2013 RULES: Anonymous Bidding

[Goodell]

We had an involved free agency improvement question in a past off-season I wanted to follow up with this year.
http://www.fangm.com/sportstalk/viewtop ... 06&start=0

Here's a simpler question for something that was very evenly split last time we asked.

Do you think it would help free agency for bids to be anonymous?

You'd know that Player X has a bid for $x/years $x SB, but you wouldn't know which team (or well-respected GM) was placing that bid.

We also had a previous suggestion of possibly having bids be anonymous except if they exceeded a certain high profile amount (like 2M/yr), where teams could more covertly make small player investments but once it involved more of the star players it was more likely to be known by everyone which teams were bidding for that higher profile player. Another previous suggestion was to not necessarily show whose winning with the top bid but still publish a list of which teams have placed a bid on the player during these negotiations.

Open to other suggestions here also. Thanks

[Ben C.]

I'm not sure where I stand on this yet, but here's an idea I just had:

What if the default was anonymous but there was a random chance of it being "leaked" to the media? The way I see this working is if it is a bid lower than $1mil, there's no chance it would be leaked and would remain anonymous. But if the bid is greater than $1mil, there's a 25% chance, if it is over, say, $5 mil there is a 50% chance of it being leaked.

That would sort of mimic reality in that some agents will put information out there about the teams bidding, but others won't.

Alternatively, we could have the "anonymous" bid pick a team randomly from the 32 to be the team that "bid" on it. That would be somewhat like reality because agents make stuff up all the time.

[redsoxfan31x21]

I'm not sure where I stand on this yet, but here's an idea I just had:

What if the default was anonymous but there was a random chance of it being "leaked" to the media? The way I see this working is if it is a bid lower than $1mil, there's no chance it would be leaked and would remain anonymous. But if the bid is greater than $1mil, there's a 25% chance, if it is over, say, $5 mil there is a 50% chance of it being leaked.

That would sort of mimic reality in that some agents will put information out there about the teams bidding, but others won't.

Alternatively, we could have the "anonymous" bid pick a team randomly from the 32 to be the team that "bid" on it. That would be somewhat like reality because agents make stuff up all the time.

Agree wtih this and really like this all the way upto the last paragraph. Cut that out and I'd like this option 100%.

The last option for voting is what I think would be ideal. You'd know who's involved in bidding but not necessarily whose winning.

[Chad55]

Hey, I like the anonymous bidding idea. I'm all for it!

[charlie813brown]

I am not sure the reasoning behind wanting this rule. The reason it works the way it does in the NFL is because they have scouting departments, media sources and the players PHYSICALLY visiting teams to know what is going on. We don't have that, so why hide the names?

I think the bigger bidding issue is allowing teams to bid in FA, when they are over the cap. I don't think you should be able to sign a player without making the cuts first.

[Royce R]

I am not sure the reasoning behind wanting this rule. The reason it works the way it does in the NFL is because they have scouting departments, media sources and the players PHYSICALLY visiting teams to know what is going on. We don't have that, so why hide the names?

I think the bigger bidding issue is allowing teams to bid in FA, when they are over the cap. I don't think you should be able to sign a player without making the cuts first.

if your over the cap it doesnt let you bid. pretty sure it was working when i tried.

[Goodell]

I am not sure the reasoning behind wanting this rule.

It has come up in the past. I think a lot of the push for it might have been that sometimes it can seem more important WHO is placing the bid rather than the player being bid. For example, during the regular season when free agency is less, maybe it means a lot more to teams watching new free agency bids if one of the top GMs places a minimum contract bid on a young lesser known guy who might be more well regarded overall by that GM's reputation. I think sometimes it can feel like the GMs who do the most research into finding gems can feel like their search is cherry-picked by others who don't have to research as much but just see what pops up from others work and just counter that. Some of that is inevitable perhaps, but if there was a little more secrecy about who put in the bid it might help with some of that. There were a couple other options related to that as well, but most of them were voted down pretty significantly while anonymous bidding was more supported, so wanted to run that by the league again this year to see if most wanted to do that or not as I gear the system up for free agency again.

The plan is to put in some tighter salary cap policing this year with stronger daily automated checking and more immediate actions taken by the system to correct problems if they go beyond the time allowed teams to correct themselves.

[charlie813brown]

I could support this during the season, as that would make sense, but during the offseason, so much is going on, is it really necessary.

Knowing who is bidding against me is crucial when I am considering counter bids

[Onyxgem]

I could support this during the season, as that would make sense, but during the offseason, so much is going on, is it really necessary.

Knowing who is bidding against me is crucial when I am considering counter bids

I think the problem here is that there are some people that bid on guys just cause certain teams bid on them and they have no actual want of the player....so blind bidding takes away that.

[sportznut]

I could support this during the season, as that would make sense, but during the offseason, so much is going on, is it really necessary.

Knowing who is bidding against me is crucial when I am considering counter bids

I think the problem here is that there are some people that bid on guys just cause certain teams bid on them and they have no actual want of the player....so blind bidding takes away that.

Exactly, and making the bidding anonymous would fix that issue. I'm for this 100%.