys were rightfully angry! In these situations the correct answer, the logical answer, is also the obvious answer. The problem is that commissioners are not always honest and some just try to do what's best for them and their team. Don't be that guy, don't try to win based off your ability to cheat, win based on skill and foresight. That separates Us from Them.

I locked every team in the league. Then (using commish controls) picked up all of his players and placed them back onto his team. I set his lineup, then unlocked all the teams except his and we all went about our business. End of story. No redraft, no free for all, just keep movin on.

Obviously I kicked that manager out of the league. He was about as close a friend as a person could have (I was the best man in his wedding) but this was crossing the line. We didn't speak for a solid 2 years, then he approached me and apologized. I've since let him rejoin the league and he hasn't been an issue since. Moreover, no one else in the league has been a problem either. By showing poise, acting with integrity, and taking prompt disciplinary action, I set the tone for everyone else that our league was a no nonsense league.

Here's another for you. In my second league, I had to deal with the issue of collusion. Now like I told you before, whenever collusion happens, it's (more often than not) amazingly obvious. We're coming down to the last month of the season and the guy in first place has a small lead, the guy in second is right on his tail. They'd been having a solid battle, but as March wore on First Place started to extend his lead. Then something strange happened, the guy in second to last place drops Mike Miller to the FA wire. At the time Miller wasn't great, but he was Tier Three material and a great source of treys. It was an odd move. I scanned the list of teams and noticed that the second place team had the number one waiver position. Even worse, the two categories he had room to improve in quickly were points and treys (Roto league).

Of course, I was irate. I did some questioning and found out this whole shebang had been planned over a poker game the two were at. Fortunately it was close to the end of the season, so we wouldn't have to worry about it continuing to happen.

I never said a word to the league from finding out, and let the add/drops go through. I contacted the two colluders separately and informed them they were no longer allowed to play with us, beginning with the next season. They were embarrassed from being caught, and even more embarrassed from getting kicked out. My first post for the next season explained the situation, explained the evidence I used to track down the deal, then explained the discipline, banned for life. The owner who lost (unfortunately) and ended up in second, was surprisingly graceful. He wasn't nearly as concerned about the 2nd place finish or the lost earnings, as he was knowing that justice had been served.

Again, acting swiftly, harshly, and letting everyone know how things are going to work will give your league mates confidence in the integrity of the game. The number one reason people cheat is because they think everyone else is cheating too (or at least someone else). Take that thought out of their mind and you'll have yourself a better league.

One final piece of advice - don't let your guard down. Especially in the playoffs. What I like to do, is as soon as the playoffs begin, I lock the add/drop ability for everyone not involved. You should do this too, just as a safety precaution. As you move through each round, keep locking out those who are 'out of it'.

Well that about wraps it up. I hope you found these posts useful. You'll be able to find them all under the label 'Tips for Starting a League' for future reference. If there's anything I didn't cover that you'd like to hear about, let me know below and I'll cover it.

The Team Analyzer will be updated for stats today and uploaded for use tonight. I'll post as soon as it's ready.
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The Meat and Potatoes of Fantasy Sports

In case you haven't been following along over the last two days, I've been outlining how to be commissioner for your fantasy league. This series of best practices has spanned - gathering league members, setting up the league structure, setting the rules and draft and even some tips on keepers. To see the earlier posts, click here. This post will address trading and troublemakers, but first, we'll talk about my *personal touch*.

I like to draft about two weeks prior to the first day of the season. I find this to be an optimal trade-off between leaving enough time to properly thieve people preseason, but not too long that significant preseason injuries become a concern. During that first week after the draft, I like to issue what I call 'The Introductions'. Introductions is where you take a short time out to write up a small blurb about each owner in your league. Nothing long, nothing in depth, and packed with jokes, Introductions are a good way to build a community amongst the owners. Don't say anything really personal, like where a guy lives, but instead give his name, his team name, and then something funny like 'Joe is famous for drafting Michael Jordan in the first round of fantasy basketball......back in 2003'. To have a successful league you need everyone to feel comfortable talking and ragging on each other, your introductions are the perfect way to kick this off. Here's an example from my last set of introductions (his team name is first, then his name, then a name I made up for him):

PoopyDiapers - Mike XXXXXX - aka Monique: Hard to tell what's bigger, Mike's skill or the circumference of his arse. Two things Mike does superb, he drafts like a New England Patriots scout, and he devours a bucket of fried chicken like a young southern girl with no date to the prom. Mike's career started seven years ago and he's got two championship rings under his belt. Smart money says he finishes top three, while managing his new baby's poopy diapers.

