Max Moves = NO MAXIMUM. HURRAY!

In the past 2 seasons I've set the maximum number of moves to 10. Meaning that dropping and replacing a player on your roster would count as 1 move against your 10. The spirit of this setting was to prevent team owners from making too many rapid impulse moves. Team owners who do this are also known as free agent vultures. With the limit in place team owners would have to consider how the move would effect their team for the long term. Thus putting more thought into making moves.

It just wasn't popular. It made dealing with bye weeks and injuries too difficult for some team owners. The limit of 10 resulted in many teams needing just 1 more move at the end of the season but they were all tapped out. As commissioner I could not help but feel a little guilt over this.

The experiment I had in last year's league helped me realize a good alternative to setting max moves. When 2 of the team owners quit in the beginning of the year I came up with a plan to divide up the players on those teams. I set weekly waiver from Sun-Tue and gave everyone 200 pts in a free waiver acquisition budget. Then I dumped all the players from the 2 forfeited teams. This allowed everyone a few days to make bids on the players they wanted. It worked out pretty well. Hmmmmm.

This year I happy to say, "max moves are set to NO MAXIMUM." Instead I've set free agents to go on waivers every week from Sun-Tue. And everyone gets 1000 pts in their free waiver budgets. Hows that?

I believe this change will not only make everyone happy but it will also add another cool element to the league, the free waiver budgeting. Can't wait to see how it plays out.

First Round of Duties: Registration and Draft Order

It's been a long off-season for the Baltimore Fantasy Football Gurus (BFFG). The 2010 fantasy football season is near! I can hardly wait to enjoy my favorite spectator sport and feel like part of the action.

I've already started recruitment. Four others have joined me. Three more teams are needed to make the league's minimum of 8. I feel confident that I will always gather enough teams to make the league minimum. The goal is to achieve the maximum amount of teams, which is 16.

Sixteen teams is the target. This is the ideal number because it mimics one half of the real NFL. With 16 teams I can divide the league into 4 divisions of 4 teams each. Each division winner wins a playoff berth. The top 2 division winners are awarded first round byes. And there would be 2 wild card teams, which can come from any of the 4 divisions.

Once I have all the teams registered the next commissioner duty is to set the draft order. Last year I blogged about a special method to handle the draft order. The idea was to have this year's draft order be determined by the final standings from last season. I came up with this idea in hopes to entice teams to stay involved in the league even though they my have little to no chance in making the playoffs. For instance, the first team cut from the top 6 would have first pick. Then the remainder of the picks would follow sequentially to the last place team. Next, the playoff teams would follow in reverse order of their standings, similar to how the real NFL determines it's draft order. Finally new teams would follow the defending champion in order of who registers first. Sound confusing? Maybe it is, just a little.

Some of the team owners from last year said they would rather have the draft order be determined randomly. Their argument was that since we were not doing a keeper league nothing should carry over to the next season. Therefore, in order to truly start from scratch, the draft order should be random. Despite my efforts to debate my magical plan, I'm starting to think they were right.

So I'm thinking of going with a random draft order every year. Why not? The draft order really doesn't matter all that much anyway. Case in point, the BFFG defending champion had the last pick in last year's draft. So maybe I don't need a complicated scheme to determine the draft anyway.

There's another deciding factor for switching to a random draft order. The team owner who should have the first pick says he can't join this year due to other personal obligations. Huh. And there are others from last year who also say they're out. I'm actually looking at many new team owners. So it's probably for the better. I plan to inform the team owners that the draft order will be random. Hopefully all will agree. I'm sure I'll hear a few say, "I told ya."