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MFL users: Is your commish locked out? Beware... (1 Viewer)

Hooper31

Hooper31

Footballguy
I love MFL. Great product with consistently great support through the years.

However, every year there's always a few commissioners that take advantage of a feature built into the MFL system. IF THE COMMISSIONER LOCKOUT ISN'T SET TO YES, THEY CAN VIEW ALL PENDING TRANSACTIONS. This is most important for leagues that use blind bid waivers. If the commissioner isn't locked out, they can see how much you bid on players before your waivers get processed.

How do you check?

Reports > Rules > League Settings : Make sure it says Commissioner lockout : Yes, the commissioner has given up his ability to view pending owner-initiated transactions.

Have a great season! :thumbup:

 
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The commish can not see submitted blind bids. When the commish logs in under waivers for an owner it is to make a roster move at that moment. It does not show the bids the owner has placed.

The transaction page does show what players are being bid on though. The transaction page is the only thing that shows information for a commish. It will show trades offered between teams as well.

 
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Hooper31 said:
I love MFL. Great product with consistently great support through the years.

However, every year there's always a few commissioners that take advantage of a feature built into the MFL system. IF THE COMMISSIONER LOCKOUT ISN'T SET TO YES, THEY CAN VIEW ALL PENDING TRANSACTIONS. This is most important for leagues that use blind bid waivers. If the commissioner isn't locked out, they can see how much you bid on players before your waivers get processed.

How do you check?

Reports > Rules > Bylaws : Make sure it says Commissioner lockout : Yes, the commissioner has given up his ability to view pending owner-initiated transactions.

Have a great season! :thumbup:
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The commish can see what players are being bid on, but cannot see how much the bids are.

 
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fridayfrenzy said:
The commish can not see submitted blind bids. When the commish logs in under waivers for an owner it is to make a roster move at that moment. It does not show the bids the owner has placed.

The transaction page does show what players are being bid on though. The transaction page is the only thing that shows information for a commish. It will show trades offered between teams as well.
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Not true. A commish can see everything if this is not turned off...

 
Keep in mind that many commissioners may not be aware that they can change this setting including yours truly. Also that many would not view this and use it as a tool to cheat.

 
Commish shouldn't be logged in unless there's a problem. There's zero reason for a commish to be logged in daily.

 
The Gator said:
Commish shouldn't be logged in unless there's a problem. There's zero reason for a commish to be logged in daily.
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Absolutely. If I need to turn the lockout off to do something in my leagues, I always send a league-wide email detailing why I'm turning the option off and what I'm doing. And I always turn the lockout back on right when I'm done and log out the commish and back in as myself. Its pretty normal for the commish login to be inactive for 2-3 months at a time this time of year.If I ever see that the commish has logged in recently in a league I don't commish, the first thing I check is this setting. There's no reason to log in as commish unless you're changing something or fixing something.

 
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ConnSKINS26 said:
The Gator said:
Commish shouldn't be logged in unless there's a problem. There's zero reason for a commish to be logged in daily.
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Absolutely. If I need to turn the lockout off to do something in my leagues, I always send a league-wide email detailing why I'm turning the option off and what I'm doing. And I always turn the lockout back on right when I'm done and log out the commish and back in as myself. Its pretty normal for the commish login to be inactive for 2-3 months at a time this time of year.If I ever see that the commish has logged in recently in a league I don't commish, the first thing I check is this setting. There's no reason to log in as commish unless you're changing something or fixing something.
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Hmm. I feel like I'm logged in more as commish than as an owner because I'm usually updating the bulletin or sending out emails and such. Only thing I do as an owner is update my lineup or submit waivers.

 
Insein said:
ConnSKINS26 said:
The Gator said:
Commish shouldn't be logged in unless there's a problem. There's zero reason for a commish to be logged in daily.
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Absolutely. If I need to turn the lockout off to do something in my leagues, I always send a league-wide email detailing why I'm turning the option off and what I'm doing. And I always turn the lockout back on right when I'm done and log out the commish and back in as myself. Its pretty normal for the commish login to be inactive for 2-3 months at a time this time of year.If I ever see that the commish has logged in recently in a league I don't commish, the first thing I check is this setting. There's no reason to log in as commish unless you're changing something or fixing something.
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Hmm. I feel like I'm logged in more as commish than as an owner because I'm usually updating the bulletin or sending out emails and such. Only thing I do as an owner is update my lineup or submit waivers.
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I usually do those types of things from my own login, the league knows I'm the commish so when I email the whole league its really the same thing. Just a preference thing, I guess.

