CLICK HERE TO READ THE MEMO FROM COMMISSIONER O'NEILL TO ROFA OWNERS REGARDING CONSTITUTION CHANGES MADE ON 07/31/14.  

Brooklyn Mess Final Announcement 08.08.2013

Dear ROFA Owners,

Cheese and rice...I've made some mistakes in my tenure as Commissioner but none of them have blown up like this. I apologize for this mess and the distraction it has caused during a time where we should all be focused on preparing ourselves for the draft. Allow me to lay out the facts of this mess as I see it:

• Brooklyn traded $12 to Darien in a trade that helped the Skeets make a championship run.
• I dropped the ball on the website and didn't keep "meticulous records" like I am supposed to.
• Brooklyn trusted the website, which every owner should be able to do. Brooklyn factored in what the website said their draft budget was to make a trade for Peyton Manning, where they took on $12 more than they would have with Demaryius Thomas. Brooklyn and Protection had engaged in talks for a while and Brooklyn's main concern was that they weren't sure they wanted to take on any more money than they already were with their other expensive keepers.
• I then announced the mistakes with the draft budgets, which takes Brooklyn $12 deeper in the hole they were borderline uncomfortable with in the first place. Regardless of your opinon on whether Brooklyn should have known about the $12 they traded in ROFA VII, you have to acknowledge that there's no way they would have traded for Manning if the website said $188 instead of $200. That is undeniable.
• I then announced that I am implementing a B.C. tax, taking away $1 from every team to refund Brooklyn the money they lost due to my mistake.
• The league understandably disagrees and Bryan initiates an OLR. The OLR passes by a vote of 8-2.
• Brooklyn brings to light that the OLR should not be allowed, according to the Constitution which states "For the "Solution" to be adopted, two thirds of the owners who are not involved have to vote yes."
• This is a valid point, as every single owner is technically involved since they are having $1 taken away from them.

So here's my thought process. I made a decision that the league overwhelmingly did not like, but the OLR process was not legal according to the Constitution. Since we have a Constitution, I cannot just ignore it. (Whenever we have a problem in the league, the Constitution is updated to make sure that problem is covered in the future, and I will take measures next offseason to do just that for this issue.) On the other hand, I also cannot just ignore the opinion of pretty much the whole league, even if I still disagree, and throw it away on a technicality.

So we're going to have a nice little compromise. Brooklyn will be given $6 ($1 from 6 random owners picked via random number generator on Excel). I know this isn't ideal, but there is no ideal solution to this mess. Put yourself in my shoes for a second. There is no way I can throw away the league's opinion and give Brooklyn the full refund, but there is also no way I can uphold the OLR when the Constitution says it was not done within our rules. For you radicals out there, there's also no way in hell I am reversing the Manning trade (Trade 8). That would mean I also have to reverse Trades 9, 10, and 12 as well. This would affect 10 players, 6 teams, and God knows how many keepers. We are 16 days from the draft. That would be the absolute worst decision of all time.

I hope you all can see where I'm coming from and the reasoning for this final decision. In my opinon, this decision does a few things: 1) Makes sure the league's opinon and voice is heard and considered; 2) Makes sure Brooklyn doesn't get completely screwed; 3) Prevents Brooklyn from getting Jimmy Graham and a championship run last year for free; 4) Allows us to move on a focus on August 24th, which will no doubt be the best day of the year.

Sincerely,

Commissioner O'Neill

P.S. Below is the screenshot of the Google Doc spreadsheet I used to generate the random teams that will be giving up $1. I used a random number formula which produces, as one might expect, random numbers between 0 and 1. The six largest numbers are the teams that will give up $1. However, I wanted it to have 3 teams from the east and 3 teams from the west to make it a fair distribution so I volunteered the Chupacabras to take the $1 hit instead of Moscow, which was the 6th highest value. So the 6 teams are: Happy Valley (.9864), Moon (.8700), Hood (.8634), Hell (.7219), Tishomingo (.6425), and Chula Vista (volunteered). Travis was logged into the Google Document with me at the time and can attest to the legitimacy of the process.

