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Interesting commissioner dilemma (1 Viewer)

J

jmo87usc

Footballguy
Maybe it's not a dilemma and the answer is very clear cut, but I'm posting this question in anticipation of what is to come.   I am not the commissioner in this league, but an issue seems like it is about to arise and I wanted to get opinions from you guys ahead of it.

One of our divisional playoffs ended with Team A beating Team B by 1.9 points.  Team B has Jared Goff, who just had a INT changed to a fumble yesterday.  We get -2 for INT, but no points lost for fumbles.  This change would have Team B beating Team A by .1 points!

Now my understanding is myfantasyleague will not automatically update the score on Thursday, but the option is there for the commissioner to do so.  I don't believe our commissioner has ever hit the "apply stat changes" button, nor was there ever a need to do so.  The easy answer would be, if it's never been done, now is not the time to start.  However, with it never being an issue before, we don't have any kind of rule in place regarding stat changes one way or the other.

So in your experience as commissioner, or your opinion as an owner that may be affected by this, what do you think is the correct move here?  Leave it alone, or apply changes?

 
Does your league want Team A to beat Team B on a play that didn’t happen?  Maybe your league really is trying to mirror the NFL...

It’s a no-brainer, IMO of course.  You change to the correct stats and the outcome follows accordingly.

.

 
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Bronco Billy said:
Does your league want Team A to beat Team B on a play that didn’t happen?  Maybe your league really is trying to mirror the NFL...

It’s a no-brainer, IMO of course.  You change to the correct stats and the outcome follows accordingly.

.
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I agree with you.  I have a feeling the only team that won't agree initially is Team A.  I think the issue lies in the fact that the commissioner has to hit a button  he has never hit to make this happen.  I may be wrong but I see it becoming an argument.  Just wanted to gather opinions ahead of time.  

 
Bronco Billy said:
Does your league want Team A to beat Team B on a play that didn’t happen?  Maybe your league really is trying to mirror the NFL...

It’s a no-brainer, IMO of course.  You change to the correct stats and the outcome follows accordingly.

.
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Agreed. This game is based solely on stats, so use the official correct stats.

 
jmo87usc said:
I agree with you.  I have a feeling the only team that won't agree initially is Team A.  I think the issue lies in the fact that the commissioner has to hit a button  he has never hit to make this happen.  I may be wrong but I see it becoming an argument.  Just wanted to gather opinions ahead of time.  
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The commish wouldn’t be overriding a rule.  If there is no rule in place, then it’s his job to make the call.  But making the decision to go with a stat that doesn’t exist doesn’t make sense - to me at least.

Worst case, tell the commish to omit the 2 directly affected teams and take a vote of the remaining owners.  Then the monkey is off his back.

 
Bronco Billy said:
Our league updates scores and standings automatically when corrections come out.  It must be some toggle in the league setup that they didn’t hit.
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Interesting.  So it may update on it's own.  I was reading the MFL FAQ's and that's where I got the info I did.  That would make it a non issue if that's the case.  

 
Bronco Billy said:
Our league updates scores and standings automatically when corrections come out.  It must be some toggle in the league setup that they didn’t hit.
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All the more reason not to get hung up on whether the commish makes the change manually. It would be like saying, "I didn't turn on cruise control in my car, is it OK for me to step on the break with my foot if I'm going too fast?"

 
zftcg said:
Not familiar with MFL, but why wouldn't they update stat corrections?
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It's a radio button option. Everything is an option on MFL. MFL has 32,768 different selectable league options for commissioners, buried six levels deep in 512 different menus, and then they wonder why people call the site user-unfriendly.  :doh:

ETA: And most of their options are set to defaults that make no sense, are poorly worded, or both. So it's obvious why the league commish didn't set it up that way - it probably never occurred to him there was another choice to begin with. It's obvious that he should apply the correction in this case IMO.

