There is also no doubt he successfully lobbied to forego the usual week of post waiver activity to compress the season start and make adjustments to his strategy more difficult because it is not a typical arrangement for most people in a lefty park. I think this was part of his shock and awe plan, so in fairness to Cristano, he was on a tight timeline to ditch his self-imposed .50 bargain roster and Max BTW did his own switcheroos multiple times, and effectively. It's a competition so no need to disparage anyone. But I think it is all in good fun. Hell, we all want to win.
As far as the length of preseason, I'm not sure anything actually got changed? In the draft chat Moose left it up in the air and made it seem like the decision would be made after the draft. Then the league was created with the 3 days before Opening Night, suggesting to me that because we finished before midnight, the setting gave us the first Monday. We'd been assuming the deadline was 11pm, but my read is the deadline was actually midnight and nothing was actually changed. Unless of course Moose tells us differently! (And let's not forget that you were lobbying to turn the clock on a couple hours before the assumed deadline because you wanted the short preseason as well.)
Also it wasn't really a short preseason, it was actually just the normal default length for any league. If you count the draft as part of the preseason then it was twice as long as a normal league. Anyway I don't really follow how not having two weeks of preseason would benefit me in particular over anyone else.
The only thing I did that could be called a switcharoo was picking Shea instead of Hilltop, but like I said I'd been stocking Shea players for the last third of the draft (starting with Lynn), so anyone paying close attention to my draft should've been able to tell I was keeping my options open.
BUT...we had this same discussion last year with a focus on the big dogs and yet while Max (and myself) were among the last four, it was two guys who just quietly kept winning their games that met for the crown.
For sure, I'm not predicting a ring here, nor would I do that in any league because anything can happen in the playoffs. I am gonna win that division though.