Our Decision On Owner Cutting Entire NFFC Team

[Son Of Leon]

I'm in this league -- I'm tied for 2nd best h2h mostly on luck. I signed up for the forums here today to post on this briefly.

I completely hear and understand Sandman's position. It's impossible to argue to with his points. AND I also think that Tom and Greg handled this openly and honestly. There wasn't a good decision to be made here, and they -- and we, in the league -- were all put in an awkward, highly unusual position by this player. They made a really tough call from a selection of bad options.

I'm playing in a $250 CBS league and it's a joke compared to this. There's nobody in charge, zero communication, family members within the same league trading each other their best players -- zero oversight.

I'm comfortable moving forward with the decision made. Just one player's take...

[Sandman62]

Feel free to respond to our decision and we welcome all feedback. It isn't a win-win situation for anyone. Hopefully this better explains how we ruled and why we ruled the way we did. Right or wrong, we welcome your feedback.

Ok...

As many of you know, we do our very best to allow all of you to run your teams as you see fit. We don't have a No Cut List. We handle each situation individually and when needed we will pull out players from the free agent pool to keep the integrity of the league intact. We felt we were doing that yesterday when we immediately pulled out all 7 top free agents. In looking at the rest of his roster, we saw players who were dropped by this one owner who were allowed to be cut in many other 12-team leagues. In fact, look at the NFFC Drops lists we posted yesterday for all of our other NFFC leagues and you will see that we allowed all 13 of these same players to be cut in other leagues.

Did you allow any other single player to drop all 13?

So the question is: Should we reverse all of these moves just because he cut these 13 cuttable players along with 7 No Cut players?

Yes, because other owners who cut some small subset of these 13 were acting in the interest of managing their teams and still trying to compete. There's an obvious difference.

Would that help this league, even though not a single owner in this league bid for ANY of these 20 free agents?

Yes, it would help because (a) we might've bid on them in the next 3 weeks and (b) he flooded the waiver pool with 13 players all at once, some of whom certainly may help other teams both score more points AND win more games. Keep in mind that, just because the 3 teams he faces the rest of the season aren't contending doesn't mean that contending teams might not benefit from these gifts that they likely wouldn't have (at least not all in one week).

The easy decision would be to make an example of this owner who blew off this season and may have caused damage to this league. We could easily do that by reversing all 20 moves, even though we've allowed these same 13 players to be cut in other NFFC leagues. By doing that we'd be returning these 7 players into the free agent pool:

Mark Sanchez
Jason Snelling
John Kuhn
Kevin Walter
Jason Avant
Jacoby Jones
Rob Housler

And you'd also be returning 13 more players to the pool, as well as removing 13 others from the pool.

The 13 free agents that we are allowing to remain in this league's FAAB pool are free agents that are available in many other 12-team NFFC leagues.

How many other leagues just had all 13 of them become available this week? Strong sense is NONE. Even if there are some leagues, how many had them all dropped by the same frustrated owner? You really are comparing apples to oranges.

And the 7 players he picked up this week were affordable for anyone to have picked them up. This league has 7 less free agents available because of this owner's moves,

And 13 more because of his moves. But I agree that in all likelihood, those 7 players never should've been picked up because anyone dropping the 7 players he did to get them - all at once - is obviously sabotaging the league.

fortunately his next three h2h matchups aren't against teams battling for the h2h crown. Not that this matters in our decision, but here are the standings in this league:

If it doesn't matter, then why did you bring it up? As I said, the extra free agents available can very likely affect H2H competition for the teams that do/don't pick them up. With 3 8-2 teams and 2 7-3 teams, this league is obviously still quite close - close enough that just one good game from one mediocre of these 13 dropped players could make the difference. Why on earth would you ever want to allow that possibility to occur?

Our first decision yesterday was to remove the top 7 free agents, per our rules. While this does look like "sabotage" and something we can act on per our rules, the bottom line is that the 13 players we allowed to be cut and remain in the FAAB pool are 13 players that were allowed to be cut in many other NFFC leagues. We can't say for certainty that his pickups are any worse than his cuts.