 
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From the mfl commissioners options for the Recalculate Standings button:

The vast majority of the time, there will be no need for you to choose this option. The only circumstances where doing a "Recalculate Standings" will be necessary is:

If you, as commissioner, change someone's starting lineup for a given week after results are issued for that week.

If you'd like to have your league standings report default to a point in time prior to the current week of the season.

At all other times, doing a "Recalculate Standings" will not be necessary.

.

 
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Use real stats. Simple. If you lose an owner who can't handle reality because his team got knocked out because of an NFL monitored and approved correction, so be it.

 
ShamrockPride said:
Use real stats. Simple. If you lose an owner who can't handle reality because his team got knocked out because of an NFL monitored and approved correction, so be it.
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I hope no one would argue using actual correct stats to determine the outcome.  That would be ridiculous.  The issue I was anticipating was if the commissioner had to manually push it through after never having done it before in 16 years.  I still wouldn't have a problem with this because I'd feel bad winning, knowing I stole the victory.  But some guys would argue it.  

Hopefully it automatically adjusts and removes the human aspect of it.  

Thanks for all the opinions.

 
zftcg said:
Not familiar with MFL, but why wouldn't they update stat corrections?
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They do automatically in my leagues - I once lost a game on Thursday that I has won as of Tuesday because a sack of Big Ben was changed to negative four rushing yards by Elias during stat corrections. I guess it's a commissioner setting to have that "button" but I have never seen that in my four MFL leagues.

 
Mr. Irrelevant said:
It's a radio button option. Everything is an option on MFL. MFL has 32,768 different selectable league options for commissioners, buried six levels deep in 512 different menus, and then they wonder why people call the site user-unfriendly.  :doh:

ETA: And most of their options are set to defaults that make no sense, are poorly worded, or both. So it's obvious why the league commish didn't set it up that way - it probably never occurred to him there was another choice to begin with. It's obvious that he should apply the correction in this case IMO.
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Wow.  This has not been my experience at all.  Interesting.

 
Whether the Commish set up for MFL's stat change option or not is irrelevant. That's just so you can be notified of stat changes & to make them automatic.

With the knowledge in hand & this early in the week, you make the change, IMO.

 
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we have a rule in place, all games are final by Thursday at 12Noon, so if there is a stat correction before that time it should be used.

This should be in your rules, if not, well its a commish call and you need to vote on it next year to get it in the rules...

 
If they haven't been applied all year (or ever before) then now is the wrong time to start.  Setting it to automatically do the changes will push through all updates since week 1 and if this changes any other results from previously this year, you've opened a big old can of worms.  And applying it to just one week and not another is no good either.  Got to be uniform in policy throughout the season and cannot make changes with that potential affect during the season without all owners being involved.  Just my opinions as a commish though.   

 
ridicule said:
If they haven't been applied all year (or ever before) then now is the wrong time to start.  Setting it to automatically do the changes will push through all updates since week 1 and if this changes any other results from previously this year, you've opened a big old can of worms.  And applying it to just one week and not another is no good either.  Got to be uniform in policy throughout the season and cannot make changes with that potential affect during the season without all owners being involved.  Just my opinions as a commish though.   
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Maybe it's just me, but prior precedent is not the way to go here.  It's certainly possible that no stat correction has ever affected the outcome of a game, and in that case there would have been no need to apply them retroactively. 

Your bylaws should say something to the effect of stats are provided by MFL or stats are considered final after all corrections have been made on Thursday.

Until then, all scores are only considered provisional.

 
apalmer said:
See FBG Contest Rules.
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I've never played in the contest--but if they don't penalize for fumbles lost while penalizing for int's-- I think that's equally stupid.  I've played in hundreds of fantasy leagues over 25 years and  I've never (nor would I) play in one that thinks that it's okay to issue negative points for an interception but no penalty for losing a fumble.  You should either penalize for turnovers or you shouldn't.  Picking and choosing the "type" of turnover to penalize doesn't make sense to me. 

