Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Q&A - Dealing with team owners who quit

Should the commissioner dump all of the players from an abandoned team into the free agent pool?

I've learned the best way to handle things as a commissioner is to do so with the least amount of manipulation as possible. Don't overreact to problems. Remember, you're the commissioner, but you're also a team owner. Other team owners in the league should understand that there may be some problems along the way, and you can only do your best to make things as fair as possible.

There are at least four things a commissioner can do when someone quits the league. I'll rank these in order of most ideal to least ideal.
  1. Assign the team to a new owner. Some fantasy football sites like Yahoo allow you to do this. Look in Commissioner Tools. If a new owner takes over and actively participates - problem solved!
  2. Do nothing! I call this the "as is" solution. You simply do nothing to the team - no add/drops or any roster changes. Teams will have to face the so-called "dead team," and while the matchups will not be fair for each team that faces the dead team - at least you won't be blamed for making things worse. The last thing you want is to manage a dead team to somehow honorably lose each week. That's too much manipulation from the commish in my book.
  3. Place all the dead team's players on the bench. This only works if each team in your league plays the dead team the same number of times. It's like creating a bye week for each team.
  4. Dump the dead team into the free agent pool. Some team owners request that the commissioner dump the players from the dead team into the free agent pool. I've found this to be the worst thing you can do. Rarely will each team owner accept this idea. Also, depending on your free agent acquisitions, and who's on the dead team, the opportunity to pick up players will probably not be fair to each team. I consider dumping players to be a overreaction by the commissioner and will only make things worse. Keep your leagues integrity and go with one of the other solutions above.



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