I thing longer benches reward owners who put in more work
Couldn't have put it better...short benches reward those who do less homework going into the draft. They also are the great equalizer, and in a hobby where luck plays a large role, it chips away at the skill factor, making it even more dependent on luck.
To answer OP's question, I would not play in a league with less than 18 roster spots.
Agree on both counts. However, while I likewise loathe short-bench leagues, I would make an exception for a short-bench league with a generous FA auction budget (and no WW). I don't think such a league would necessarily be more or less skillful than a "typical" league, but it would certainly emphasize a
different skillset (one with which most people, myself included, don't have a lot of practice).
I'd recommend to the OP that if he can't push through an increase to the roster size, I would absolutely try to move to FAABB if you're not already using it.
We do use FAABB combined with first come first serve after the bidding part of the wk has passed. I think owners are scared to increase roster size because they use waiver wire as there crutch if they have bad drafts or can't execute trades. The opinion is that it kills the waiver wire. I don't agree I think you just have to be smarter about it. I have suggested we keep our current set up of a 14 rd draft. While allowing owners to have 4 additional spots. In our current set up we have a team minimum of 9 players( have to have enuff to field starting lineup) maximum of 14. I wanna make it max 18 just don't kno how to argue this point to the rest of the owners.
Two alternatives you can consider:
1) Take away the WW option. In the setup I prefer, FAABB runs twice a week, on Thursday and Sunday mornings, then locks until the following Thursday. You don't place the winning bid on a guy (or you run out of FAABB dollars because you went hog-wild on this year's Eddie Royal in Week 2), you don't get him. If the FAABB is a low enough multiple of the minimum bid (say 50x), it will definitely have an impact later in the season on owners' ability to fish the WW.
2) Put a hard ceiling on the number of add/drops. My biggest-money redraft league allows unlimited trades but only 8 add/drops per owner all season long, and I love it. Not only does it encourage lots of trading, it makes roster management extremely critical, to the point where during the draft, D/STs with later bye weeks will go ahead of better D's with early byes, because the owner knows he'll only have to make 1 D/ST add/drop during the season instead of 2.
Under either setup, owners will start to understand that they can no longer treat FA's as an extension of their bench, then (hopefully) realize that it's pretty freakin' hard to effectively manage a roster with only 5 bench spots and they'll see the wisdom of a larger roster.
It'll probably take a season to get the message across, though.