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BlackHillsChris
Fri Oct 04 2019, 04:26p.m.
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Mark H. Thank you and you are correct about the taking over. You state that its a" bit boring ". Reading this comment and others I can see why you say that. I am to new to completely say that. Though their is a lot of entrenched teams

I been playing in various leagues for 30 years. All most all the leagues have reset, not saying the KRFL do it. Though it comes a time when you have to look not the short term but the long term. Every league goes through a cycle and need updated or changes in order to serve why we are here.

Also making changes that alter how things are done in a major way is hard in a current setting and maybe better served restarting.

Participation is tied to the fairness and fun of the league, also the level of what you have to do.

Thanks Again
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MarkB
Fri Oct 04 2019, 07:18p.m.
Mark Blume

Registered Member #81
Joined: Mon Oct 14 2013, 08:54a.m.

Posts: 1980
Chris - Thank you so much for your perspective and comments. I really appreciate it. You make very valid points.

Just a remember, our rules require a 2/3's majority vote to change any rules. So nothing will change unless at least that majority of members think it is a good change.

As Chris learned with his salary proposal last year, KRFL, at least since I've been the commissioner, does make many rule changes. Maybe that makes the league more stable or maybe it makes it stale. Not sure. I see my role in this as facilitating the discussion. I am glad so many members have made comments and I hope more do. We won't vote on anything until next Spring, so this thread will serve us well when we get to the point of members making actual proposals and then voting on them.

So keep the discussion going since I am not yet see a clear consensus that would gather at least 2/3 of the members voting for it.
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noodles
Tue Oct 08 2019, 03:05a.m.
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Joined: Mon Feb 18 2008, 02:12a.m.

Posts: 1268
Chris' post got me to asking if there is a structural imbalance in the league as a result of
our rules. Stated differently, how hard is it for someone with a bad team to get competitive?
As a perennial .600 team who has never won a playoff game in twelve years, the question has
importance to me. I decided to look into our league history to see if I could find some answers.

With regard to new owners, in 14 historical cases it took an average of 1.4 seasons for the team to get a winning record.
That average omits a couple of the newest members who have yet to achieve a season record of 9 or more wins.
It appears that it doesn't take very long for a well-managed team to get competitive.

I then decided to look at the last five years in the KRFL for a breakdown of performance. I restricted myself
to five years so that we were focusing mostly on the history since we passed the pro-parity rules limiting
in-season trading to four weeks, reducing the in-season salary cap to an additional $5m, and eliminating the $10m ceiling
on individual player salaries. Here's what I found:

First of all, in five seasons we've had five different league champions. That's a good thing.

Secondly, here's a breakdown of the distribution of team records over those five years:

Teams that had 5 winning seasons - 3
Teams that had 4 winning seasons - 4
Teams that had 3 winning seasons - 3
--------------------------------
Teams that had 2 winning seasons - 6
Teams that had 1 winning seasons - 3
Teams that had 0 winning seasons - 5 (*)

Let's compare that to the NFL over the same five years:

Teams that had 5 winning seasons - 4
Teams that had 4 winning seasons - 2
Teams that had 3 winning seasons - 7
--------------------------------
Teams that had 2 winning seasons - 9
Teams that had 1 winning seasons - 8
Teams that had 0 winning seasons - 2

Surprisingly, the percentage of teams with three or more winning seasons in the KRFL, 41%, is almost
identical to the percentage of teams in the NFL with three or more winning seasons, 42%. That tells me we are doing
something right if we consider the NFL as a lode star.

(*) I am a bit concerned about the excess of teams with no winning seasons and I'm not sure what to attribute that to but, on the
whole, the numbers tell me that the rule changes in favor of competitive balance and parity have been working.

On a note to Chris - like the NFL, the KRFL is a qb driven league and it ain't easy to get a good one. That's just the way it is.
We've made it more difficult to hold on to an elite qb (or any elite player) unless you are willing to pay the steep price of keeping one for
multiple years. In twelve years of playing, I've only had a top 5 qb on my roster twice and those two only became available to me because
of salary cap and tenure rules. I won't go into the times I had bad luck in the rookie draft or had to
put together teams with quarterback by committee but I feel for you.

That brings me full circle to my original post in this thread about how I'm concerned with in-season tanking. A couple people took
offense at the term so let's call it whatever you like - giving up the ghost, falling asleep on the job, phoning it in, taking a knee.
I still think it's a problem. Here's why. It's antithetical to the spirit of gaming. It gives easy wins to teams that don't deserve them and penalizes teams
not facing the tankers. Jeff from Salem is right. "Tanking," or whatever you prefer to call it, is bad for the league even if it's
temporarily a good strategy for an individual team. As such, we must fight against it.

My Recommendations

Hold off on the $70m in-season salary floor for now.
Leave everything else the same but,
Adopt Salem's idea of the reverse draft order. (Keep in mind that bad teams in that system would still never have anything less than a number 12 pick. I haven't had a pick that high in years).
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MarkB
Tue Oct 08 2019, 11:23a.m.
Mark Blume

Registered Member #81
Joined: Mon Oct 14 2013, 08:54a.m.

