League Notice: Here are the 2016 proposals. Voting will be open until Mother's Day (Sunday, May 8th 2016. Please send in your votes ASAP!

Your Friendly Neighborhood Commishi-Man,
Brian

2016 Rule Change Proposals

 

Commissioner's Commentary: Just as a preface to many of the proposals below, and to the comment that a lot of people come back to time and time again that we have always tried to be as close to the NFL in many of our rules and the way we structure things. That being said, this is still a FANTASY league. Many of our rules, although they would be completely ludicrous in the NFL or real sports, are fun in our league. It is what makes our league so unique. We have such an anchor into the overall "realness" of how we operate compared to the NFL, but we also have some interesting rules that are strictly fantasy oriented and in our constitution to add to the fun side of our league. Just a note I wanted to convey as you think about whether to change, add or eliminate new rules each season.

- Brian

Last Updated on 5/5/16

Prop #
Prop Title (Results = For/Against)
Definition and Notes
#1
Expand Playoffs to 6 Teams

Prop Sponsor: Various Owners

This one is pretty easy, there have been a few requests to add 1 more playoff team to the mix. This would have a couple effects, (1) it would set the count of playoff teams to 1/2 of the league, (2) keep more teams in the running longer, and (3) change up our post season draft pick tournament set up.

Parts 1 and 2 needs no further explanation. Part 3 however does. The changes would be as follows:

  1. With 6 playoff teams, only the TOP 2 Division winners would get a 1st round bye. The 3rd division winner would play the lowest ranked Wild-Card team and the other 2 remaining teams would play in Week 14.
  2. The bottom 4 teams would be unchanged for their matchups in the Best of 3 series for the 1st thru 4th draft picks. The 7th and 8th place team would have a week 14 bye and play the Wild-Card losers in Week 15. We would reseed so that the Week 15 matchups had the highest Wild-Card loser playing the #8 ranked team and the other Wild-Card loser would play #7. The remaining rules on the matchups for Picks #5-8 remain unchanged.
  3. We would also reseed for Semi-Final matchups with the lowest ranked remaining Wild-Card winner matching up against the #1 overall seed and the other 2 teams facing each other.

That about sums it up. Pretty easy proposal.

Commissioner's Notes: I have always pushed against having 1/2 of our league make the playoffs. I believe this deminishes the purpose and strategy that makes our regular season fun. However, if a majority of owners agree to expand the playoffs, I will not override as Commissioner as I have been tempted to in the past when the discussion has come up. I would just ask that everyone think about the consequences of expansion to our regular season intruigue. :)

#2
Change to Restricted Free Agent (RFA) Protections with additional clarifications added 5/3/16

Initial Commissioner Notes: The past couple of seasons we have been trying to find ways to reduce the length, in time, of the Free Agency Auction. One key factor to the length of the auction is the total number of points available. One other thing that seems to slow things down is RFA bidding. 1st there are always a lot of RFAs and since they currently are not required to be resigned if unbid on many are just place holders with little value and/or players that teams have no interest in resigning and are only listing for the possibility of getting more points back without consequence, which was not the original purpose or idea for the RFA rule. We believe the proposal below addresses both the value of a RFA tag and should have an effect of lowering the amount of points available overall during the auction which should in turn make it shorter.

Prop Sponsor: A.Abrams [Kashyyyk Kommandos (CDL) / Jedi Knights (FSDL) / Evil Empire (TLSL)] w/ editing contributions from B.Eisner [Uncanny X-Men (CDL) / Sinister Syndicate (FSDL) / The Avengers (TLSL)]

The proposal is that RFAs are now MANDATORY to be resigned if they are not bid on, but with various changes to the RFA listing rules.

The changes/effects to the process this will have are this… We still have the same slots for restricted free agents, meaning a 12 point slot, a 10 point slot and 6 slots ranging from 8 down to 3 points. The key difference to the current process is that based on how many players are listed as RFAs and in which slots, each owner must keep in reserve the amount necessary to resign all remaining RFAs based on the slots they reside. Due to this another change would be that you are no longer required to start with a 12 point slot and fill moving down in value with the lowest value last, you can now place any player in any RFA slot or none at all (still only 1 player per value). For example, if you have 4 RFAs listed, in the 12, 8, 7 and 3 points slots, as long as they remain on your RFA list you must keep 30 points back in case they are never bid on and like an unbid on Franchise Player, it is mandatory that you resign those RFAs.