I've opened the door for my league here on two accounts, I've told them to make fun of this kid for being large and for being a new dad. Instantly he gets labeled in the league, and people are much more comfortable dropping the ole trash talk because they know exactly where to hit him, they're more comfortable. Community and camaraderie is key, and introductions will get your league started off on the right foot.

Now onto trading. I probably should've said this back during the league setup, but it was too important to lump in. When you set the rules on trading, you must select that teams may not vote on trades, and the ultimate and only decision comes from you, as commissioner. Then, explicitly tell your whole league, no trade will ever be vetoed EXCEPT in the instance where collusion is involved. Collusion is not permitted and you will be banned from the league if you collude.

Trades should never be vetoed. First and foremost it's unrealistic. If trades were veto-able in the NFL, the Pats wouldn't have gotten Randy Moss. If they were veto-able in the NBA, the Lakers wouldn't have gotten Gasol or Artest. The whole notion of a veto is a bad idea. Never veto any trades period. So long as there is no collusion going on (trust me, collusion is VERY obvious), then (in my opinion) the more one owner Trade Rapes another, the better. That's playing the game!

Should you ever decide to veto a trade 'in the name of league fairness, because one team would be too good after the deal', you're going to open up a floodgate that will make your life hell. For every single subsequent trade you'll have at least one league member demanding you veto it, and using your past veto as precedent. Let them all through, every single trade goes through. If you did a good job recruiting members, you'll have no worries following this advice.

Sometime during your career as a manager, you will deal with both - two managers colluding on a trade and - a ridiculously lopsided deal, a 'too' lopsided deal. In the case of the first one, you have to use your judgement. If there is any way you can proceed without using the veto, do it. If it's a collusive trade, but neither owner still has a realistic shot at winning, just let it go. I can't urge you enough, try to never use that veto button, it's just a whole world of trouble waiting for you. But, if it's absolutely necessary, this is the only instance to ever veto a trade. EVER. Still, no matter which route you chose (veto or no veto) those managers are banned from your league going forward. Zero tolerance. This is a situation you will deal with once, and proper handling will send a message to everyone else that you do not tolerate collusion, and it won't ever happen again.

You will also preside over a ridiculously lopsided trade. I'm talking along the lines of Lebron for Eric Gordon type lopsided. It will happen. Guess what, when it does, you're going to let it go through. Be sure you investigate and make certain there was no collusion, make 100% certain, and then let it go through. Then again, at the end of the season, let the guy who traded AWAY Lebron know, he's no longer allowed to play. He is not 'up to the level of competition'. Move on, find a new manager, nuff said. Remember, that veto button is your worst enemy. Keep your rules transparent and consistent and your league members will respect you greatly.

Ahh, this post went on longer than I expected. These were important things so I'm glad to have gotten them across. We'll continue tomorrow where I'll go over troublemaker managers and tell you the story of the guy who dropped his entire team to the FA wire in one of my leagues!
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A Public Service Announcement on: Streaming

We interrupt this regularly scheduled series on league setup and commissioning to bring you this special announcement: Have you ever heard the term Streaming? Are you familiar with what it means? Allow me to explain:

When you play in a H2H league, unfortunately, most sites do not yet have the capability to offer a maximum amount of games played per position per week. I've written Yahoo many times asking for such capability, but they don't seem too interested in making their system better. This lack of functionality leaves a gaping hole in H2H play to be exploited.

I'm sure by now, if you play in a Head to Head format, you've realized that those teams with more games in a week offer a manager a huge advantage. Sure you have LeBron James, but if he only has one game this week, and I have Tyreke Evans playing 3 games this week, Tyreke's stats will dominate LBJ's. At least for every category that is not a % category.



Taking it one step further, there is nothing more frustrating than taking a loss in Head to Head because the manager you are playing against is doing a bunch of add/drops during the last few days of your match, dropping players with low value, picking up players with low value, but accumulating stats nonetheless.

There are a few ways to combat this, such as limiting the add/drops a manager can make each week, limiting player lineup changes to weekly, or adding a transaction cost (a nominal fee to add/drop). All of these take away from the fun of playing fantasy sports.

In baseball it's worse, and I'm sure any avid Fantasy Baseball fans out there will sound off on this. In baseball, people will often only draft hitters, then just add/drop pitchers all week accumulating strikeouts, saves, wins, etc. This strategy is called streaming, and make no mistake, it takes away from the game. It's just not fair if you had to go to some event for the weekend and the guy you play against was add/dropping 14 different players to beat you in your match.

The most effective way to combat against this is by having categories that negatively affect streamers. Generally, any % category will do the trick, though to a certain extent Turnovers in basketball or Losses in baseball will help too.