Look, it's this simple: You've stated many times that you don't wish to make owners' decisions for them on how to manage their teams. Yet something about THIS event compelled you to act. Had an owner dropped 1-3 of these "undroppable" 7 players (or a similar small group of any of the other 13), then I agree with you not getting involved, per your longstanding goal of letting owners manage teams as they see fit. But the fact that you DID get involved shows that you obviously felt this time it was necessary. WHY? (Because it WAS sabotage) Then at that point, why go back on your own rule and use your own personal subjective player evaluations to determine how much of this to undo? Isn't it cleaner and more objective to just undo the whole dirty mess?

Yes, there are now 13 different free agents there than if we had reversed all of the moves. But those same 13 players are available in other 12-team NFFC leagues -- including national contests -- and we did not make exceptions to keep any of them out of their FAAB pools.

This co-owner has only hurt himself.

Sorry, but that's just completely false.

[JETS SB]

I'm in this league -- I'm tied for 2nd best h2h mostly on luck. I signed up for the forums here today to post on this briefly.

I completely hear and understand Sandman's position. It's impossible to argue to with his points. AND I also think that Tom and Greg handled this openly and honestly. There wasn't a good decision to be made here, and they -- and we, in the league -- were all put in an awkward, highly unusual position by this player. They made a really tough call from a selection of bad options.

I'm playing in a $250 CBS league and it's a joke compared to this. There's nobody in charge, zero communication, family members within the same league trading each other their best players -- zero oversight.

I'm comfortable moving forward with the decision made. Just one player's take...

Great first post! I think this puts things into perspective. We complain about an issue and 100 comments and responses from ownership later, the situation is being handled... albeit a no win situation for Greg and Tom. But at least we have a Greg and Tom and we aren't playing at CBS. I've been there. It is an absolute disaster and although situations like this are ugly, look at our alternatives. Even in some of the other HSFF leagues, you don't have this kind of support and understanding from the leaders, in fact in many instances, the leaders feed into the anger, instead of looking for a solution that satisfies the majority. Although I don't always agree with Greg and Tom's decisions, I think they have looked at this situation and made the best call they can, while also looking forward to how they will deal with something like this in the future. Imagine if we had trading??? Lord help us.

[got heeem]

if there was tradeing the nffc would fold like the tigers in baseball

[BLACKHAND]

Couple of points...

I know it doesn't apply to this league but the NFFC need to do a better job of letting people know about the consolation play-offs in the national contest. I don't think people are particularly aware that they exist from my personal experience.

I know you gave pretty good reasons against it last time the subject was raised but I will say again all-play at the end is a much better way of negating teams that quit and give an unfair edge to teams that play them late in the year.

I agree with this. "All Play" makes much more sense at the end of the season, with many owners disregarding their teams at the end of the season, giving teams an advantage of having a weak schedule at the end of the season. Although in NFFC leagues, its all about points, a team going for top H2H, winning one of their last games 87-34, is definitely frustrating. Obviously, this was a once in a lifetime incident (hopefully) and this specfic situation doesnt effect the standings, but at a smaller level, the teams that leave hurt players in their lineup and haven't managed their team for weeks, it does more sense to have all play at the end of the season, rather than the beginning.

al , the only problem with " all play " is that it would be very hard to make up ground at end of season like that.

getting to the subject....i am sorry to say that i think this was not taken care of the right way. what could have been done was for greg or tom to get on the phone with this guy and have him make a quick apology on the boards and ask for his players back. could have pleaded temporary insanity. being SUCH A GOOD CUSTOMER he could have saved you guys all this crap and only a few would have still be pissed. going forward this is now a danger zone. what will be done in the future without the cop out of "this is the first time" and "lets hope this will never happen again". future problems is what you need to look at.

[Sandman62]

I'd like to understand the precedent being set here, as I really thought it would've been so much easier to not head down this gray path.

Which of these players should be undroppable?
1. Has averaged 12.0 PPG his last 6 games and just lost his starting QB indefinitely. Over the next 6 games, he'll face the 8th, 14th, 19th, 21st, 25th and 25th defenses against his position.
2. Has averaged 10.3 PPG his last 6 games and the player directly in front of him missed practice Wed and Thu and returned limited today. Over the next 6 games, he'll face the 6th, 10th, 16th, 20th, 26th and 30th defenses against his position.
3. Has averaged 8.2 PPG his last 6 games. Over the next 6 games, he'll face the 2nd, 6th, 13th, 15th, 21st and 23rd defenses against his position.

Player 1 is Heath Miller = undroppable.
Player 2 is Ronnie Brown = droppable.
Player 3 is BenJarvus Green-Ellis = undroppable.

