2011 league: 2011 Live Draft

[bernieh]

Dear "2011 Live Draft" League,

This is my official response to the situation that has arisen in this league.

It's my job as arbiter to look at ALL sides of the debate, and for the record, I do see some valid points by everyone. In my opinion, the trades in question were indeed pretty one-sided, so I can understand the concern by most of the other teams in the league. HOWEVER, the trades were NOT explicitly a violation of our Fair Play Policy. There would have to be clear and unequivocal evidence of collusion or tanking in order for us to take action, and there isn't in this case. In fact, there seems to be evidence that both managers conducted these trades in good faith. As such, I can't say that this is grounds for official intervention, and it's hard to believe any unbiased third party would.

So while I commend the owner of the SEMO Cardinals for volunteering to reverse the trades, I can't blame the Dallas Matrix for not wanting to do the same. From his perspective, he pulled off some trades [i:6a95768925]in good faith[/i:6a95768925], did nothing wrong besides making out with the better side of the deals, and should not be blamed for wanting to put his new players on the field. Perhaps some of you might say you'd volunteer to reverse the trades if you were in his shoes, and that's great, but some of you might not, and it would be hard to blame you.

That said, I ALSO know what it's like to be in everyone else's shoes; you're excited to start a new league, but then you see one team get seemingly much stronger, and your hopes for competing get somewhat deflated. I get that. But now put yourself in my shoes - I can't, in good conscience, penalize one manager [i:6a95768925]who made some honest trades[/i:6a95768925] because his competition is unhappy. I hope you can understand that, although it's a tough decision for me that I hate to have to make, it's the right one.

So where does that leave us? Well right now everyone's unhappy. And I would like to do whatever I can to rectify that. The best course of action would be if the Dallas Matrix would finally be willing to undo the trades. But if he still refuses - as is his right - and if every other manager in the league would not be happy otherwise... then maybe the Dallas Matrix is just not meant to be in the league. If he agrees, I will be happy to find another manager to replace him, and will give him a replacement credit with which he can start another team at his leisure, and we can all try to move on.

Again, I hope everyone understands where I'm coming from. This is the part I hate about my job!

Sincerely,
Bernie H.

[23pirate]

My question is still....do these two teams know each other or is one team just a trojan horse for the other...what is to stop two people from doing this type of thing? No one is going to admit they have cheated, if indeed they do!