Challenging Team Owners through League Rules

As a general rule, a game where enacting a successful strategy is needed to win requires multiple decision points between starting and finishing the game, and having multiple paths to victory, each with it’s own decision points, significantly increases the amount of strategy required and the game’s “replay-ability.”  For that reason, one of my main philosophies in designing leagues is to force difficult decisions upon owners.  There must be a trade-off to every decision.  As one example, I like to create tension between short- and long-term interests.  I’m not a fan of “taxi squads” in which teams can stash young players that they hope will develop in later years without using a spot on their active roster.  If a team wants to hold such a player to improve their long-term production, make them use an active roster spot and thus create a cost against their short-term, present day performance.  And what about my wanting to recreate the NFL?  Well, their practice squads are not at all similar to how such squads are used in fantasy football leagues.  As to NFL practice squads, they use those players as practice field bodies, primarily to simulate what they are likely to see scheme-wise from their upcoming opponents. If one of them takes advantage of the coaching and develops into a roster-worthy player in the future, then all the better. But those players only make a couple hundred dollars per week and the team has no protections in keeping them. If another team wants to sign one to their roster, there’s nothing the first team can do about it. So if teams in my leagues want to have their own developmental squad, then they can go ahead. They can keep a list of players they’re keeping an eye on and hope they develop into something down the road. They just need to remember to cross the player’s name off their list when I sign him to my roster in week 11 with the intention of keeping him for the next season.

Other ways of creating costs to decisions is by having limited roster spots, thus making every decision to cover a bye week or temporary injury a calculus in talent evaluation and replacement availability.  In my salary cap leagues, have cap hits for cutting players on multi-year deals, with the bigger the hit for the longer the remaining number of years on the contract.  This not only correctly replicates the NFL, but it increases the strategy regarding signing free agents.  In such a set-up, if the cap hits are too high then there can be a temptation to teams signing players to nothing but one-year deals, thus turning the league into a re-draft league.  So, as always, be mindful in how you structure this rule.  Team owners in salary cap leagues always want the ability to sign their own players coming off a contract, and thus deny other teams the ability to even have a chance of acquiring him.  Let it be possible, but expensive.  It becomes another decision point in which the advantages and costs are weighed carefully, and increases the game’s strategy.

So think very carefully about how your league rules will play out, and how to create a cost to most decisions.  A big potential problem is that the team owners will try to vote in rule changes that make things easier on them.  They will want to keep their better players for longer years, or will favor scoring changes that help out the positions of their best players.  Even if they aren’t one of the better teams, they will still vote in favor of such changes, not realizing that they are hurting their long-term prospects.  Don’t let them do this.  The Commissioner must retain sole authority to alter the rules.  Don’t make many major changes, and when you do only enact them after sufficient time to allow teams to appropriately alter their strategy.  My biggest mistake with my first complex league I formed was allowing majority vote to enact rule changes.  My influence as the league founder got me enough votes to avoid major changes at first, but the longer the league ran the more bad rule changes were enacted. I was eventually left with a long list of improvements I wanted to make and mistakes I wanted overturned, and the only remedy was to form a new league.