 
It will be an issue sooner or later....  and as commissioner, I addressed that in our By Laws declaring a day/time all game scores official (Wednesday at 3:00 PM).  This allows the owners a chance to see the adjustments.   You cannot apply them "when it suits you" with this...

But I like the idea of "automatically" updating things "up to a deadline" 

 
tangfoot said:
Are you sure you're using MFL?  My experience has been exactly as was described by @Mr. Irrelevant
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No, it was actually pretty simple to set up and maintain the league using their step by step walk through instructions.  But then I expected to have to go through a few steps because we are a dynasty league with IDP and some scoring that drills down a bit.  But as far as difficulty, no not really.

 
I disagree with the majority here.

If you've never done a stat correction before, you can't start now.  

How do we know that one of them didn't win or lose a game earlier due to an unnoticed stat correction that would have changed this matchup or kept one of them out of the playoffs altogether? 

How do we know that all past champions won without a stat correction that "should have" been made? 

If you selectively enforce rules because a team complains, you reward complaining.  The team that "should have" won brought it up when it was to their advantage but might not have if it hadn't been.  

You have to follow the rules, and in the absence of a clear rule follow the precedent of the league. I don't care what other leagues do or what the nfl did or what the site allows if we've never reversed a win on a stat correction before.  

I understand why people would prefer that the league mirror what actually happened in the NFL, and i agree that's probably what people would want and what was intended, but that's not the rule that's been used in the league and it's unreasonable to change the rules mid season, especially in the playoffs, and especially after the result is known.  

That said - if there's no precedent, then you make the change. 

 
Cut and dry....the current rules of your league are what they are, and you adjust outcomes according to how the NFL changes stats.....there really is no other way at this point.

Edit:. I guess I sorta missed the part where your league doesn't adjust to official NFL stat changes....that's bad form, especially if it's a money league.

 
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We have all games go final Thursday morning, so if the stat change hasn't happened by then it won't be applied.  In your leagues case I would argue since it had never been discussed or used before then it would have to be something taken up at next years draft.  It's too late to implement now (who knows if earlier outcomes would have changed as well).

 
At MFL, if logged in under "Commissioner", you go to "For Commissioners" > "Statistic Changes".  There it will show weekly statistic changes, but more importantly, there is a check box there that sets it to automatically apply stat changes on Thursday @ 10am.  I believe that Thursday 10am is the deadline for the NFL and any stat changes.

For the league in question, I would think your commissioner needs to see if that box is checked.  If not, I think it would be wrong to change the results, because as @bostonfred mentions, you don't know for sure how many times this may have changed a result and was missed.  This is a situation where if there is no rule, precedence has to rule, in my opinion.  It's something I would address for sure for next season, as obviously you want game results determined by accurate statistics.

 
bostonfred said:
I disagree with the majority here.

If you've never done a stat correction before, you can't start now.  

How do we know that one of them didn't win or lose a game earlier due to an unnoticed stat correction that would have changed this matchup or kept one of them out of the playoffs altogether? 

How do we know that all past champions won without a stat correction that "should have" been made? 

If you selectively enforce rules because a team complains, you reward complaining.  The team that "should have" won brought it up when it was to their advantage but might not have if it hadn't been.  

You have to follow the rules, and in the absence of a clear rule follow the precedent of the league. I don't care what other leagues do or what the nfl did or what the site allows if we've never reversed a win on a stat correction before.  

I understand why people would prefer that the league mirror what actually happened in the NFL, and i agree that's probably what people would want and what was intended, but that's not the rule that's been used in the league and it's unreasonable to change the rules mid season, especially in the playoffs, and especially after the result is known.  

That said - if there's no precedent, then you make the change. 
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Am I the only person who watches stat corrections on Thursday morning for any game that I lost by less than a couple/few points?  In the very few times that a stat change would potentially affect the outcome of one of my game, I watch them like a hawk and notify the commish immediately when they are announced.

