From the Desk of the Commish

Ryan McDowell Posted On July 2, 2015

desk

As you probably know, one of my passions in the fantasy football industry in creating and managing dynasty leagues. Of the 18 dynasty leagues I currently play in, I am the commissioner of 11 of those. On top of that, I also run another 26 leagues (and counting) as part of a commissioner service.

I’ve written about a number of topics relating to the role of the commissioner in the past, including a strong set of rules and various types of creative leagues. In anticipation of the revival of the From the Desk of the Commish series, as I often do, I reached out to my Twitter followers for potential topics that should be covered and the response was overwhelming. With that in mind, I’ll turn this and subsequent articles into somewhat of a commissioner mailbag. If there are other topics related to dynasty league commissioning that you’d like to see discussed, just respond in the comments section below.

First of all, here was my call out on Twitter…

Working on some articles from a dynasty commissioner POV. Any specific topics you guys are interested in related to that?

— Ryan McDowell (@RyanMc23) April 23, 2015

@RyanMc23 league activity and how to handle lack of activity by owners and ways to generate more activity — Clark The Cub (@BMatz08) April 23, 2015

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Having a good, active dynasty league is something we all crave. The easiest way I have found to encourage activity is to actually require it, meaning I have built into the rules that all owners must check into the league at certain times, must respond to all trade offers and must vote in all league polls. Now, that ensures a certain level of activity that I would consider the floor. If I have owners that are just meeting those bare requirements, I am likely not satisfied and if they are not meeting those requirements, they are putting themselves in risk of being removed from the league.

While this may be the easiest way to have an active league, the best way is to find 12 active and dedicated owners, but that is much easier said than done. To do this, I think you have to go back to that dynasty community that I mentioned in the last edition of the Commissioner Mailbag. Filling a league with dynasty players that have already proven themselves as active is your best bet.

@RyanMc23 removing “bad” owners, ie:the guy that everyone rushes to take advantage of on trades cause he doesn’t know what he’s doing

— Aggiejeff00 (@aggiejeff00) April 23, 2015

This can be a very touchy subject since the typical commissioner is trying to keep peace between all league participants. I think back to my first year as a dynasty commissioner of the initial HyperActive league. We had a strong group of over 20 owners, but there was one bad apple that stood out amongst the group of strong personalities. This person would confront others on the league message board, repeatedly send terrible trade offers and generally berate all other league members. None of this was technically against the rules, but he was making this an unpleasant experience for all others involved. I quickly decided to remove him from the league and found a replacement. I feel that was one of the best decisions I’ve made as a commish. Otherwise, the HyperActive leagues may not have had the success they have since that time. If a commissioner is opting for a similar outcome, I would make sure that the offending owner has had plenty of warnings, but I do not think it’s necessary that a league rule must have been broken. Often times, the commissioner must make decisions that are simply best for the league.

@RyanMc23 how to do expansion/contraction — Jeff (@jeff_underscore) April 23, 2015

I’ll be honest, this is not something I’ve encountered through my time as a dynasty commissioner, but I do have some thoughts on organizing either expansion or contraction.

From my observations, along with some quick research, it seems that expansion is much more common in dynasty leagues than contraction. While I have not had the chance to oversee expansion in any league I commission, I was once an expansion team. In my first dynasty league, I joined a friend’s existing league made up of his college friends. The league was expanding from eight teams to ten and I was to be one of the new league members. Again, this was my first dynasty league, so I knew little about the common practices in dynasty leagues. I was told that I could fill my team from the waiver wire and in the upcoming rookie draft, I would have the last pick in each round. Needless to say, it took a while before my team was competitive. This would be the completely wrong was to handle expansion.

Instead, I would allow each returning league member to protect a certain amount of players. The exact number would depend on roster size and number of players in the starting lineup. In most cases, I would allow everyone to protect three players in addition to the number of players in the starting lineup. So, if your league starts eight players, I would allow owners to protect 11 players. After each round of the expansion draft, the returning owners could pull back one player onto their roster.

As far as contraction, obviously the players once belonging to the teams leaving the league will now be available to the remaining owners. The question is how to organize that. I would not include those players in the annual rookie draft as that would drastically change the value of those picks. Instead, I would use blind bidding waivers to allow all owners to have a chance to add those veteran players.

@RyanMc23 how to handle waivers in the offseason

— Dan Martin Jr (@dmartin815) April 23, 2015

I’ve answered a couple of questions on how to encourage activity in dynasty leagues and one way it to ensure owners always have something to be responsible for. Clearly, during the season, that would include submitting their best possible lineup, but there also needs to be off-season events to keep all parties actively engaged. The best way to do this is to allow off-season waivers. In most of my leagues, waivers never end, with the exception of during the annual rookie draft. Otherwise, we run blind bid waivers, followed by a first come, first serve period, year round and I would encourage most leagues to use this format as well. I do participate in some leagues that have open waivers during the off-season. Considering my typical activity level, I appreciate this, but some dynasty players with less forgiving schedules may not be open to this system, which I understand.

@RyanMc23 How to incentivize trading — FFBren (@FFBren) April 23, 2015

This is another important challenge and one I think commissioners often unfairly feel responsible for. For most dynasty owners, being knee deep in trade talks is the highlight of their fantasy season and we all want to be in leagues with active traders and a high volume of trades, but that is not always the reality.

In the past, I created a rule designed to encourage and increase trading. The rule called for each owner to add a player to the trading block and all other owners would then be required to make a trade offer for said player. This rule failed for many reasons. In the end, owners were making trade offers for players they didn’t want, resulting in one-sided offers and hurt feelings.

Based on this experience, I don’t think it makes sense to mandate trading or have any type of rule to require a certain level of trade activity. Instead, the answer goes back to simply having a league full of the most active and dedicated owners possible.

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Ryan McDowell

Contributor at Dynasty League Football

In addition to his senior leadership role here at DLF, Ryan is also a husband, father of three and PE teacher. Ryan is the commissioner of multiple dynasty leagues, most notably the Kitchen Sink Dynasty Leagues. Here at DLF, Ryan’s focus is on identifying, monitoring and analyzing player value.