by cminton » Fri Sep 15, 2006 1:04 pm
Once again, I publicly apologize to teepack, the Tour and my league. I am responsible for my team. I did not do this intentionally, but that is not an excuse. (If I did want to slip an NL player on my roster, I would not draft him in front of everyone in the league on Penn's site.)
This is supposed to be a game and fun for us. I assume we do this as a diversion from our busy, daily lives. Leave teepack alone. I do not have nearly enough time to be the commish here. I am thankful that teepack does it. I have been commissioner for many fantasy leagues and am one now. It is a time-consuming, thankless job.
The idea that teepack should check everyone's roster is insane. The only way to check the rosters perfectly is to pull up every team and then click on every name. Unless you know every player by heart, you need to see the card to see what team they are on. (It is not displayed on team rosters.) The Tour has been averaging 12 leagues. He would have to go to the link for each league, then to each team, and then to each card. That's 3,600 cards. That's one hour per second it takes to get to each card. I think it would take several seconds per card. That's several hours of clicking on links. I do not expect him to do that.
As for my punishment, from the beginning, I have said that it would be reasonable to give me a zero for this league. I do think if I participate in enough leagues to drop one, I should be able to drop the zero. I made the mistake, so let's assume that without Lopez I would not have won any games. (If you do this, however, I do think that should apply to anyone who used an illegal player - whether it is Pujols, Lopez, Myers or a $0.50 scrub. You have to be consistent) gstanis has suggested that I have to include the zero when my average is calculated. You might as well kick me out of the Tour. To make the top twelve It's going to take a 100 average. I would need four scores of 125 to get to a 100 average after including a zero. I do not think this deserves being kicked out of the Tour.
As for tanking, it is well understood and condoned for teams to bench top players in the games leading into playoffs if you have clinched a playoff spot. You're doing that to protect your best players, not to sabotage the league. You're actually "penalized" in the Tour for it, because if you lose a few games as a result, that can cost you a half point on your tour average. (Positions 10-14 are currently separated by one point. That's five losses, so bench players at your own peril.) In any case, this is very different from dropping all your players for $0.50 scrubs. We all know the difference..
Lastly, on the rules, it is nearly impossible to write down rules that cover every situation. In fact, the harder you try, the more loopholes you create. The real job of the Commissioner is to understand the intent of every rule and to make decisions that make sense and are in the best interests of the league. That's what we trust teepack to do. The rest of us should thank teepack for managing the league and respect his decisions.
The only advice I have for future tour events is to use themes that are easy to control within the switches/controls provided by TSN. That is, if TSN does not have a switch to limit the player pool to AL or NL, let's not do a league that is AL/NL only.