This will serve a few purposes. 1 – It will entice owners to place players on the RFA list that they really want to resign (which was the original purpose of the rule in the first place) and therefore the quality of the players will be increased. 2 – It will reduce the number of points to be initially available overall and we assume over the course of the auction since keeping enough to resign players still in your RFA list is mandatory, so we believe this will help reduce the time of the auction as it seems like UFA bidding is quicker than RFA bidding since there is no time to wait for matching and RFA bids normally go a little higher since you aren’t sure about the matching aspect. So less RFAs in the end means a shorter auction, or at least WE THINK this would be the effect.

Brian has been testing formulas within a spreadsheet that will denote the change in points available for use so it will not add any additional time to the admin process and he will share that with anyone that wants it so owners can track the same info as well during the auction. There would be NO CHANGES to the way RFAs are handle once they are bid on at all. The resigning rules are still the same… Once bid on and the bidding ends the RFA holder will have the option to resign at the final bid amount or release for an FAP rebate of ½ of the bid UP TO the slot level of the RFA.

It is my opinion that this rule change will not only add another strategy twist to everyone’s ability as general manager, it will also make things closer to the actual NFL as the points you carry into the auction become a bit more of a semi-cap. If you have no or less enticing RFAs you may not get many/any points back and can just resign your own players or possibly you could end up losing them all and going after others. It seems like an interest change on the way things have been working in the past to keep things interesting.

Here are a few questions that were asked and answers on how they would apply in the given circumstances:


Q: If a team has 4 RFA's remaining totaling 30 points (12,8,7,3) meaning in the proposal they would no longer be able to bid on new players, and their 7 slot RFA ends at 10 points and they decide to match. They now have 20 points remaining for 23 points of RFAs remaining on the board, do they need to drop an RFA to UFA status to maintain the rule of having to keep enough points to cover remaining RFA's?

A: No. It would be announced that as it stands they can no longer resign all of their remaining RFA's but we would not make teams pick a player to drop matching rights too. In fact, we would not allow at any point in the auction for a team for any reason to voluntarily renouce RFA rights for any player.


Q: If a team skips their turn to bid on a new player becuase they have to keep points to possibly cover unbid on RFA's can they rejoin the bidding if they lose an RFA and get additional points back?

A: Yes. If you stopped bringing up players BECAUSE you are stopped due to point level restrictions, then we would treat this just like we do now when a team gets to 0 or 1 points, and if they get points back they can jump back in if wanted. Noting the above question and answer, what would not be allowed is to drop rights to a listed RFA in order to reduce the needed amount that must be held back and therefore be able to bring up new players.


Final Commissioner's Notes: The base idea to make RFA signing's mandatory was originally proposed in 2012 and did not pass. This proposal however adds additinal changes that make the idea more palatable and workable and this time around the Commissioner's Office believe it actually could have an effect on the length of time of the FA Auction as well as add some very interesting stratedgy to the RFA listing and bidding process. As it stands now, I believe I am in favor of this change (although I am still working thru the pros and cons) as it gets closer to our original idea of the RFA slot being someone you intended to resign instead of just fill in guys to allow for placing someone in the slot they want. This may not be the only way to do this so counter proposals are welcome.

I also believe since some teams may have made trades or moves last off season planning for this season that we would implement this with the 2017 FA period and not this season if it is voted for and passes. I am open to ideas on this as well.

COUNTER/AMENDMENT to PROP #2 - Amendment Sponsor: J.Tanzer [Tanz Devils (CDL)]

As it appears that if this proposal were to pass, it could effectively reduce the number of players available on the RFA side as well as make teams more hesitant to spend big early if they wish to resign any RFAs that are brought up and go higher than their initial slot value, it surmises to presume that there could be a larger number of FAP's remaining for all teams than normally occurs in our auctions. For ex. Team A could have 3 RFA's remaining on their list and be holding 68 FAP. They only need to hold 30 for their 3 players in the 12,10 and 8 slots but in case they go higher Team A is holding extra back to possibly match higher bids. They skip their turn and therefore can no longer bid on new FA's or RFA's. What if in this case their 3 players are NOT brought up. They would be required to spend the 30 points to resign their RFAs but lose 38 FAPs that are use or lose where in the past they most likely would have kept spending.

