The 24-Team Challenge: Live Draft against 23 other owners

[maligned]

This is an idea I've been thinking about for quite a while. Please read the details before you sign up. It seems complicated at first, but it's actually pretty simple.

"The 24-Team Challenge"
1. 24 franchises are drafted live by 24 different owners on Penngray's site (www.fantasysportstools.com)
2. Unique stadiums are drafted
3. Four total leagues are formed in which each owner must compete two times with the one team that he has drafted. Teams are dispersed in leagues such that each owner would not see any team twice in his division and would face 17 different owners in total between the two leagues he joins. Each team will compete in either League 1 OR League 2 AND League 3 OR League 4. See listing below:

League 1
East 1,2,3,4 Central 5,6,7,8 West 9,10,11,12
League 2
East 13,14,15,16 Central 17,18,19,20 West 21,22,23,24

League 3
East 1,10,15,24 Central 5,2,19,16 West 9,6,23,20
League 4
East 3,12,13,22 Central 7,4,17,14 West 11,8,21,18

4.All four leagues run simultaneously.
5.Any transactions performed by a franchise must occur with BOTH of his teams...(example: Owner 1 drops Torres to pick up Schilling in League 1. He is required to do the same with his franchise in League 3.)
6.An overall champion will be determined with the following scoring system:
Regular Season win: 1 point
Playoff Series win: 5 points (10 points max earned by a team in the postseason)
Because the emphasis here is trying to recognize the best team in overall performance, there will be less emphasis on simply getting to the playoffs (which is many times determined by just being in the right division), but still some bonus points available for winning a series.
7. $65M salary cap (read below)
8. DH rule applies
9. No salary cap penalty for waivers (read below)

Reasons for a league like this:
1.It forces owners to create a balanced team. They will have to be successful competing against 6 different divisional opponents and 17 different league opponents. If someone wants to make an adjustment to his team, it must help the team's overall balance because the change will occur in two different league settings.
2.It adds even more intrigue to the live draft. With 24 franchises, there is a feel more similar to that of real baseball.

Problems with this setup:
1.An $80M salary cap is unworkable. There is not enough salary to go around. Having no salary cap is also unworkable. Some owners will have significantly more salary than others because of the disparity in player values in the top 75 players.
2.If transactions must take place across two leagues, there could be issues with owners making a transaction in one league, then not being able to pull it off in another league because another owner claimed the player he wanted. In reality, league owners will need to have access to information about transactions in all four leagues at all times to be sure players are available.

Solution to transaction problem:
1.Make all transactions public on a message board string before performing them. For example, Owner 1 will post a message saying he is claiming Torres and dropping Schilling. He must hit "enter" and doublecheck that no other owner of the 24 has claimed Torres before his message gets posted. He then must claim Torres and release Schilling in both of his leagues within one hour. Once a posting has been made that Schilling is available, he officially becomes available to all other owners.
2.Trades may be made from ANY owner to ANY other owner. In the case of two owners not being in the same league with both of their teams, they would circumvent this problem by simply releasing and signing the correct players. For example, Team 1 trades Torres to Team 3 for Schilling. In League 1, this is no problem. They simply conduct the trade as normal. In League 3, the computer would assume that Schilling is unclaimed since Team 3 is not in League 3. Thus, Team 1 would simply drop Torres and pick up Schilling. In League 4, Team 3 would need to do something similar: drop Schilling and pick up Torres (who the computer sees as unclaimed).

Solution to the Salary Cap Issue:
1. Because of the types of transactions described above, there is almost no way to do a salary cap that could be governed by the computer. The only solution is to do a $200M league in which owners follow a given salary cap. A $65M cap will force us to use the large majority of the top players, but will allow everyone to be competitive.
2. Since there will be only very cheap free agents available, there will be no penalty for adds and drops throughout the season. Again, we can pull this off because the computer will think we're using a 200M cap. There will simply be a limit of 10 drops for the season (trades don't count as drops). This will prevent extreme add/drop screwing around.