In reality, the best fix would be for one of these major Fantasy Sports providers to implement max games played in a week, much like the max games played in a season feature for Roto (If you play Roto, streaming is not an issue). This way, each position would be allotted say 4 games per week max, and there would be no incentive to try to stream. The effectiveness of streaming increases throughout the season, having the biggest impact during the playoffs.

Every year in baseball, as a commissioner, I've had to deal with owners streaming. It gets under my skin and every year I battle to find more and more ways to disincentivize people from doing it.

Calling for an 'Honor System' and an all out ban never works. In fact, as a commissioner, never ever try to implement a rule that the platform you play on doesn't have a backup for. In other words, to avoid collusion you can veto a trade. But there is no real fix to streaming (you could try locking players, but that will surely backfire) so don't try to do it by declaring people shouldn't stream. A co-worker of mine played in a football league this year where the commissioner told people they were only allotted a maximum amount of players at each position during the draft. He had no system tools to implement this. Some people ignored him and went ahead drafting however they wanted to. About a month into the season he announced the rule no longer effective. This was disastrous as those who followed the rule felt cheated.

Don't implement rules you can't enforce properly. Don't change rules mid season. Stay tuned for the next post where I go over those rules you can enforce, and how to deal with troublemaker owners and trouble trades. Until then, let's hear from you! What's your opinion on streaming and how do you deal with it?
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The Money, The Draft, The Keepers

The third part in our little miniseries here will deal with fees, drafting and keepers. Hopefully if you’ve gotten to this point, you’ve got yourself a solid group of 12-16 guys who’ve paid their entry fee and are ready to play. You’ve got a nice setup with some divisions, you’ve set the league schedule to make sure there’s lots of division rivalry, and you’re ready to get started.

1)       The Entry Fee

I realize that not everyone plays for money, and you might have something against playing for money, but let me tell you, the best way to play involves playing for money. Money motivates people, gives them something to shoot for. Money makes it so that everyone is serious and everyone plays honest. Money is

the ultimate reason for people to NOT screw things up. But there’s a happy medium to it. I like to charge an amount that everyone is comfortable paying, where the prizes are big enough to get you excited, and there’s enough to spread the wealth. For my leagues it’s 125 to enter. With 16 teams, that rounds off to 2000. I don’t keep anything unless I win, I commish because I like to play not because I want to make a living. None of the guys in my league have much issue paying 125, for your league maybe it’s 50 or maybe it’s 200. I will advise against going too high, because that provides a whole new incentive to cheat. No need to introduce that. I pay 1000 to first place, and then spread the rest amongst second place and division winners. It’s good to pay the division winners an amount equal to the entry fee, because that means they have a 1-4 to 1-7 chance of breaking even. That’s solid odds. To collect the money I just use paypal, it makes everything faster and easier. If you’re looking for a service that doesn’t charge a fee, use revolution money exchange. And Remember, collect ALL the money from EVERYONE before the draft. I can’t stress this enough. Collect it and keep it all in that paypal account where you will not spend it. Nothing worse that coming to the end of the season and having to find money to pay the winners. If you’ve ever commished before you know exactly what I’m talking about. Paypal is fast and easy, and everyone should have an account anyway. Make them use it.

2)       The Draft

This one is a no brainer unless you’ve never tried it before, but all drafts should always be done auction style. It’s no more complicated than a snake draft, but its much more fun, more involved, and people have to use their brains instead of just clicking on the next highest ranked guy. 

It also gives everyone a fair shot at those Tier One players. Two more tips for you here. First, in auction drafts, the Tier One players always go pretty early and are always sold at too cheap of a price. Be sure you get one. Second, Yahoo doesn’t offer auction drafts yet cause their stupid, but ESPN does. More importantly, ESPN does for free. I set up all my leagues to run on Yahoo, but we all draft via ESPN. The only time we don’t is when we gather once a year for a live in-person draft. You should really consider trying that too, it’s a wild time. We have guys fly in from all around the country to do it, and it gets better every year. Logistically it can be tough though so don’t force it. I will now continue as if you’ve done an auction draft because every other way is bunk.

3)       Keepers

If you’ve never played with keepers, change that. Likewise, if you play with more than 3 keepers, change that too. Keepers make drafting that much more important, especially in an auction. It basically means you get rewarded next year for having good foresight this year, kind of like the way real teams run. Here’s my rules for keepers, you can take em or leave em. Owners are allowed to keep up to 2 players per season. Their Keeper must be declared by the trade deadline for that season. If you choose to keep a player, you will enter next years draft with that player already on your team, at the price you paid in the previous draft (ESPN makes this process pretty easy for a commish to hook up). You may keep that player for one year, and then he goes back into the pool and you have to choose either someone else or no one. After the declaration date (the trade deadline) if you choose to drop a keeper, you may (incase he does something like going to jail in the offseason) at no penalty. Finally, owners are not allowed to drop their keepers at all during the year. If they do so, that player can not be your keeper. That lasts from the draft to the final week, if you ever dropped a guy, you can't keep him. You also can not trade away or trade for a keeper. You must have drafted the player and held him from day one straight through. These rules are FIRM and shall not be changed under any circumstances.

