Q&A - How to manage trades

How should I manage trades as commissioner?

Ideally, commissioners should not review every trade in their league. Reviewing trades is time consuming and creates a lot of unwanted drama.

As commissioner of 12 years, I only vetoed one trade. And although I still feel that my veto was justified, it caused me a lot of grief and has lead me to set my league to 'Trade Review - League Votes.'

By setting your league to: Trade Review - League Votes, the commissioner is taken out of the picture. This democratic approach allows the commissioner to react to trade arguments objectively. If there comes to be too many trade vetoes, or not enough, then that is the fault of the team owner majority, and it's up to them to communicate and react to trades fairly. If major trade problems occur in the league, the commissioner should speak up, and request that owners be more reasonable or they won't be invited back to the league next year. Commissioners who opt out of reviewing trades, and leaving the responsibility to the team owners, strengthen the integrity of their league. The Trade Review - League Votes setting eliminates the chance for you, as the commissioner, to make a mistake managing trades. You won't be accused of vetoing a trade that would otherwise affect your team's chance at winning. And you won't be accused of helping out, or not helping out, another team for some insinuated personal reason.

Set the time to vote on trades to 1 day.

To stimulate trading in your league, try reducing the standard 2 days for voting on trades to 1 day. 24 hours is enough time for team owners to get the notice of a trade and make their call whether to allow it or not. Trades should have some advantage over waiver pickups, which are typically set to 2 days.

Fantasy football websites should allow teams to include acquisition budget dollars into trades.

Wouldn't that be cool?

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.

Creating the Schedule

One of the most overlooked tasks for a fantasy football commissioner is devising a simple way to
create a fair schedule. The schedule has a profound influence on how a team will perform in the season. As team owners look anxiously over their schedule, they check for those tough weeks and for those big breaks that come throughout the season. What will you do when both your #1 QB and your #1 WR face the Seattle Seahawks defense in the disruptive CenturyLink Field? Could you, in fact, luck out and face the team that has Adrian Peterson and RG3 when they're both on their bye weeks? Lots of things can happen, and it's all dictated by the schedule.

There are three ways to create a fantasy league schedule:

1. leave it based on the order in which team owners joined the league (default)
2. the commissioner manually creates the schedule week to week
3. the commissioner randomizes the schedule

Although the default method of allowing the schedule to be based on when team owners joined is basically random, and it requires no action from the commissioner, there is no way for the rest of the league to know that. In fact, the case may be that the commissioner could have invited owners and had them sign up in an order that's fortuitous for their team by cherry picking who they'd rather face more often. Also, leaving the schedule based on sign ups just doesn't feel right. It's generic.

Having the commissioner manually create a schedule week to week is the most troublesome. Making decisions on who should play who, how often, and when is too difficult and too time consuming for commissioners. And if your commissioner sets the schedule manually after the draft, you should be very suspicious, as all the information they need to rig the schedule their way is there for them to manipulate.

This leaves randomizing the schedule as the optimal choice for commissioners. A random schedule is fair, and it's easy for the commissioner to manage. There are at least three important things for the commissioner to do when randomizing the schedule for their league:

1. randomize and set the schedule before the draft, this virtually rules-out the idea that the commissioner could have rigged the schedule
2. click the 'Randomize Schedule' link only once, clicking it multiple times suggests some level of manipulation from the commissioner, and it's unnecessary
3. have a team owner present as a witness, or document the randomizing of the schedule with a Screencast-O-Matic video

I have followed-through on all points of my scheduling creed. You may view the randomizing of the Greed is Good FFL schedule here on YouTube.