 
I've been commissioning MFL leagues for 15 years and I got in the habit early on of doing my team transactions as owner vs. commish. Best way to do business. Login as commish only as required and log back out, as many posters have already said.

 
Thanks for sending this. This is my first MFL league. Just noticed this setting is set to 'no' in my league. We are a 4 round standard waiver (no bids) league but I still see the commish has an advantage here. They can shape their own waivers based on what they see from everyone else. 2 questions. Where can I see a login report for when he logs in as commish? Should I tactfully send him a private email? Why does MFL allow this?

 
I am the commish

Every time I turn that on and off, the entire league gets an email. Thought that was standard.

And iirc, I was able to see the exact dollar amount people bid. Maybe that has since changed, but I saw it.

 
Underachievers said:
Bronco Billy said:
If you have any serious concerns about your commish sneaking peeks at BBs, why are they your commish?
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This
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Pretty much. You either trust the commish or you don't. In my local leagues (one I commish, another a buddy does) we have never turned this on. Why? Well, I remember back in the day when every owner was calling me or sending me email (those that actually had email or a computer) what waiver moves they wanted, their starting lineups, etc. I knew everything just because I had to manually run everything. I could have cheated like crazy for years had I wanted to. But they all trust me, period. So I don't bother with it. I also never log on as commish unless I need to do something like write the weekly league article, but now that I'm thinking about it I can just do that as my owner team as well so I'll probably do that now too.

The online leagues I'm in where I really don't know anyone in real life it's pretty standard to have that setting on. When the commish changes the setting off the whole league gets an email and usually the commish will send a note explaining why the setting was turned off and what he did. But frankly, I trust the commish in those leagues so I could care less if the setting is on or off.

As to the question of where that setting is...it's on the Abilities Setup page all the way at the bottom.

 
Bronco Billy said:
If you have any serious concerns about your commish sneaking peeks at BBs, why are they your commish?
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That's it in a nutshell.

I play in leagues and I commish leagues and I'll be honest-If I had that level of suspicion with my commish, I'd probably not play in the league.

In the leagues I commish, I try very hard to make EVERYTHING as transparent as possible and keep info flowing to everyone. I try to be think things out for how it affects the league and try to communicate those reasonings. I try to do it right and do the job right.

I log in as little as possible as the commish but I don't go out of my way to flip abilities on and off because when I have to commish something, the less check marks I check, the better to not mess something up (MFL can be finicky..to me at least).

I think it just comes down to if you trust the group you play with.

 
I joined a 'public' MFL league but assumed commish wouldn't have this kind of access. Don't know the commish or any of the owners and assume they don't know each other either. Tough to just simply trust the commish when you don't know them at all and there are some dollars involved. CBS didn't allow this kind of visibility and I assumed MFL did the same. It's my own fault for not looking into this deeper.

 
strawb said:
I joined a 'public' MFL league but assumed commish wouldn't have this kind of access. Don't know the commish or any of the owners and assume they don't know each other either. Tough to just simply trust the commish when you don't know them at all and there are some dollars involved. CBS didn't allow this kind of visibility and I assumed MFL did the same. It's my own fault for not looking into this deeper.
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Can anyone provide a hypothetical where this type of visibility by the commoish is needed?

 
Short Corner said:
strawb said:
I joined a 'public' MFL league but assumed commish wouldn't have this kind of access. Don't know the commish or any of the owners and assume they don't know each other either. Tough to just simply trust the commish when you don't know them at all and there are some dollars involved. CBS didn't allow this kind of visibility and I assumed MFL did the same. It's my own fault for not looking into this deeper.
Click to expand...
Can anyone provide a hypothetical where this type of visibility by the commoish is needed?
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Yes, trying to remember why I had it turned on in the first place????