Remember, your league members need to believe they are playing on fair ground. Never change any rules throughout the season no matter how important it seems. Chalk it up as a learning error and change them next year if need be. When there’s money involved, always act with caution, integrity, and consistency.

Stay tuned for the next piece where I’ll go over in season play including trading, vetoes, and troublemakers. Until then, let us hear from you. Have you ever auctioned drafted? If so, let everyone who hasn’t know why they should!

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How to be a Successful Commissioner

I’m going to take some time out to run a little mini series on being a commissioner. If you’re reading this post, then you already have what it takes to be a commish, and I can’t stress enough how much better it is to run your own league. Over the next couple of days I’m going to go through each step of the process to ensure that you set up a fun, competitive, fair league. Let me repeat that for emphasis, fun, fair and competitive. Those are the three key aspects to a successful league.

1) The Members

Thinking of starting a league? Good, but you’re going to need some people to play with you first! It’s taken me many years to establish the groups that I play with. Fortunately for you, I’ve already handled all the ups and downs and can offer you some tips to make the process quicker. For league members, the first place you need to look is obviously your good friends and family. But having these guys in a league can be both a good thing and a bad thing. It’s important to screen out who will be a positive contributor to your league and who will be a drag. Once you become the commish, your relationship changes a bit, and as one friend likes to point out to me often, it’s all business. After that I go to co-workers, and then I work outside my network. I’ve posted on craigslist, on my old college message board, and I even suggest using the comments section here. The key is to find a diverse group of people that all want to contribute, and have as many members as you can with NO RELATIONSHIP to one another (outside your core friends and family). It helps to avoid issues of collusion.

In order to join my league, I tell people up front that four things are expected of them. If they do not sufficiently comply with these three four things, they will be asked to leave at the end of the season and will not be invited back.

a)       You must manage your team

Sounds simple enough, but way too often you’ll find managers who simply give up at a certain point in the season. Be upfront about this, ask them ‘are you the type of guy who will stop following his team halfway through the season’? Even if a team is completely out of the running for any shot at a title, their moves and actions can have a big impact on the ultimate winners. If it’s H2H, they can knock teams in and out of the playoffs, and no one should ever make the playoffs because they got a virtual bye week at the end of the season. I’ve tried a few different methods to ensure this, including implementing a ‘loser’s tax’. What I’ve found works best involves structuring your league format to maintain competitiveness through the end. In a future post I’ll go over the details of that more closely.

b)       You must respond to all trade offers in a reasonable amount of time

This one is vitally important. Ignore a trade offer completely, and people just don’t know if you’ve seen it and don’t like it or haven’t seen it and have stopped playing. 1-2 days is more than enough time to respond to a trade offer. If you’re going to reject a deal, I’d like you to either send a counteroffer, or send a note back saying ‘I’m not interested in dealing so and so’ or ‘I’m going to hold my squad for now and see where they’re headed’. Blind rejections are an invitation for a manger to pepper you with deals, which is an invitation for you to ignore them, which causes frustration.

c)       You must act with integrity at all times

Collusion will absolutely not be tolerated. As the commissioner it will be up to you and solely you to determine whether or not teams are acting in concert. If you suspect they are, you must put a stop to it immediately. Zero tolerance policy, and let them know it upfront. The one good thing about collusion: it’s wicked obvious. If you are clear about this in the beginning, you hopefully won’t deal with it at all. Everyone needs to be confident that everything is on the ‘up and up’ with your league. Ethics and integrity are vitally important. I can’t stress this enough, if one guy cheats it opens the door to everyone cheating. That’s no fun. Integrity also covers paying your entry fee BEFORE the draft begins. Waiting until after opens up a whole host of issues. Don’t let a single person slide, the people who always screw me the most on entry fees are family members. Zero tolerance.

d)       You need to let people hear from you now and again

Use the message board. It helps build a community. You aren’t expected to post every day, but now and again we’d like some trash talking. If someone calls you out, we want to hear your response. Silence is deafening. Posting is a sign of activity and it let’s everyone know you are alive. There’s also a piece of integrity here as we ask managers not to post rejected trade offers on the message board. It just isn’t fair to let everyone know how one person values their players.

That’s all I got for this piece. I recommend getting together 12-16 guys for optimal play. Stay tuned for the next part n the series where I’ll discuss the best way to set up the league for maximum competitiveness.

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