Isn't this exactly the type of dilemma you've purposely avoided for nine years?

[Glenneration X]

What a mess.

[JETS SB]

Couple of points...

I know it doesn't apply to this league but the NFFC need to do a better job of letting people know about the consolation play-offs in the national contest. I don't think people are particularly aware that they exist from my personal experience.

I know you gave pretty good reasons against it last time the subject was raised but I will say again all-play at the end is a much better way of negating teams that quit and give an unfair edge to teams that play them late in the year.

I agree with this. "All Play" makes much more sense at the end of the season, with many owners disregarding their teams at the end of the season, giving teams an advantage of having a weak schedule at the end of the season. Although in NFFC leagues, its all about points, a team going for top H2H, winning one of their last games 87-34, is definitely frustrating. Obviously, this was a once in a lifetime incident (hopefully) and this specfic situation doesnt effect the standings, but at a smaller level, the teams that leave hurt players in their lineup and haven't managed their team for weeks, it does more sense to have all play at the end of the season, rather than the beginning.

al , the only problem with " all play " is that it would be very hard to make up ground at end of season like that.

getting to the subject....i am sorry to say that i think this was not taken care of the right way. what could have been done was for greg or tom to get on the phone with this guy and have him make a quick apology on the boards and ask for his players back. could have pleaded temporary insanity. being SUCH A GOOD CUSTOMER he could have saved you guys all this crap and only a few would have still be pissed. going forward this is now a danger zone. what will be done in the future without the cop out of "this is the first time" and "lets hope this will never happen again". future problems is what you need to look at.

On the "all play" thing, in 12 team leagues, if you are going to have it, end of season is better than beginning of season,week 1 and 2 (as it is now). Ground to be made up is most often points and this is not affected by "all play", but the issue of teams letting their team go is a much bigger issue, that can be helped a little by doing the "all play" weeks during week 12 and 13, for those battling for H2H. As far as the team dropping, I hear ya.. Its a no win situation. I see both sides of this and I dont know how I would react if I was in that league or if I were Greg or Tom. Just plain ugly.

[DonnyG.]

No cut lists don't work well because player values can change too quickly - commisioner judgement works better. In this case because the drops were based entirely on something other than player evaluation, I think reversing the whole thing would have been more appropriate, regardless of which players are available elsewhere. That gives the owner a chance next week to make legitimate decisions which will play out more fairly for the league. Probably doesn't matter much for this league, but next time it might.

I'm more concerned about disruptive players, past and present, that are allowed to come back and given the opportunity to do more damage. Also, BWaz should not in any way be lumped in with the guy from last season who made relentless offensive posts in the Diamond League against your best customers and the NFFC. Billy (among others) got sucked into a no-win argument with him and nothing else, and I doubt anyone here has a shred of contempt for him which is as opposite as can be from youknowwho.

I don't know about youknowwho and what he might have or might not have done in the past allegedly but I do think that calling out anyone who does not have a chance to respond in kind to an allegation is a classless, low-blow and all too easy a thing to do. Any person who chooses to use such a cheap tactic like this example here must have his values, morals, standard of fair play and very core called into question himself. Just my opinion.

[mattjb]

No cut lists don't work well because player values can change too quickly - commisioner judgement works better. In this case because the drops were based entirely on something other than player evaluation, I think reversing the whole thing would have been more appropriate, regardless of which players are available elsewhere. That gives the owner a chance next week to make legitimate decisions which will play out more fairly for the league. Probably doesn't matter much for this league, but next time it might.

I'm more concerned about disruptive players, past and present, that are allowed to come back and given the opportunity to do more damage. Also, BWaz should not in any way be lumped in with the guy from last season who made relentless offensive posts in the Diamond League against your best customers and the NFFC. Billy (among others) got sucked into a no-win argument with him and nothing else, and I doubt anyone here has a shred of contempt for him which is as opposite as can be from youknowwho.

I don't know about youknowwho and what he might have or might not have done in the past allegedly but I do think that calling out anyone who does not have a chance to respond in kind to an allegation is a classless, low-blow and all too easy a thing to do. Any person who chooses to use such a cheap tactic like this example here must have his values, morals, standard of fair play and very core called into question himself. Just my opinion.

amazing that after last year this post is here in all its glory. laughable.