 
If it is true that there has never been a stat correction, there should be no expectation that the outcome would change.  Why would there be a problem, unless team B is the commissioner.

 
jmo87usc said:
Maybe it's not a dilemma and the answer is very clear cut, but I'm posting this question in anticipation of what is to come.   I am not the commissioner in this league, but an issue seems like it is about to arise and I wanted to get opinions from you guys ahead of it.

One of our divisional playoffs ended with Team A beating Team B by 1.9 points.  Team B has Jared Goff, who just had a INT changed to a fumble yesterday.  We get -2 for INT, but no points lost for fumbles.  This change would have Team B beating Team A by .1 points!

Now my understanding is myfantasyleague will not automatically update the score on Thursday, but the option is there for the commissioner to do so.  I don't believe our commissioner has ever hit the "apply stat changes" button, nor was there ever a need to do so.  The easy answer would be, if it's never been done, now is not the time to start.  However, with it never being an issue before, we don't have any kind of rule in place regarding stat changes one way or the other.

So in your experience as commissioner, or your opinion as an owner that may be affected by this, what do you think is the correct move here?  Leave it alone, or apply changes?
Click to expand...
Sounds like you're making a lot of assumptions about how things are set up. You can set mfl to automatically apply stat changes. First thing to do is find out if you've done stat changes in the past. If the league hasn't you can't just start now.

 
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If stat corrections have never been completed in this league it should not start now.  This should be used as a discussion point moving forward to get a league clarification (vote by the league) on whether you want to used the adjusted stats or not moving forward.  It should not happen this year.

As others have stated MFL allows for this to be automatic or by commish only.  If you have set to automatic it can/will change outcomes on Thursday and adjust the standings accordingly.  I have found this is most applicable to IDP players because there are a lot of tackle/sack/assist/etc changes each week.  Depending on your scoring this could have implications.  Typically it is not of consequence for the offensive players.  Regardless, if it has never been done before it should not be done now just because someone found a correction that affects a game.  This could be the case many times in the past that were not changed because the settings were not set that way. 

 
There are two concepts at play here -- accuracy v. finality.  All the leagues that I run rely on stat corrections because I'd prefer accuracy even if it delays the actual result by a few days.  But there are a lot of people that prefer finality, i.e. you know the results on Tuesday morning and they aren't going to change.  And is accuracy really that important in a fake game?  There are arguments for both but both are very different and I would have a hard time justify switching from one to the other to alter the result of a playoff game.  If it has never been done before and no one thought to bring it up as an issue before the games started, the commish should not be making any changes now.  Wait a few weeks and deal with it in the offseason.

But I can tell you that, from my experience, the owner who would lose a win by putting in a new rule now isn't going to be happy and it's going to create issues in your league.

 
tangfoot said:
Am I the only person who watches stat corrections on Thursday morning for any game that I lost by less than a couple/few points?  In the very few times that a stat change would potentially affect the outcome of one of my game, I watch them like a hawk and notify the commish immediately when they are announced.
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No lots of people check for stat corrections. Lots don't. 

Do you notify the commish if the stat correction goes against you? 

 
Birdie048 said:
It will be an issue sooner or later....  and as commissioner, I addressed that in our By Laws declaring a day/time all game scores official (Wednesday at 3:00 PM).  This allows the owners a chance to see the adjustments.   You cannot apply them "when it suits you" with this...

But I like the idea of "automatically" updating things "up to a deadline" 
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I don't think the stat changes are made official until Wednesday evening so that rule is pretty meaningless (unless you did not want the stat changes to count then it's fine).

 
Dr. Octopus said:
I don't think the stat changes are made official until Wednesday evening so that rule is pretty meaningless (unless you did not want the stat changes to count then it's fine).
Click to expand...


I was thinking the same thing.  He pretty much negated the use of any stat corrections to right improperly scored plays.

 
bostonfred said:
I disagree with the majority here.

If you've never done a stat correction before, you can't start now.  

How do we know that one of them didn't win or lose a game earlier due to an unnoticed stat correction that would have changed this matchup or kept one of them out of the playoffs altogether? 