The amendment to the above proposal is this, that we allow teams that have remaining FAP's to convert them into FPs that CAN be kept and carried into the season. We propose that at a rate of 4 FAP to 1 FP, teams can convert unused FAPs into FPs with a limit of 20 FPs in total converted in this way.

On another note, it is also possible that this could be made into a completely separate proposal, but it is not initially offered in that way but in conjunction with the above proposal. I would have offered this amendment/proposal separately without Al's Prop #2, but believe it should be included as part of Prop 2 OR vote on separately.

#3
Changes to Draft & Auction Process and Timing

Prop Sponsor: J.Tanzer [Tanzmanian Devils (CDL)] w/ editing contributions from B.Eisner [Uncanny X-Men (CDL) / Sinister Syndicate (FSDL) / The Avengers (TLSL)]

The initial reasoning for coming up with this proposal was to eliminate the need to have to be available for 2 separate days in the offseason – 1 for the Auction and 1 for the Draft – as it appears many owners have more and more obstacles in recent years to being available 2 times, on top of multiple league owners needing 4 or 6 days possibly, and in the end it isn’t easy to get 12 owners without any overlapping conflicts. So out of that that thought process comes the proposal below in which the idea is to make the Draft and Auction on 1 days with the draft first and then the auction for all current Free Agents as well as any undrafted rookies. We hope the result is a single and shorter overall day than the 2 we currently have. Here are the details:

The first change would be to shorten the draft to only 4 rounds. Each team would get their 4 picks (Rounds 1 thru 4) and they would be available to be traded just as they are now. No change to the salary value per round would made. 1st round picks would still be 12, 2nd round picks 10, 3rd round 8 and 4th round 7 salaries. Also no change to any compensatory franchise picks would be made, they would still be sandwich picks between the 1st and 2nd round and be at an 11 salary.

The second change is that the 4 round draft would be conducted PRIOR to the auction. There would be no change to the draft rules, meanings ALL NFL rookies and any NFL veteran that was not in the database at the time of the 1st (or subsequent) drafts are available to be picked. [This would require the Commissioner’s office to maintain a list of draft eligible veterans as they are selected or signed during the auction for the 2nd and 3rd drafts.]

The last change is that once the draft is complete we immediately begin the FA Auction where all RFAs, UFAs any undrafted rookies or new-to-the-database veterans are available to be brought up. The remaining auctions rules are unchanged and would work with the changes proposed in Prop 2 or if that doesn’t pass it would work with how we run things now.

If passed this would go into effect for NEXT season (2017) as no 2017 draft picks have been traded yet everyone would be affected equally.

Side Notes: We believe the shortened draft (half of past drafts) in conjunction with adding the undrafted rookies into the draft will make the average signing a little higher during the auction and therefore eliminate many of the late 2-3 points picks that seem to drag things out. We hope a side effect of this is actually shortening the Draft/Auction day or at least making it to one day helps out everyone. Also a shortened draft adds a little more strategy and drama to trading draft picks and planning your draft.

Commissioner Notes: In addition to Jeff’s proposal we would add that the minimum amount to sign a UFA during the auction be raised to 3 to match the pre-season waiver pick salary and make 3 our MINIMUM salary for a player. The commisioner's office no longer sees any reason that a player signed during the FA auction should be able to be signed for less than a waiver pick in the pre-season.