Additional considerations:
1.25-man required roster
2.26-round draft (unique stadiums must be drafted at some point)
3.Unlimited trades during the draft, but you must finish with a 25-man roster that fits salary cap and autodraft requirements
4. After the draft, no transactions may be made until after the autodraft. There would be no need for a waivers period, but no transactions would be allowed until noon ET the day after the leagues fill. At that point, people could begin posting transactions on the league discussion thread. Obviously, everyone would have to pay close attention and refresh his computer often while making decisions. Whoever shows up first on the thread gets to make the proposed transactions that are listed.
5.As I mentioned, all four leagues would run simultaneously.

Draft Details:
1. Serpentine
2. Pick-3 Lotto Numbers will be used to determine draft order (please enter a state when you sign up)

[maligned]

Remember: Be sure to read the rules before you sign up. It's not too complicated, but you'll be lost unless you know what's going on.

1. maligned-Indiana
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[cummings2]

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[maligned]

Let's give this a try again...

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[errormagnate]

Let's give this a try again...

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[maligned]

You own one team. That team plays in two leagues at the same time. Whichever owner of the 24 has the best success overall in the two leagues he completes is the winner. The other rules are simply adjustments to make the league work with the Sporting News parameters. Please ask if there's something that doesn't make sense.

[CHARLESBELL]

maligned, interesting concept and should make for some intriguing possibilities.

Need to get some clarification on a couple of things:

1. Salary cap - you say an $80M leauge is unworkable and so will use the $200M league, then say that you plan to have a $65M salary cap? How much money will a team have to spend? If you are looking to have "the majority of top players" selected, $65M does not seem to be a large enough cap. Not sure I understand where you are going with this.

2. Transactions - Requiring that the same moves be made by both of an owner's teams is going to be impossible to manage. Either moves will be made that will violate the rules or there will be no moves made because it is too hard to figure out. Manually figuring out who is really available in what league before a move could be made based on a bunch of posts is not realistic IMO. I would suggest that it would still be plenty challenging even if you let transactions happen normally within each league without forcing an equal move.

3. The live draft is really a standard 12 owner with a full 25 man roster plus stadium draft. That draft then applies to the owner's two teams. Correct? How are the teams assigned? I see how teams 1-24 are assigned to leagues, but how are they assigned to owners (ie, team 1 would also have team 24; team 2 gets team 23, etc?)

4. A 26 round live draft will take time to do, just so you know. Most live drafts only pick around 15 plus stadium and can take days or even weeks to do. Folks need to be prepared for that.

5. Actually winning a championship gets you no points?

[maligned]

1.An 80M salary cap is unworkable because the average team will only have 73M in salary, even if every player is taken in order highest salary to lowest. So, we could just make it an 80M cap and just not worry about the cap. However, as I mentioned, there is a HUGE discrepancy between picks 1 and 24, and a not so huge discrepancy between picks 25 and 48. Thus, the person that has picks 1 and 48, if he's smart at all, will have a 5M salary advantage over the guy with picks 24 and 25. The salary discrepancy in later rounds is not big enough to ever come close to making up the difference. Having the first pick will be a HUGE advantage.
By making the cap 65M, all the top players will be used. There will be very few players over 1M left on the board at the end.

2.If we allow moves to be made as normal within each league, it completely defeats the purpose. All the players from the 12 owners that aren't in your league will be available. You could completely remake your team during the waivers/post waivers process. The idea of this concept is to see how one team does in different environments.

3.Team numbers will be assigned by draft position. In other words, if you get draft position #1, you are team #1 in leagues 1 and 3. If you have draft position 2, you are team #2 in the league list. If you notice, teams are dispersed so that your one team has to compete in two different leagues against many different owners.

4. I realize live drafts take a long time. This one would take at least a couple weeks.

5. Every time you win a playoff series, you get 5 points, just like in the Tour. A first round series win is 5 points. A finals series win is 5 points. Any series win is 5 points. A championship is billed as 10 points in the Tour just because it's 5+5. It's the same here. You just don't get bonus points for winning your division alone--only for continuing to win games.

[CHARLESBELL]

Ok, I think I got it. What I had to work out is that the players are being spread over two leagues and can't be duplicated so twice as many players will be picked in the draft. Now the $65M cap makes sense. I'm in. :-)

1. maligned-Indiana
2. Cummngs2-WA
3. SteveAmes(errormagnate)- Virginia
4. charliewb - CA
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