How do we know that all past champions won without a stat correction that "should have" been made? 

If you selectively enforce rules because a team complains, you reward complaining.  The team that "should have" won brought it up when it was to their advantage but might not have if it hadn't been.  

You have to follow the rules, and in the absence of a clear rule follow the precedent of the league. I don't care what other leagues do or what the nfl did or what the site allows if we've never reversed a win on a stat correction before.  

I understand why people would prefer that the league mirror what actually happened in the NFL, and i agree that's probably what people would want and what was intended, but that's not the rule that's been used in the league and it's unreasonable to change the rules mid season, especially in the playoffs, and especially after the result is known.  

That said - if there's no precedent, then you make the change. 
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In my league it is the teams playings resposibility to report to me any errors in the scores before  the first game is played the next week. After that the scores are deemed official.  The fact that it MAY have happened in the past would (and should) be irrelevant at this point.  The fact that somebody has (or will) alert the commish of an error in scoring  in a timely manner is what matters in this situation.  Ive only made a couple of stat corrections in my main league as commish. Infrequency is no reason to NOT follow the league rules.  Bottom line is if its in the league rules,  and the league site doesnt correctly score it, the commish  definitely should go in and correct it.  

 
If you have never used the stat correction option before, why start now?  How many other matchups during the course of the season would have been different had it been utilized weekly?  Leave it alone and fix it (and the scoring) for next year.  

 
bostonfred said:
I disagree with the majority here.

If you've never done a stat correction before, you can't start now.  

How do we know that one of them didn't win or lose a game earlier due to an unnoticed stat correction that would have changed this matchup or kept one of them out of the playoffs altogether? 

How do we know that all past champions won without a stat correction that "should have" been made? 

If you selectively enforce rules because a team complains, you reward complaining.  The team that "should have" won brought it up when it was to their advantage but might not have if it hadn't been.  

You have to follow the rules, and in the absence of a clear rule follow the precedent of the league. I don't care what other leagues do or what the nfl did or what the site allows if we've never reversed a win on a stat correction before.  

I understand why people would prefer that the league mirror what actually happened in the NFL, and i agree that's probably what people would want and what was intended, but that's not the rule that's been used in the league and it's unreasonable to change the rules mid season, especially in the playoffs, and especially after the result is known.  

That said - if there's no precedent, then you make the change. 
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This.

 
tangfoot said:
Maybe it's just me, but prior precedent is not the way to go here.  It's certainly possible that no stat correction has ever affected the outcome of a game, and in that case there would have been no need to apply them retroactively. 

Your bylaws should say something to the effect of stats are provided by MFL or stats are considered final after all corrections have been made on Thursday.

Until then, all scores are only considered provisional.
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Agreed. Just because stat changes were missed in the past (if indeed, there even was one), is no reason not to do it now.

You have the correct stat now. Use it. Unless there is a bylaw stating changes have to be done by a certain time (& it's unlikely it would be before now), I believe you have to make the change.

I'm not seeing the argument against it at all, mainly because of the second sentence (first paragraph) in this post. Ignoring it isn't the right call, IMO.

 
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I think as a commish myself the most important thing to remember is not to make changes in rules or the league in the middle of the season.  If a league has ignored stat corrections and no rule or discussion has ever been discussed at the draft among owners then the right thing to do is fix it next year.  Now is no time to suddenly decide to implement scoring changes due to stat correction due to two main reasons:  

1.  Don't change the league scoring rules during the season.  Do it next year.  Yes this is a new scoring change rule.

2.  What happens if you check that box to process stat corrections and it changes previous outcomes.  Maybe different teams now make the playoffs.  

Bottom line is discuss it at next years draft 

 
Gally said:
If stat corrections have never been completed in this league it should not start now. 
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You know, this philosophy makes good sense most of the time.

But this is not one of those times.

This is not a case of human error by the commissioner. It is a case of human error by an unrelated party (the official scorekeeper). You should not allow this human error to affect the score of the game.

