Rule discussion for next year if not sooner

[larry linke]

I am starting this topic because when you are old and collecting social security and on medicare you are liable to forget it at the appropriate time (ask our President LOL). A highly respected GM in the AFFL just signed a player to a 1 year, $2 M contract with a $59,999,999 signing bonus. This isn't just any player. He is rated as a 89 at CB and PFF rated him as the # 1 CB in the league. He valued the contract this way so that he can acquire the rights to the player this year to sign the player to a LTC next year and not worry about paying a higher salary. This is wrong on so many levels. In the BRFL we have a Slack channel which we discussed this at length. We agree that it is not illegal but is definitely exploiting a loophole that shouldn't exist and is creating an unfair advantage for him. I feel it is against the best interests of the FanGM community. Between the 32 GM's in the BRFL we are probably in every other league and wouldn't be surprised if it spreads to all the other leagues (especially since I am mentioning it). I don't know if anyone else has done it.

Since this signing affects the long term integrity of the leagues I feel it should be declared null and void. To allow it to continue until next year and close the loophole next off season would give a major benefit to one GM that everyone else would not be entitled to.

Another possibility is to pass a rule PRIOR to next years free agency is that a substantial signing bonus on a 1 year or a short term contract is to be included in the salary when considering a long term extension.

Thanks
Larry

Minnesota AFFL
Tampa Bay BRFL
Jets FFFL

[bpboguta1483]

I agree with the argument Larry, but here's the kicker. a B grade for any player 75% of the franchise tag price, so next year that owner will have to pay market price if I am interpreting correctly

[Royce R]

Just so everyone knows it was me who signed the contract. I have no ill will towards anyone in this conversation. As long as everyone is working towards ideas that can better the league.

Let's just not turn this into a name calling complaining fest. We're all adults here (I think) and should welcome any ideas towards bettering the best league I have ever been a part of in my life.

Have a good one folks.

[sportznut]

I don't believe in making rules retroactively b/c someone found a loophole, but going forward one easy fix is that you can't sign any FA on a one year deal to an LTC the next year.

But as someone mentioned, LTCs are based on grades, and averaged out. So, it might be a moot point once you pull the top 10 salaries of similar grades, and position.

[larry linke]

My complaint is he acquired the player by paying $61,999,999 but when he goes to sign him long term one year later it is based on $2 M. For the record Royce and I had a very good conversation via DM and this isn't a Larry vs Royce thing.

The strength of Fan GM and what makes it the best league I have ever been in (since the mid 80's for baseball ) is its realism. Acquiring players this way isn't realistic. FanGM just finished its 17th year and for some reason nobody has ever done this before. Is it because most people agree with me that we want a realistic league and not a gimmick league which is run (and by my opinion) degraded by loopholes.

Larry

[sportznut]

My complaint is he acquired the player by paying $61,999,999 but when he goes to sign him long term one year later it is based on $2 M. For the record Royce and I had a very good conversation via DM and this isn't a Larry vs Royce thing.

The strength of Fan GM and what makes it the best league I have ever been in (since the mid 80's for baseball ) is its realism. Acquiring players this way isn't realistic. FanGM just finished its 17th year and for some reason nobody has ever done this before. Is it because most people agree with me that we want a realistic league and not a gimmick league which is run (and by my opinion) degraded by loopholes.

Larry

Its based on 10 salaries close to his overall grade. Top and bottom salaries thrown out. So, it averages 8 salaries, some above, and some below his grade. Yes, the 2M salary would be factored in, but so would 7 other salaries. In fact, the 2M is likely to be the lowest salary, and would be thrown out.

Anyways, I understand the concern.

Once Royce said I can't call him names, I lost interest.

[bpboguta1483]

If you sign a player for example a 30 mil. SB, then the salary should be around 25-30% of that (anywhere from 7.5 mil to 9.0 mil. per year) more realistic that way. Maybe once a SB hits a threshold, then the percentage kicks in....just a thought

[sportznut]

If you sign a player for example a 30 mil. SB, then the salary should be around 25-30% of that (anywhere from 7.5 mil to 9.0 mil. per year) more realistic that way. Maybe once a SB hits a threshold, then the percentage kicks in....just a thought

I was one of the guys who suggested in the offseason that the SB shouldn't be more than 200% of the salary. Or, in other words, the salary shouldn't be smaller than 1/3 of the SB.