Posts: 1980
Very interesting analysis Steve. Thank you for doing that.
I am happy that over the past five seasons we've had five different champions and going from a losing record to a winning record can be done in 1.4 hours. I think that is a testament to the members and rules KRFL has.

May I ask you to do one more thing? I would be interested in finding out how many trades the teams the teams with 5,4,3,2,1,0 winning seasons in the last five years made. I suspect it will be inverse normal distribution (i.e. the teams at 5,4,1,0 made more traded than the teams at 2 & 3) as I've long believed the only way to win a championship in this league is to make trades. But maybe not. So that information will be insightful.

On Salem's draft order proposal (reverse order of teams not making the playoffs) my concern is what Chris stated. For a bad team, there is a huge difference between the player chosen with the #1 or #2 pick and the player chosen with the #12 or #11 pick, particularly if the team needs a QB. I know the counter argument is the rookie picks are a crap shoot and you are better off making a trade or getting a QB in the free agent draft. And while I agree with that, something tells me a straight reverse order draft will have too much of a negative impact on the worst teams. Since we already have a lottery for the first four picks, maybe a new lottery system where the 1st and 12th team have the same odds of getting the first pick, and the 2nd and 11th teams have the same odds of getting the first pick, and the 3rd and 10th team have the same odds..... Just an idea....
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noodles
Wed Oct 09 2019, 02:03a.m.
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Joined: Mon Feb 18 2008, 02:12a.m.

Posts: 1268
As requested: a rough survey of the number of trades over 5 years correlated with W-L records over the same period.

While trading has slowed down a bit, surprisingly the number of players and draft picks traded has been relatively consistent.
Avg number of trades per year - 22
Avg number of rookie picks traded - 22
Avg number of players traded - 53

Teams that had 5 winning seasons over the 5 year sample averaged 6 trades per year.
Teams that had 4 winning seasons averaged 4 trades per year.
Teams that had 3 winning seasons averaged 3 trades per year.
Teams that had 2 winning seasons averaged 2 trades per year.
Teams that had 1 winning seasons averaged .3 trades per year.
Teams that had 0 winning seasons averaged 1 trade per year.

Avg number of trades per year by a super bowl winner - 3
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noodles
Wed Oct 09 2019, 02:08a.m.
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Joined: Mon Feb 18 2008, 02:12a.m.

Posts: 1268
MarkB wrote ...

On Salem's draft order proposal (reverse order of teams not making the playoffs) my concern is what Chris stated. For a bad team, there is a huge difference between the player chosen with the #1 or #2 pick and the player chosen with the #12 or #11 pick, particularly if the team needs a QB. I know the counter argument is the rookie picks are a crap shoot and you are better off making a trade or getting a QB in the free agent draft. And while I agree with that, something tells me a straight reverse order draft will have too much of a negative impact on the worst teams. Since we already have a lottery for the first four picks, maybe a new lottery system where the 1st and 12th team have the same odds of getting the first pick, and the 2nd and 11th teams have the same odds of getting the first pick, and the 3rd and 10th team have the same odds..... Just an idea....


Maybe we can have our cake and eat it too. Have the first round order remain as we currently have it and then make all subsequent rounds use Salem's reversed order.
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Cliff
Wed Oct 09 2019, 02:10a.m.
Guest

I think everyone is thinking too much into this because in this league, any other league or the NFL there is no exact science to making everything even over the long haul. The suggestion of finishing 12th worst overall being a better drafting spot then the team finishing worst in the league is absolutely absurd. You are going to get owners disgusted because they did nothing wrong but have no chance of getting better quickly and end up quitting and with that rule and no trading good luck finding new owners.

Simply put most owners want a league with trading and freedom to build a team whether for today or the future. You want to restrict that you probably will end up restricting new owners from joining and having current owners tired of playing 16 games and losing by 20+ and quitting. Any league that has 24 teams will have a top-heavy league every year and a bottom tier. That can reverse the following year but you will never have 20 teams with 7-9 wins.

Here are facts in any league replay or real life and not much research needs to go into it. No team ever has a perfect draft and can field the perfect team every year. All leagues are won by player movement. Yes maybe the NFL is done more by free agency and the draft but in this league we can’t don’t have a bid system for free agents and rookies but a draft and our rookies don’t play until the following year. The NFL also has a lot of positioning for trades on draft day to get players they want to will holes. We have trades after the draft because we have limited flexibility with cap prior, contracts and next to no trading during the draft.