The fact is that Goff did not throw an interception. Simple as that.

If this had happened in Week 2, and Team B pointed it out at the time, I have no doubt that everyone in the league would have agreed that the score should be corrected.

 
[scooter] said:
You know, this philosophy makes good sense most of the time.

But this is not one of those times.

This is not a case of human error by the commissioner. It is a case of human error by an unrelated party (the official scorekeeper). You should not allow this human error to affect the score of the game.

The fact is that Goff did not throw an interception. Simple as that.

If this had happened in Week 2, and Team B pointed it out at the time, I have no doubt that everyone in the league would have agreed that the score should be corrected.
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How do you know it didn't happen in week 2?  My league had this issue about three years into our dynasty IDP league on MFL.  We did not have the setting checked for auto changes and had a lot of discussion during the year about the best way to do this.  It is a lot more prevalent in IDP leagues because tackles/sacks/assists change all the time.  We had to account for waiver orders being affected by late scoring changes as well as the standings throughout the season.  A few owners didn't want to have to wait until Thursday for official changes that could affect outcomes and some wanted to make sure we followed the official statistical changes.  For IDP it seems to be a lot more random than a pass going forward for an INT or fumble designation. 

Rather than change midseason we held off until the off season and had discussion and a vote.  It ended up being changed to use the official change on Thursday.  We also voted that the unofficial standings would still be used for the waiver processing (Wednesday night due to the Thursday night games).  Everyone ended up accepting the majority position and we moved on.

The point to all this is that if you have never updated the scores based on the late statistical changes you shouldn't do it mid season.  That is changing a rule midseason.  However, if the league has a provision in place to petition for scoring changes mid week then that rule should be followed per the by-laws.  I do not know is the OP has that type of rule provision or not (need to go back and check the OP wording again).  The OP stated they had no rule in place for stat changes so it should remain per the original scoring. 

 
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elshagon said:
I think as a commish myself the most important thing to remember is not to make changes in rules or the league in the middle of the season.  If a league has ignored stat corrections and no rule or discussion has ever been discussed at the draft among owners then the right thing to do is fix it next year.  Now is no time to suddenly decide to implement scoring changes due to stat correction due to two main reasons:  

1.  Don't change the league scoring rules during the season.  Do it next year.  Yes this is a new scoring change rule.

2.  What happens if you check that box to process stat corrections and it changes previous outcomes.  Maybe different teams now make the playoffs.  

Bottom line is discuss it at next years draft 
Click to expand...
I get what you're saying, but I'd still want the team that won based on that actually happened officially, to win. 

 
jmo87usc said:
Maybe it's not a dilemma and the answer is very clear cut, but I'm posting this question in anticipation of what is to come.   I am not the commissioner in this league, but an issue seems like it is about to arise and I wanted to get opinions from you guys ahead of it.

One of our divisional playoffs ended with Team A beating Team B by 1.9 points.  Team B has Jared Goff, who just had a INT changed to a fumble yesterday.  We get -2 for INT, but no points lost for fumbles.  This change would have Team B beating Team A by .1 points!

Now my understanding is myfantasyleague will not automatically update the score on Thursday, but the option is there for the commissioner to do so.  I don't believe our commissioner has ever hit the "apply stat changes" button, nor was there ever a need to do so.  The easy answer would be, if it's never been done, now is not the time to start.  However, with it never being an issue before, we don't have any kind of rule in place regarding stat changes one way or the other.

So in your experience as commissioner, or your opinion as an owner that may be affected by this, what do you think is the correct move here?  Leave it alone, or apply changes?
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you play by those rules ALL YEAR LONG now suddenly in playoffs you want to change them? out of curiosity are you the team A owner?!?! 

team B wins because you use the scoring system already in place. myfantasyleague will change if Elias sportsBureau does, aren't they the official keepers of NFL stats? rules are rules.if I'm Team B who was rightfully awarded a win because of a stat change I'd be more than upset if you gave team A the win.

 
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