The DLF Commissioner’s Court

Matt Price

court
Welcome to the first edition of DLF’s Commissioner’s Court. This is a new article series where Carla Gruse and I will discuss a variety of topics, questions and concerns league commissioners face each and every season. Being a league commissioner is a necessary but thankless job. Without a commissioner, a league simply cannot exist. Without a good commissioner, a league cannot thrive and stand the test of time. Carla and I both have decades of commissioning experience in a wide variety of formats. We hope to bring some of the issues commissioners face into the light and into the consciousness of the fantasy owners who populate fantasy football leagues. We will be drawing many of our topics from the Commish Corner subforum found here.

This forum is a great resource filled with experienced commissioners willing to help with specific issues in your leagues. Of course you can also contact us, @coinflip22 and @MPricer, directly as well.

For this first edition of the Commissioner’s Court, we’re going to discuss some common issues I see come up in leagues every season. Carla and I will each discuss how we like to deal with the topic so you get two perspectives.

Let’s get to it!

“Is this trade fair?”

[am4show have=’g1;’ guest_error=’sub_message’ user_error=’sub_message’ ]

Matt: This has to be one of the most frustrating issues commissioners often have to deal with. An answer about how to deal with trade disputes when they come up needs to be in your constitution from the get go. If you play in one of my leagues, you know not to even bring up this question. The reason being is this – unless it’s completely obvious that collusion or cheating is going on, the trade is going to be approved.

To me, it doesn’t matter if other owners feel a trade is unfair or off balance. What does matter is that both owners involved in the trade are happy with it and have agreed to the terms. Every single fantasy owner has the right to build their team as they see fit. If you don’t have that freedom, why play the game at all? In the dynasty format, this is even more important. Player values fluctuate on a weekly basis and just because a trade looks lopsided now, it doesn’t mean next week it won’t shift the other direction. I’m sure we can all think of trades that seemed really bad at the time but in the end worked out in a way no one (well, other than one of the trade partners) saw coming. Maybe a contending team wants to trade away a stud rookie for a veteran who will help him win this year. The rookie may have more value long term but won’t help the owner win right now. Dynasty owners need the flexibility to make trades that shape their team into what they want it to be. The other owners don’t need to like a trade and are free to have an opinion about it but they should not have the ability to affect the outcome of a trade they are not involved in. I implore every commissioner to have a “no-veto” trading system section in their constitution so owners who join the league know they cannot affect trades they are not a part of. Having this rule in place will save commissioners a lot of headaches over the life of a league.

Carla: This is a great question to start with, Matt. I mirror your thoughts on this topic. I agree a commissioner’s job is to determine if the trade involves collusion and not to evaluate talent and values of players. You are spot on.

How Do You Handle Trades Involving Collusion?

Carla: This seems like an easy answer, but the path you travel to determine collusion can be a stressful and time consuming journey. The easy answer is the team should be removed from the league. I have a personal experience dealing with collusion/cheating in one of my leagues. The difficult angle is this is a serious offense and one you do not want to accuse an owner of without solid facts.

Once I suspected collusion, it was a couple months before I felt I gathered enough information to approach the owner. My first suspicion was actually a trade that occurred between two teams. I did process the trade although the trade seemed unbalanced in value it did not point directly to collusion, but it did raise an eyebrow. The next clue for me was the sign on and sign off times of two teams. One owner participated in league chatter and the other rarely participated. Each time the non-active owner would sign on, it would be one minute or less after the active owner signed off – this was the case during our league’s waiver times and weekly lineup times. I won’t go into every detail that led me to my discovery but I will add that I also knew this owner played in a league I did not commish. I shared my concerns with the commissioner and he began tracking his movements as well. I also contacted Myfantasyleague.com support and asked them to turn on the IP addresses of the two owners in my leauge. This allowed me to track his IP addresses for the moves he made while making trade offers, waiver moves and setting lineups. I shared this information with a league member I trusted and he confirmed my thoughts. I approached the owner and soon it was “The End” for him.

Matt: This is a really tough one. I completely agree you need to gather your evidence for a strong case before you bring any accusations into the open. To the best of my knowledge, I have been lucky enough to avoid being a part of a league where there was any kind of cheating or collusion, but in the event of such an unfortunate occurrence, it is important to know what to do. This is where having a bulletproof constitution comes in. When something like this does come up, you have a documented way of how it will be dealt with and what the consequences will be. Every owner who joins your league must know the rules and what happens if they are broken. Having that in a document accessible to your owners at all times is important because they have no excuse for not knowing the consequences of their action.

We’ve talked about some “not so fun” things in the first edition of this series, so I want to end on a more positive note. We all need to realize most people play this game for fun. I always assume participants in this great hobby are good people. This especially seems true in a dynasty setting because you will be interacting with these people for many years. Maybe even decades. Mutual respect when you interact with the other owners of the league goes a long way toward keeping twelve owners together for the long haul. One of the saddest things I can think of is when a dynasty league folds because the relationships within it are not strong enough to survive turmoil.

Play the game. Have fun. Be respectful. Case dismissed!

[/am4show]

matt price