The NFL also can move players to different positions on the line, LB or DB to make a player fit on their team. Any player in the NFL can break out or over or under achieve. We are limited to the ratings from the year before and if our RB or QB gets injured we can’t take a backup with 50 attempts and let him play all year like an NFL team can. It will never be duplicated to the real NFL. Honestly, we need to get passed that and make the league fun for all members. What is fun is the better question and I would imagine for most that is playing the games and being able to adjust your roster to try to find a winning formula this year or in the future. Any way you try to trade it is a gamble and you can be wrong. You go all in and don’t have the horses you pay next year. You go for next year but don’t get back solid pieces you still could miss the playoffs the following. You sit tight and roll the dice the players on your roster will step up you can be right or wrong. There are no guarantees and the truth is trading is part of any league and more often than not with only 1 winner more teams end up hurting their chances for next year than capturing the ultimate goal of winning it all.

Everyone has a choice to trade or not. Maybe you can claim those that trade have better results though I am sure there are plenty of losers including myself you have over traded some years to come up thin the following year but if you choose not to trade you really can’t rip and complain about the owners who want too. But to take trading out of a league makes us all basically robots where we draft and play with what we have with no creativity to build a winner. As I mentioned prior the shift in high end salaries increasing and very few middle tier players with the decrease in season salary cap has already knocked out a lot of trading in this league and sucked some of the fun out of things. If you want to suck out more fun I think ownership will become an issue going forward.
Assuming everyone draft to $83M with fines included (which I can’t understand why someone wouldn’t, talking about a low cap of $70M isn’t worth discussing with only $5M extra for every team it would be hard for more than 1 team to drop that low because there is not enough cap space to go around to give away $13M for multiple teams. Do the math how many teams could pull that off? There is only $120M of extra cap space a year (24 teams X $5M) and if 15 aren’t trading for this year it cuts it to $45M extra in cap space and each team can only go up $5M so unless stars aligned perfectly not more than 1-2 teams could even hit this number and unlikely more than 1 can when matching up money to make a deal and keep the team going for it under the cap. This is a waste of time to discuss as if 5-10 teams can pull this off and in my opinion kudos to anyone who can be that creative to find 4-5 trade partners and find a way to make that work for them and acquire that many future assets because that is some hard work they did and they deserve it.

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MarkB
Wed Oct 09 2019, 02:58p.m.
Mark Blume

Registered Member #81
Joined: Mon Oct 14 2013, 08:54a.m.

Posts: 1980
Thanks for your comments Cliff. Keep them coming gentlemen.
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KRFL-BayCity
Thu Oct 10 2019, 05:10a.m.
Registered Member #12
Joined: Mon Sep 01 2008, 07:40p.m.

Posts: 798
I think draft order should remain as is.... the incentive for winning amongst weaker teams needs to come from a different source; maybe an extra roster spot somewhere, maybe an extra pick(s) in a mid-round of a draft, maybe entry into a lottery for an extra franchise player keeper, maybe a salary reduction on a franchise or tender signing, maybe an extra roster spot somewhere in the process, maybe a salary exemption for an I.R. player.... no solution is perfect; some of the above would help the trying teams without alienating the weakest ones; but then you must also decide how far up the teams to extend the incentives.... the more I ponder, I am thinking entry into a straight lottery for one of the above perks; it gives you the incentive to try but no guarantees so that it isn't a blanket reward for all....
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noodles
Fri Oct 11 2019, 01:14a.m.
Webmaster

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Joined: Mon Feb 18 2008, 02:12a.m.

Posts: 1268
Cliff, you may be right that this discussion is a foolish waste of time because a completely fair system
can never be built. You may also be right that the majority of game players would hate the ideas put forward
so far if they were enacted. The good news is that we decide things democratically in this league and it takes
crossing a high two-thirds majority bar to get a rule passed. If you're right that most players would hate these
rule change ideas, the ideas will get easily voted down and we'll move forward. If you're wrong, because cautious
and slow change is built into the system, when a rule change passes it by definition represents the will of the
majority of players in THIS league.

I see no problem with politely talking over the possibility of improving the league. Few would argue against trying
to achieve greater parity, a more level playing field, more diversity in success, and, in this case,
discouraging "tanking" and encouraging competitive play throughout the season, etc. We can debate as to how to achieve
those goals or whether they are even possible but that doesn't make the discussion not worth having.

Assuming that "tanking" is a problem for the super majority of members, we thus far have a few suggestions as to
how to address it, each with pros and cons.

1. Eliminate all in-season trading. (This idea seems to have little support).
2. Set an in-season salary cap floor (i.e., no team can have less than $70m in salary).
3. Rework the draft order so that the most successful non-playoff teams get the higher picks (or some version of this).
4. Blow up the league ( a "reset") and start fresh. (No takers on this idea so far).
5. Use DKSports salaries instead of our salary system. (This needs some explication).
6. Use other incentives to encourage winning besides the reverse draft proposal (extra draft picks, extra franchise player,
salary relief, etc.)(I think Jerry's idea of coming at this issue from another direction could be a good one. Now
we need to get to the specifics.)
7. Do nothing (or better yet, return in-season trading to week 8 and add $5m more to available cap room).

As to the secondary issue of whether or not we need to make more provisions to turn around really bad teams or help
out a new owner, the issue has been raised but without any specific proposals so far.

Please weigh in. The more ideas and voices the better.
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