To me, in the NFL there's more guaranteed money that is in every contract every year, but in my example, if you had a salary of 5M AAV, then your SB wouldn't be higher than 10M AAV.

It doesn't have to be my formula, but I think that would be closer to realism, and make everyone happy. If you took it a step further, perhaps a minimum salary doesn't require a SB at all (like we currently have), but you wouldn't be able to have a lopsided deal like this one presents.

[soonertf]

Moral of the story…bid big early and get your targets, because free agency gets crazy after about 2 days.

It does need fixed, but every proposal will just get voted down, no matter how great of an idea they are.

[Goodell]

Thanks for the discussion. We did have an off-season poll and discussion topic about some of these main points directly in February in preparation for possible adjustments to the rules this year.

However, changes in LTC calculations to factor in SB or other adjustments were soundly rejected 27-15.

It was mixed, but the majority also voted to not change SB restrictions on bidding (versus adding additional maximum SB calculations compared to salary bid, etc.).

Both areas discussed and rejected in league vote.

However, it is something that comes up over and over annually seemingly no matter what we do.

A couple of years ago we made it MUCH easier to counter the 1-year high-SB low-salary bids. They were very hard to beat before, but we made it much easier to counter with more realistic longer-term bids. Now, though, most of the comments I get say that's too far and SB not as important as it used to be and salary over-inflated, etc.

So it's hard to win and lots of opinions on all sides no matter what seemingly.

Maybe next year there will have been more discussions and some great new ideas, and can be presented in a way that gets a lot of support or enough support anyway where it makes sense to change the rules for the future for avoiding extreme cases.

In the meantime, any future LTC is always based around average of salaries for similar players with only a couple exceptions (QBs, elite grades, high salary). That's the intention. And a low salary one year doesn't change that a player will still get an average-based salary for LTC next season. Whether he's minimum salary now or 10M so long as it's under the average he'll get the same LTC next year based around similar averages. Generally speaking there isn't a benefit of a low salary getting a better LTC deal than if it was a bit stronger salary. The LTC is the same, based upon average players. Extreme high and low cases are thrown out of that average, and so it's just looking at the most reasonable top 8 salaries of guys just like him. Even if there's an avalanche of extremely wacked out deals otherwise that many argue mess with LTC, there are MASSIVE amounts more of players not with extreme deals that make the average of similar players based upon something reasonable generally for that kind of player at that position. There are 128 starting LBs for example, and even if upset about a couple of them getting extreme high or low deals messing with LTC there are so many more other guys very similar without extreme deals for the average with extremes thrown out.

LTCs also come with SB requirements which make them arguably very expensive (some argue too expensive) well above that average salary in terms of overall cap value. It's paying MORE for the player than average of guys like him in order to convince him to not hit the free agency market and just stay with you without bidding wars. While making a smaller salary doesn't help your LTC value, already having a very high salary over that average instead does hurt that LTC value requiring it to be a raise because you can't convince a sim player to sign with you longer term, not get other teams bidding on him if you're going to give him a lousy pay cut. He's not having that.

So having a very high salary impacts LTC, but a low salary does not change the LTC value for someone.

We can look into maybe outlawing future 1-year deals to not be extendable, but there may be some tracking complications to that from year-to-year and additional manual labor in that also. Arguably also unrealistic in that there are reasonably many examples where you could see guys taking 1-year "prove it" deals and doing well for their team and then the player and team wanting to keep him around longer realistically. So it makes some realistic sense to not outlaw, arguably, in addition to having to create new tracking from one season to the next or additional labor.

In an ideal world, we'd have less extreme unrealistic examples or loopholes that anger people. I understand why. In some cases we didn't think about people doing something unexpected, or maybe we did but difficult to build a limit or script around certain things without impacting other types of bids that maybe don't work for those limits or rules. And in some cases we've proposed potential fixes to the masses, but found it to be rejected soundly.

We'll keep talking, monitoring some of the examples that anger people most, and see if there are limits/rules toward those we can implement that make sense to most. Thanks for the continuing discussion!