 
Short Corner said:
Bronco Billy said:
If you have any serious concerns about your commish sneaking peeks at BBs, why are they your commish?
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Do you know all of your league commssioners personally?Pretty sure the Phenoms guy was pretty trustworthy too.
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Yeah, I know him pretty well.

I trust him completely, but I'm pretty sure the other owners shouldn't.

 
Short Corner said:
strawb said:
I joined a 'public' MFL league but assumed commish wouldn't have this kind of access. Don't know the commish or any of the owners and assume they don't know each other either. Tough to just simply trust the commish when you don't know them at all and there are some dollars involved. CBS didn't allow this kind of visibility and I assumed MFL did the same. It's my own fault for not looking into this deeper.
Click to expand...
Can anyone provide a hypothetical where this type of visibility by the commoish is needed?
Click to expand...
I can't offer hypotheticals, but I can offer these situations where the commish had to access another owner's team, which in mfl requires that visibility:

Owner drops the wrong guy by mistake in final cuts

Owner puts players on PS instead of IR

Owner will not have service over the weekend, has one player listed on Friday as doubtful, and gives commish instruction on who to start depending upon Sunday status.

I'm sure the bright minds here can think of a few others.

 
Bronco Billy said:
Short Corner said:
strawb said:
I joined a 'public' MFL league but assumed commish wouldn't have this kind of access. Don't know the commish or any of the owners and assume they don't know each other either. Tough to just simply trust the commish when you don't know them at all and there are some dollars involved. CBS didn't allow this kind of visibility and I assumed MFL did the same. It's my own fault for not looking into this deeper.
Click to expand...
Can anyone provide a hypothetical where this type of visibility by the commoish is needed?
Click to expand...
I can't offer hypotheticals, but I can offer these situations where the commish had to access another owner's team, which in mfl requires that visibility:

Owner drops the wrong guy by mistake in final cuts

Owner puts players on PS instead of IR

Owner will not have service over the weekend, has one player listed on Friday as doubtful, and gives commish instruction on who to start depending upon Sunday status.

I'm sure the bright minds here can think of a few others.
Click to expand...
Not sure I am seeing where commich needs to see pending transactions, ie offers and bids in any of those examples.

 
Bronco Billy said:
Short Corner said:
strawb said:
I joined a 'public' MFL league but assumed commish wouldn't have this kind of access. Don't know the commish or any of the owners and assume they don't know each other either. Tough to just simply trust the commish when you don't know them at all and there are some dollars involved. CBS didn't allow this kind of visibility and I assumed MFL did the same. It's my own fault for not looking into this deeper.
Click to expand...
Can anyone provide a hypothetical where this type of visibility by the commoish is needed?
Click to expand...
I can't offer hypotheticals, but I can offer these situations where the commish had to access another owner's team, which in mfl requires that visibility:

Owner drops the wrong guy by mistake in final cuts

Owner puts players on PS instead of IR

Owner will not have service over the weekend, has one player listed on Friday as doubtful, and gives commish instruction on who to start depending upon Sunday status.

I'm sure the bright minds here can think of a few others.
Click to expand...
You got the idea there. In a lot of league services the commish and your team are one and the same. On MFL it's born of old school (and frankly makes more sense) that the commish can "break all the rules" to actually manage the league. I've had just about every one of these situations come up over the years where I have needed to make an IR move for an owner, submit a lineup or even update a bid (which how can I do that if I can't see what that team has bid in the first place). MFL allows you to take care of all this stuff as commish where with a lot (most?) league management sites you're kinda stuck unless things have changed in recent years.

And this is why you need to be careful and not be logged on as commish unless you need to do "commish things". For example, say it's a waivers request period right now, as commish you could make an immediate move even though it's waiver request time. MFL even has a help article explaining just this situation. Basically only do stuff for your team as that team and not the commish. Once you have the league all set and ready to go for the year (I've logged on as commish at least a dozen times in the past week getting things ready) then there is very little need to do so other then to correct something.

The point of commish powers isn't to have this ability to see waiver or bidding requests, it's to have the ability to manage the league, which may include making a bid request on behalf of an owner for various reasons. If you have a commish you trust then it's not an issue.