League Improvements 07.24.2013

Dear ROFA Owners,

In accordance with the letter and spirit of the laws of the ROFA Constitution (namely, 13.2.1, 2.1.3, and 2.2.3), I have decided to make three improvements to the league. These changes and additions are being made with unanimous support from the Board of Governors.

Improvement #1-Keeper Injury Forgiveness
Please consult 8.2.7: "If a player is declared to be kept on August 1st and anytime thereafter but before the draft suffers a new, non-preexisting injury that, according to multiple credible sources, will force the player to miss at least one regular season game, the player’s owner will be given a 48-hour period to release him. The team that released this player will not be able to keep anyone else; they do not have any players on their roster as of August 1st."

Improvement #2-Hybrid Draft
Please consult 6.2.9: "The auction draft ends when every team is out of money. Once each team has exhausted their auction draft budget, a random order will be announced and a snake draft will commence. The snake draft ends when every team has no more roster spots available."

We are doing this to make sure all the rosters are filled at the draft, rather than everyone taking to the FAA the day after the draft and forcing a bunch of ties that need to be settled.

Improvement #3-Owner Contracts
Many league owners have voiced concern over the contracts and wanted to abolish them completely. I enjoy them, however, as it gives us something to do and talk about in the offseason and provides me with the pleasure of winning a holdout with Tony. Sure, they might be a little silly and serve little purpose, but I like them, OK?! So after some talk about doing away with contracts altogether, I decided to keep contracts but abolish the incentive guarantees. With fantasy football so often driven by things out of our control, it is irresponsible to hold owners to a certain threshold of wins. So immediately and henceforth, contracts will only be a number of years with no guarantee clauses. FYI...check out the updated Owner Contracts tab.

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact me.

-Commish

Roster Changes 06.24.2013

Dear ROFA Owners,

The league has decided to add an IR spot to the roster to curtail to our keeper-league format. You may use both your IR spots however you choose, but the theory here is that 1 of your IR spots would be for short-term use like always, and the other could be used for an Adrian Peterson/Peyton Manning situation where you may want to keep the guy the next season and in the past you may not have been able to afford having him in your IR spot all year but now you can.

-Commish

Free Agent Auction Solution 06.21.2013

Dear ROFA Owners, 

As you all know, last year we switched from waivers to the Free Agent Auction and it was a mess. The minimum bid was $0 so that you wouldn't exhaust your $100 budget on picking up IDP's. Since we were all then putting in several $0 bids on the same players, there were a ton of ties which ESPN settled with a non-rotating tiebreaker list that was not fair. So we adopted a rotating tiebreaker where you go to the end when you win a tie and I had to manually settle the ties and often times undo what ESPN had already done. Indeed, it was a mess.

Fret not, though, because #CommishIsWise. The solution for this mess is real simple. If we could add decimals to the bids, the chances of a tie happening decrease significantly. ESPN does not let us do decimals, but they do allow us to change the budget amount. So for ROFA VIII, your FAA budget will be $1000 instead of $100 and the minimum bid will be $1 instead of $0. This way, if you want an IDP, you can afford to put a real bid on him like $4 or $5 (which is really equivelant to 40 or 50 cents on last year's scale.) This way, we will not have a ton of ties because people won't be bidding $0 on IDP's. Sure, you could all just bid $1 now since it is the new minimum bid, but if you really want the guy there's no reason not to put more than that on him: YOU HAVE $1000 TO PLAY WITH! In the event of ties, we will break them the same way we did last year with the rotating list but it will be much easier to keep track of now.

-Commish

P.S. Perhaps the best part about this, as pointed out by the Green Mosquitos, is when Moscow ridiculously overbids for someone, $370 makes it look even worse than $37 did (or whatever it was).

Weigh in on Twitter with your opinon of this change using the hashtag #FAAsolution.  

Click below to download the document for the Decisions on the Recommended Changes for ROFA VIII and beyond.  

Click below to download the document for the Recommended Changes for ROFA VIII and beyond.

Click below to download the press release announcing the new owner of the Dick Artillery.