Throwing in the towel

mtreff4 · Post by **mtreff4** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 1:16 pm

Hey Greg and Tom,

In my league, as well as my brother and my neighbors, there are teams who have stopped submitting their lineups, thus starting guys on their bye weeks and guys like Hasselbeck even though they have derek Anderson or Dave Gerrard on their bench. Even more, there's a team in my league who starts 2 or 3 guys who are not playing in some weeks, but then in other weeks he puts in his best lineup. I'm starting to think maybe he has friends in the league. Possible collusion.

This throws off the competitive balance of the league and quite frankly, in a league that costs $1300 it is complete bull$#%! I expect it in a free yahoo league, and even in a $150 nffc satellite its not a surprise or a big deal. But for the main event, there's gotta be something we can do.

Can you install some kind of program where if at 1pm on gamedays if a guy has players in the starting lineup who have a bye or are declared out during the week, can the site automatically put in a bench guy at that position?

Help me out, this is bothering me. $100,000 on the line, this is basically cheating.... any ideas?

mtreff4 · Post by **mtreff4** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 1:27 pm

...I understand nothing will happen for this year, but this is a great league with very few flaws, and this is a major flaw. We've gotta find a way to prevent it for next year.

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 1:33 pm

Originally posted by Mike Treff:
Hey Greg and Tom,

In my league, as well as my brother and my neighbors, there are teams who have stopped submitting their lineups, thus starting guys on their bye weeks and guys like Hasselbeck even though they have derek Anderson or Dave Gerrard on their bench. Even more, there's a team in my league who starts 2 or 3 guys who are not playing in some weeks, but then in other weeks he puts in his best lineup. I'm starting to think maybe he has friends in the league. Possible collusion.

This throws off the competitive balance of the league and quite frankly, in a league that costs $1300 it is complete bull$#%! I expect it in a free yahoo league, and even in a $150 nffc satellite its not a surprise or a big deal. But for the main event, there's gotta be something we can do.

Can you install some kind of program where if at 1pm on gamedays if a guy has players in the starting lineup who have a bye or are declared out during the week, can the site automatically put in a bench guy at that position?

Help me out, this is bothering me. $100,000 on the line, this is basically cheating.... any ideas? No, we can't submit lineups for folks. At $1300 a team, folks should be able to manage their lineups for more than 5-6 weeks a year. I will gladly look at your league and your brothers tomorrow morning to see if 2 or 3 teams in each league have really given up. It's hard to believe, but it's up to everyone to manage their teams and it's not my job to reach out to anyone. This is what they signed up for.

If you can show me any semblence of collusion, that's a different story. That's also a serious charge against other owners. Feel free to e-mail me at [email protected] with more info and we'll stay on this.

mikeybok · Post by **mikeybok** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 5:49 pm

Originally posted by Greg Ambrosius:
No, we can't submit lineups for folks. Greg ... In my opinion you already do ... you start each new week with last weeks lineup thus setting an initial lineup each new week.

It would be great if you could use a better automated system to set a beginning lineup for each week that would make non managed teams a little more competitive. You could even use some neutral services projections to set an initial lineup. We could then alter it to what ever we wanted.

renman · Post by **renman** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 6:13 pm

Ugly,

I agree with you. This is something I have talked about casually for years here. With todays technology there must be something we can do to protect league integrity when the occasional owner bails on the event. I am not saying we should have someone literally managing quitter teams and making free agent bids, etc... However, if there is a viable player on the bench that could be inserted for a player that is on bye or has been clearly named as OUT for that week... something should be done in the spirit of competitive fairness.

It is at the very least a worthy topic to discuss.

TradeStar28 · Post by **TradeStar28** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 7:10 pm

Most of the time,, the injury report has players listed as questionable....sometimes doubtful...so an automated system cannot tinker with those players because it would not be fair to have someone with a dead team all of the sudden get a viable bench player right at game time.

The only way it could be done is possibly with just bye week fill ins if available on bench.

Honestly, this is just one of the small things that are crappy about any fantasy football leagues, big or small, and I don't forsee it getting changed here in the NFFC

pizzatyme · Post by **pizzatyme** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 8:12 pm

Man I hope collusion doesn't enter the picture here. What a shame if that's the case.

Bad enough are all the abandoned teams.

What is the penalty if collusion is proved here or at any point in time? I'd hope banishment as I wouldn't want to be in a league with someone who exhibited that before.

Let's hope that never happens!

ToddZ · Post by **ToddZ** » Sun Oct 26, 2008 1:10 am

Isn't the purpose of the Top 10% of total points making the championship round rule to counter these occurrences?

Each season, how many teams make the 100K round strictly on the basis of H2H record and are not in the upper 10% of total points scored?

mtreff4 · Post by **mtreff4** » Sun Oct 26, 2008 4:36 am

Greg, I said one team in the league starting 2-3 guys who aren't playing, not 2-3 teams in each league who are doing this... Go to my league New York league 6, Team Burns. He started 3 guys who werent playing, for two weeks in a row, and scored like 60. Then last week he changed his lineup compltely and scored 134 and won. There is another team in my league who has done similar things, cant recall team name at moment but he's one of the bottom few teams.

Then go to NY league 2 and Team Hosford. i think this guy just gave up. there are posts on each of these league message boards from owners asking guys not to do this.

Like I said I'm not furious I know this can happen, but its ridiculous that it does and I think an automated bye-week lineup filler would be an awesome addition to the league.

mtreff4 · Post by **mtreff4** » Sun Oct 26, 2008 4:37 am

Zola, right on. But in that case, it should just be a total points league, period. Forget head-to-head.

Right now, first place is determined by overall record so your argument doesn't carry enough weight.