 
Short Corner said:
Bronco Billy said:
Short Corner said:
strawb said:
I joined a 'public' MFL league but assumed commish wouldn't have this kind of access. Don't know the commish or any of the owners and assume they don't know each other either. Tough to just simply trust the commish when you don't know them at all and there are some dollars involved. CBS didn't allow this kind of visibility and I assumed MFL did the same. It's my own fault for not looking into this deeper.
Click to expand...
Can anyone provide a hypothetical where this type of visibility by the commoish is needed?
Click to expand...
I can't offer hypotheticals, but I can offer these situations where the commish had to access another owner's team, which in mfl requires that visibility:

Owner drops the wrong guy by mistake in final cuts

Owner puts players on PS instead of IR

Owner will not have service over the weekend, has one player listed on Friday as doubtful, and gives commish instruction on who to start depending upon Sunday status.

I'm sure the bright minds here can think of a few others.
Click to expand...
Not sure I am seeing where commich needs to see pending transactions, ie offers and bids in any of those examples.
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I touched on it in the post I just made. Say I have an owner that ended up having to take a business trip and has no Internet or data cell service or maybe ended up in the hospital or something. He calls me and asks me to put in a bid of X$ on a player for him in the upcoming waivers. Well, I can't do that if I can't see his bids now can I. So I either do it or if the lock is on then I need to unlock the commish, put in the bid for the team and then turn the lock back on. Now certainly I have the technical capacity to look at everyone's bids while the lock if off (or it's not on by default) but I don't and my owners trust me that I won't. And obviously I now know what this owners bid is and I could use that information to my advantage but I don't. And I never did when we did waivers by hand all those year so why would I start now or why would my owners not trust me, unless I give them a reason not to. And if they don't then they should vote to remove me from the league and appoint a new commish.

I'd bet a lot of the outcry here are from people that never did things the old fashioned way before the Internet. Nothing wrong with that but just my observation.

 
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Short Corner said:
Bronco Billy said:
Short Corner said:
strawb said:
I joined a 'public' MFL league but assumed commish wouldn't have this kind of access. Don't know the commish or any of the owners and assume they don't know each other either. Tough to just simply trust the commish when you don't know them at all and there are some dollars involved. CBS didn't allow this kind of visibility and I assumed MFL did the same. It's my own fault for not looking into this deeper.
Click to expand...
Can anyone provide a hypothetical where this type of visibility by the commoish is needed?
Click to expand...
I can't offer hypotheticals, but I can offer these situations where the commish had to access another owner's team, which in mfl requires that visibility:Owner drops the wrong guy by mistake in final cuts

Owner puts players on PS instead of IR

Owner will not have service over the weekend, has one player listed on Friday as doubtful, and gives commish instruction on who to start depending upon Sunday status.

I'm sure the bright minds here can think of a few others.
Click to expand...
Not sure I am seeing where commich needs to see pending transactions, ie offers and bids in any of those examples.
Click to expand...
The commish' ability to access teams and the ability to view BB amounts are tied together.

 
Short Corner said:
Not sure I am seeing where commich needs to see pending transactions, ie offers and bids in any of those examples.
Click to expand...
Commish needs access if a team trades for an additional waiver pick (we set ours at one fcfs each week but It's tradable) to make the 2nd pick if the other team (the team who traded the pick) doesn't do it.  Also need it to promote players off the taxi squad. 

 
Just a heads up, the Bylaws page went away and now it all gets lumped together under League Settings.

 
Thanks for this. Just checked and 6/12 leagues they were not turned off ?

 
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jeaton6 said:
Thanks for this. Just checked and 6/12 leagues they were not turned off ?
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3 of my 5 still have it on too.  Two are free leagues where the commish pays the site fee out of his own pocket so I don't care too much there but one is my biggest money league (not big compared to some, but still $1600 at stake). So I just asked the commish that he turn it off. 

Of the two that have it turned off, I'm a co-commish in one and the other is a weekly lineup league where everyone can start every player once a year and there are no trades or waivers. (Fun league, I might do more of those next year)

 
As a commissioner, I only ever log in for approval of trades. I send all communications or MB post from my user/team name.

Also, on RTSports, there are options to hide bids and trades from the commissioner.