#4
Scoring Change: Add 2pt for Defensive 2pt Attempt Return for Score

Prop Sponsor: B.Eisner [Uncanny X-Men (CDL) / Sinister Syndicate (FSDL) / The Avengers (TLSL)]

This one is pretty easy, the NFL added a new scoring play last season (and it actually happened 1 time) that on a 2pt converson attempt, the if the defensive team gets possession of the ball on a failed attempt and returns the ball the length of the field it is now a 2pt score for the defense rather than a dead ball at the spot of the turn over. I propose adding a 2pt score in the 'Any Player Scoring' category so that if any player in the starting likeup for a team scores in this manner they recieve 2pt. If the scoring player is started at Returner and another regular position it would only be add 1 time to the regular position listing.

Commissioner's Notes: This one seems to just make sense.

#5
Add Suspension Slot

4a Prop Sponsor: Don't Remember Who Asked for This Actually, Didn't Write it Down

This proposal is to add an IR list slot for any suspended player with the following limitations:

  1. Only 1 available slot per team.
  2. Only players that are on a team's roster at the time they are suspended are eligible to be placed in the SUSP list slot. This means you cannot trade for nor pick up a suspended player after their suspension is announced and stash them away.
  3. Once a team uses this slot, the player in this slot can only be waived or traded. They cannot be moved back to the active roster (on current team) until reinstated by the NFL. If a player in a suspension slot is traded, they will move to the active roster of the receiving team and NOT be eligible for the suspension slot since players must be on their team at the time a suspension is announced to be eligible.
  4. If Team A puts Player A into the suspension slot and then waives him later to make room for Player B, a different suspended player, and then resigns or reaquires Player A later then Player A is no longer eligibile for the suspension slot, even if still suspended when Player B is activated.
  5. This is not a FA period exemption eligible slot. If a player is on the suspended list for an entire season, they must be kept as would an Active player and their Contract Status would increase.

This idea is that we have no control over the stupid things these players do in real life. So if your team is directly affected by something dumb your player does you may now have some protection other than using an Active Roster spot to keep the player and play the season at a disadvantage. Again, this would only be open to players that are on your team at the time their suspension is announced, and is not available to players added later thru waivers or trade.

Commissioner's Admin Note: Not sure where I stand on this one but with the limitations of only currently owned players at the time a suspension is announce being eligible as well as a single player limit, I think it may not be too consequential to our rules and allows for a small bit of compassion for owners with stupid players.

#6 (CDL ONLY)
CDL Division Realignment

Prop Sponsor: J.Krakower [Brahma Bulls (CDL)]

This one is simply enough. Since we have done realignment in both the FSDL and TLSL in the past couple seasons the request for a revote on CDL realignment is back.

Please note:

  1. This proposal is for the 12 CDL owners only. If you are not a CDL owner, please skip this one.
  2. As we did with the FSDL and TLSL, if realignment passes, it will stand for a minimum of 5 seasons before it can possibly be brough up again.
  3. Realignment would be random, as it was with the other leagues. The commissioner would get together with at least 2 other CDL owners (if possible, if not then at least 2 other BSL owners would be present) in person and conduct a hat draw for divisional realignment.

Commissioner's Notes: If this passes, the selection process would most likely happen in Tampa at a Rays game since 3 owners work there and I could go to a game and conduct the drawing with J.Tanzer to make sure at least one other CDL representative is present.

#7
Change Returner Position to a Special Teams Player Position

Prop Sponsor: J.Forster [California Eclipse (CDL) / Electric Mayhem (TLSL)]

With all of the NFL tinkering with the kickoff placement and increase in touchbacks over the years our returner slot has lost some of its original quirky fun. To keep the position interesting it is proposed to change it from strictly a returner position and open in up to a 'Special Teams Player' position. This change would keep all of the returner scoring for the position and add to it tackles, assists and turnovers that occur on special teams plays.

In the NFL gamebooks, the defensive stats (Tackles, Assists, Fumbles, etc.) are kept separately in the defensive scoring section so scoring this would not be an issue. This would allow teams to decide if they think a full time returner would be more valuable than an NFL special teams player or open up the position to any player on the roster that may play on special teams and reduce each teams requirement to use an active roster spot exclusively for a returner in order to not be at a competetive advangtage. This would add additional strategic planning for roster make up as well.

The additional scoring would be at the same level as their corresponding defensive scoring levels. 1pt for Tackles, 1/2 pt for assists, etc.

 

Proposals