owners that are brothers should hold themselves to higher standard and goo out of their way to avoid anything that smacks of impropriety, which they didn't do here
I agree everywhere except here.It is not like a commish who has power to veto trades should be held to a higher standard - brothers should be held to the SAME standard as everyone else.Brothers only = one more piece of evidence for collusion in unbalanced trades. It does not impose on brothers a requirement to avoid appearances of impropriety in all trades. As per brothers, they should be held to the same standard as everyone else - if they can defend an unbalanced trade with rationale thought, then it should go through.Just b/c they are brothers means nothing until a trade like this comes down the pike - and even then, it is just one more piece of evidence, nothing more and nothing less.
i wasn't referring to higher standard they should be held to by others, but they should hold THEMSELVES to...this could be semantic quibbling... i'm not saying brothers (friends, whatever) should hold themselves to an unfairly draconian standard whereby prospective trades or so even for fear of accusations of collusion that they become irrelevant... just saying that if people that know each other and take part in a one-sided transaction that tends towards skewed and unbalanced, imo it looks even worse than if they didn't know each other.imo, in theory, everybody should avoid appearance of impropriety in trade... just saying that it looks worse if questionable activity arises out of questionable context and questionable opportunity...this is where i disagree... it may be one more piece of evidence but it could more than that... if it is a piece of evidence that ties two people together and possibly creates an explanation for a motive, than it can be a piece of evidence that changes the very nature of the way we might interpret earlier and other evidence... in other words, not just an incremental quantitative addition, but a potential qualitative shift which changes the rules for how the parts are added, and in a way that could change the equation.would you be more likely to be suspicious of a trade that involved opportunity where two people know each other... or where they didn't? or no difference at all...lets say there was potential, but borderline case of cheating in a casino... would casino be more worried about two or more "accomplices" that clearly knew each other... or perfect strangers (once they could establish this, to extent that were possible)... if they really didn't know each other, that would make cheating seem unlikely and maybe the evidence that suggested it was just spurious...i think point about brothers having equal opportunity to defend indefensible trade is red herring... the point is that if a trade really is indefensible (not talking about all potential trades, some gray area ones that may be more defensible that others... but THIS one, which clearly doesn't seem to have any possible justification other than one brother helping better positioned one to win more games & increase chance of winning money in league), that more suspicion would naturally be cast on potential accomplices that know each other... as opposed to strangers where that issue isn't really in dispute...as to it not being an issue until bad trade comes down the pike... well yeah, i'm not suggesting all brothers should be banned from being in leagues together (
)... we're not addressing here cases where there are no sloppy and potentially malignant trades that can be divisive... we are talking about AFTER such a trade arises, whether proximity and opportunity for mischief could be interpreted more harshly IN THAT CONTEXT... the subject matter of this thread STARTS at the point that very scenario has unfolded (otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation if brothers trade steven jackson or westbrook or KJ for each other)...maybe i'm off the mark on this (
)...i've thought for a long time that collusion is a stupid and untenable standard to base the possibility of dreaded and borderline taboo trade vetoing on... how do you prove it if you aren't a mind reader or have FBI wiretaps... maybe some owners are just really foolish & have whacked out valuation... should other owners be able to take advantage? and anyway, in the age of the internet, how can we know who knows each other or not (at least on i-friend basis)...you are right that all trades must be judged on their own merits, whether they involve brothers or not... if a trade so completely whacks out the competitive balance of the league that it unfairly helps one team at expense of every other (i'm in one with 32 teams... some BAD trades like a tatum bell for quincy wilson doozy in a real way harmed THIRTY OTHER TEAMS), that should be looked at... not on grounds of unprovable & maybe misguided and irrelevant collusion issue... but on grounds of competitive balance... should the #32 team be able to trade peyton manning, LT & CJ to #1 team for a 7th rounder? what if it really wasn't collusion but just a heinous trade by novice who doesn't know what they are doing... would that make it OK... what if that catastrophic trade causes other teams to quit and runs risk of jeapordizing future of league?my favorite leagues are smaller ones with evenly matched talents... in bigger leagues it increaes chances that there are too great a disparity of talent from top to bottom in talent evaluation & trade valuation skills, which inevitably leads to a few exploiting the situation to disadvantage of majority... these kinds of leagues are in constant danger of falling apart when extreme disparity becomes mirrored in records from top to bottom, and teams that have no chance drop out...in former case they basically are maintenence free, & happily dark issues like these probably never surface... in latter case, it is important to have a mechanism to protect competitive balance of league in cases of gross imbalances, and address way to deal with these thorny, difficult & potentially divisive issues at the league bylaw level...i can hear some people say why be in a league like that, but sometimes they don't start out that way, & if you have spent a lot of time & work building it, it may not be so easy to just walk away... and questions like this may be of interest to find ways that strike the right balance between not managing owners teams for them but not allowing grossly unfair trades, to protect your investment...
(@ the sarcasm)
Or you are the team receiving Brian Westbrook maybe?
(axel wrapping as you called it)...i was actually as sober as rush limbaugh when i wrote it ( 
There ya go