I'll add that I play in a league where the commish only ever logs in as commish, it has always bothered me from a ethics point of view but he wants nothing to do about hearing complaints about this. 

 
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Grigs Allmoon said:
:shock:
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To be fair, I wrote that a season and a half ago. I can easily admit that this has been a tough year for MFL. I've been using MFL for a long time and have had several positive interactions with MIke Hall in the past. 

 
Hooper31 said:
To be fair, I wrote that a season and a half ago. I can easily admit that this has been a tough year for MFL. I've been using MFL for a long time and have had several positive interactions with MIke Hall in the past. 
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The site has been garbage for nearly two decades, now. It is decent by late '90's standards, but it is stuck in time and is lousy by today's standards.

 
identikit said:
If I did try again, you wouldn't notice for years.

Apparently.
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Seriously. You think I "just noticed" this? I've been involved in fantasy football since 1991. I've worked in the business. I don't have a problem comparing my resume to anyone posting here. I posted this before last season started as a notice to people that haven't been using MFL for near as long as I have. This might be a shock to you, but there are new people entering the hobby from year to year. There will be new members posting here a year from now. But then, you're demeanor here seems to indicate that those peons aren't worth bothering with. I'm thinking you need to take a look in the mirror and ask yourself if meandering through life treating strangers this way is a good thing. But then, it's the internet and you get to be anonymous. Your choice.

 
Bronco Billy said:
If you have any serious concerns about your commish sneaking peeks at BBs, why are they your commish?
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That's not the point.  All doubt should be removed, so the commish should turn this option off until it is needed.  I won't play in a league where the commish refuses to do this

 
Hooper31 said:
Seriously. You think I "just noticed" this? I've been involved in fantasy football since 1991. I've worked in the business. I don't have a problem comparing my resume to anyone posting here. I posted this before last season started as a notice to people that haven't been using MFL for near as long as I have. This might be a shock to you, but there are new people entering the hobby from year to year. There will be new members posting here a year from now. But then, you're demeanor here seems to indicate that those peons aren't worth bothering with. I'm thinking you need to take a look in the mirror and ask yourself if meandering through life treating strangers this way is a good thing. But then, it's the internet and you get to be anonymous. Your choice.
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I stand corrected.

It's a PSA.

 
I would think it should be easy to deal with (someone who is the commish not being happy he is being questioned on why he's logged in as commish).

You ask him, "Can you PROVE you are not doing something shady?"

Case closed.  He'll never be able to prove he's not doing something wrong.

As others have said, transparency is all.

 
Some commishes like to use the excuse of the amount of leagues they commish and don't want to switch it back and forth as needed.  Well, my answer to that is not to commish so many leagues if you're not willing to remove all doubt.  This is just the right thing to do and there isn't any viable come back for it.  To be frank, I don't care if they get pissed,  because I'm not personally questioning their integrity, it's just the right thing to do for the league as a whole as a commish.

 
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MFL added an option as commish this year to swap directly back to your owner login rather than what you used to have to do--manually hitting log out, then logging in as an owner. It wasn't hard, but it was slightly annoying. Now there isn't even that barrier anymore. On MFL, there is zero reason not to hit the button and go back to being an owner when you're done doing your commish thing. Its not even an inconvenience anymore.

 
5/6 leagues  shoot sorry I didn't realize it was even set that way and just ofegot to set back and This response below. Lol. There's been maybe a handful of the below instances used (and the reality is the lineup changes (whatever that is exactly) and adding accidentally dropped players doesn't have to be an issue (you drop a player by accident then tough $?!%)). I know which league I'm dropping first when I decide I'm in too many. At least he said sorry haha

No I can't...sorry. If I change it to locked out, I've gotta change that setting every time I need make any lineup changes whatsoever (incorrect taxi squad moves, lineup changes, adding a player that was accidentally dropped), and I'm not changing that setting and sending locked out status emails to the entire league every time I need to make a change. 

 
I don't want to be an #######, but I'm over the bull#### that comes with running a league and trying to keep everybody happy. It's been this way since the first season, and if you're just having a problem with this now, it almost seems like you're doing this just to give me a problem about it. You either trust the commissioner of your league or you don't, and if you don't, then you can always look for a new league that better suits your fancy.

 

 
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