A Modest Proposal to Change Slow Auction Drafts

Many of you reading this take part in auction leagues; they present a level of fairness that many owners seek out as opposed to a random draft order generator. Owners have a lot more control over who they inevitably get on their team without hoping and praying that a player falls to them.

There are three basic forms of the auction draft – the in-person live draft, the online live draft and the slow auction draft. The first two kinds of auctions are usually done over the course of a few hours and have timers ranging from ten seconds to a couple of minutes per player, while the third allows a player to be on the board for several hours and as long as a day per winning bid.

There are benefits to both ways of auctioning. The live versions get the process done quickly, but require everyone to be focused and present at the same time. The slow draft variation spreads the ever over several days or weeks and allows those involved to be engaged at their leisure. Despite the different formats for different levels of league engagement and the thousands of leagues run using these variations, one of these formats is broken – it’s the slow draft.

As I sat through the past couple of days targeting my chosen players and placing bids upon them in a start-up slow auction draft, I began to realize just how broken this format is. This particular league has a 24 hour timer on every player/ In other words, in order to win a player an owner must be the top bidder for 24 straight hours. The timer is a bit excessive in my view, but it does allow everyone a fair shot at a player as long as they log in every day. The timer is designed to promote fairness, but what is actually happening is far, far different.

Many of the owners in this league seem to be your typical owner. They’re not looking to make waves are fairly friendly and are just trying to put together the best team they can. However, unfortunately, not everyone in the league fits this mold. At least two owners have decided to make this process horrifying for everyone involved. Rather than putting in timely bids on players they want on their team, they’ve anointed themselves the arbitrators of fair value or are simply trying to wear everyone into the ground before the league even takes off. Despite their motives both of these owners do the same thing – they wait until an action is nearly over to bid high enough to reset the clock on a player.

Players like this exist in every league that does a slow draft. The first, “the arbitrator,” feels the price for the player in question is too low and that the player is worth more than he is going to be won for. In order to achieve this price, the arbitrator will bid in the minimum increments allowed by the league until the proxy bid is overcome and the timer for that player is reset with the arbitrator as the high bid. This individual has no intention of winning the player, they set no proxy bid to keep that player, and they only want the price driven higher. The arbitrator knows someone will outbid them because only one bid is required to take that player of their hands – something that’s extremely likely if the player is desirable. The arbitrator will continue to do this as long as they feel the player is undervalued and actually views themselves as an asset to the league. I’d say they got at least part of the word “asset” correct.

The second individual, “the troll,” doesn’t have a rhyme, reason or strategy for their last-minute bidding. The troll simply wants to make others irritated by preventing their competition from obtaining any kind of satisfaction. The troll follows the same tactic as the arbitrator – they wait until the waning moments of a player auction and bid the player up. They are less particular than the arbitrator in the fact that they don’t care if they reset the clock on a player. If they do, it’s simply icing on the proverbial cake. The troll is simply looking to make their league mates miserable by any means at their disposal. If they’re a special kind of troll, they’ll even drag about it through the league chat, message board or email list.

It’s because of these two kinds of owners I’m calling it quits on slow auction drafts.

I don’t need the headache, the pettiness or waste of time these two types of owners bring to those around them, and I’m sure many of you out there don’t either! Maybe I sound bitter, but I sincerely doubt I’m alone in this sentiment. A simple, anecdotal poll of those who have taken part in slow auction drafts has revealed to me that these individuals exist in every single slow auction draft that occurs between individuals who don’t know each other too well. If you’re part of a slow auction draft, you likely don’t know your league mates all that well. That’s not always the case, but more often than not it’s a safe bet. If you like the format, but hate the drama associated with it, I may have a solution.

I’ve thought about how to fix the slow auction draft format for a long time and have actually developed a solution I feel preserves the format, but limits or marginalizes the arbitrators and trolls out there. This solution does not require drastic changes to the format and it’s my hope that some fantasy hosting sites out there will this concept up for next year. If one hosting site in particular can incorporate this for next year I may return to the format.

Enough teasing, let’s get to the solution!

If this solution were to be incorporated in the league I spoke of earlier, then everything would remain the same. The 24 hour clock, the ability to bit up until the last minute, everything. However, escalators start to come into play around hour six. Instead of being able to increase the bid by one dollar, you are now only able to increase the bid by two dollars. At hour twelve, the escalator increases to three dollars, at eighteen hours, it’s four dollars to increase the bid and in the last hour, the minimum bid to increase the bid is five dollars. These amounts are arbitrary, of course, and based solely upon the economics of your league, but the concept should be clear and transferable. As you can see, this solution eliminates troll bids, punishes the arbitrator, promotes activity in the bidding process and will keep any slow auction moving along much faster than it otherwise would.

From my experience. the slow auction bid is in dire need of a shake up. The arbitrators and trolls are killing this format slowly but surely with no relief on the horizon. Unless we can get some of these fantasy football hosting sites to provide leagues with tools which serve to limit theses deviants, I can’t see this format really taking off. In my opinion, that’s very sad because the auction format, when done correctly with an absence of drama producing people, can be very fun and can really level the playing field.

I’d like to encourage those reading this to try to roll out systems which employ this concept or lobby your dynasty league hosting site to embrace this concept. I’d also love to hear any other ideas those reading this article have for improving this format, or any format for that matter.

Finally, remember, don’t be an arbitrator or a troll! It’s a cheap thing to do to those with which you’ll be interacting for the rest of the time you are a part of the league. People can have long memories and what you do today might come back to bite you down the road.