by honestiago1 » Tue Sep 26, 2006 9:53 pm
I liked sudden retirement and free agency, as well, b/c, to me, it forces us to deal with more issues. I like having some things out of my control, having it as if these players have a "mind of their own." If not the retirement idea, then the "serious injury" idea might be worthwhile.
I also like a smaller pool of keepers. The way the decade league works now, you can keep a LOT of players (subject to payroll). I'm in favor of sticking with an 80M payroll all the way throughout, though. Or spending a few years with 60M, then rocketing up to 80M (or staying at 60M all the time -- then we really have to make some choices about players).
In fact, the 60M payroll might be the thing that makes the league interesting, and ensures a lot of player movement. With 60M, you have to choose your core carefully. Under this system, you SHOULD be allowed to keep sub-1M players in your corps, since they allow you to carry some of the more expensive players. Since the cheaper players are bigger gambles, anyone keeping a slew of them in order to, say, hang on to Rocket, is gambling on some other folks (though there are some cheapies I'll use every year, no matter what card I get [ALopez comes to mind]).
If an 80M payroll, it'd be interesting to play the FA and retirement. Whether it is "fair" or not is sort of immaterial. FA isn't fair by its nature. But since FA or retirement selection would be random for EVERYONE, you could argue that it IS fair to ALL.
See, my whole idea was to allow drafting of ALL the players, then institute rules that made player retirements random. You'd protect your core players (say 6), then place nine of your keepers up for possible retirement or FA. If you lose them, they go into the draft pile. Each season, we'd hold a two-round draft of eligible players, rebuild our core group (6 plus the nine "semi-keepers"), then autodraft the last 10 slots (or live draft the final ten slots prior to the season starting).
There wouldn't be any tracking of when players "actually" came in the league. Everyone would be eligible. The most covted players would be in the league every year, and some decent, mid-range players would disappear via retirement (even a sub-1M could retire, if we were allowed to designate them as "semi-keepers").
Anyway, we SHOULD debate this openly, and see what everyone else thinks. Maybe we can compromise between those who want the traditional decade league (the control freaks) with those who want some randomness (the anarchists). Personally, I could probably live with a decade league. But I'd like the excitement of having to deal with money-grubbing or broken-down players leaving my team. It would definitely allow us to choose a "GM of the year" award!