What's new
Fantasy Football - Footballguys Forums

This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Unethical or Collusion? Yes/No poll (1 Viewer)

This Transaction Is

  • Textbook Collusion

    Votes: 87 73.1%
  • Not Collusion, just unethical

    Votes: 32 26.9%

  • Total voters
    119
Status
Not open for further replies.
1) This is redraft, right? So can we get past the "who's the backup", "need to see the rest of the roster" stuff. All three positions were upgrades for one team based on current market value on any site, anywhere.
So what? That and $2.50 gets you a ride on the bus.One team dominating on current market value (according to the global FF community) happens ALL THE TIME when someone is stacked at a position and the trade market is not liquid. Not saying that happened here, but your #1 point is complete bunk. The closer you get to the deadline the more likely it is to happen.

Evaluating trades with no rosters and only the words of someone who is without any doubt selective with the facts is ludicrous.
The 3-7 team admitted he traded to help the other team. I do understand what you are trying to say, but in this case it simply doesn't apply. I have no idea why the OP wouldn't post the rosters, but I've never seen one where losing at three different positions helps. I have also seen questionable trades that appeared bad on one side turn out the other way. Doesn't mean anything here because by all accounts 3-7 said he knew it was a bad trade for his team.
It may have been a bad trade for his team, but was it a good for him personally. I already mentioned that he may have been a fan of one to player/teams and decided since he was going to be watching from the outside, he would rather lose with his favorite players.Would doing something like this be considered collusion? Or conduct detrimental to the league?
So if my team is bad, but I really like Brandon Lafell, being a Panther fan and all, you'd be OK with me trading Calvin Johnson for him because it would make me happier. YES I have a problem with that. Can you not see how this affects the rest of the league? Unbelievable.
But it does happen. And if you don't like it, then get the commish to not ask that person back next year. A lot of people over value hometown players, last year a lot of packer fans drafted Cobb very early. It actually paid off, but he was selected well above his adp. If you're really a "serious" league, then this shouldn't happen and the trade deadline should have expired long ago.A smart owner detects these little weaknesses and identifies who might be giving up and tries to give them a low ball offer.

Is it really my fault and should I have $400 stolen from me because I was smart enough to deal with the sucker in the league? No

 
Last edited by a moderator:
1) This is redraft, right? So can we get past the "who's the backup", "need to see the rest of the roster" stuff. All three positions were upgrades for one team based on current market value on any site, anywhere.
So what? That and $2.50 gets you a ride on the bus.One team dominating on current market value (according to the global FF community) happens ALL THE TIME when someone is stacked at a position and the trade market is not liquid. Not saying that happened here, but your #1 point is complete bunk. The closer you get to the deadline the more likely it is to happen.

Evaluating trades with no rosters and only the words of someone who is without any doubt selective with the facts is ludicrous.
The 3-7 team admitted he traded to help the other team. I do understand what you are trying to say, but in this case it simply doesn't apply. I have no idea why the OP wouldn't post the rosters, but I've never seen one where losing at three different positions helps. I have also seen questionable trades that appeared bad on one side turn out the other way. Doesn't mean anything here because by all accounts 3-7 said he knew it was a bad trade for his team.
It may have been a bad trade for his team, but was it a good for him personally. I already mentioned that he may have been a fan of one to player/teams and decided since he was going to be watching from the outside, he would rather lose with his favorite players.Would doing something like this be considered collusion? Or conduct detrimental to the league?
So if my team is bad, but I really like Brandon Lafell, being a Panther fan and all, you'd be OK with me trading Calvin Johnson for him because it would make me happier. YES I have a problem with that. Can you not see how this affects the rest of the league? Unbelievable.
But it does happen. And if you don't like it, then get the commish to not ask that person back next year. A lot of people over value hometown players, last year a lot of packer fans drafted Cobb very early. It actually paid off, but he was selected well above his adp. If you're really a "serious" league, then this shouldn't happen and the trade deadline should have expired long ago.A smart owner detects these little weaknesses and identifies who might be giving up and tries to give them a low ball offer.

Is it really my fault and should I have $400 stolen from me because I was smart enough to deal with the sucker in the league? No
Please tell me you do see the huge difference in overdrafting a player as a homer, vs trading away multiple very good players to your buddy right before the trade deadline. What does homerism have to do with this trade?

Did someone steal $400 from you?

Did I say somewhere that they should?

 
1) This is redraft, right? So can we get past the "who's the backup", "need to see the rest of the roster" stuff. All three positions were upgrades for one team based on current market value on any site, anywhere.
So what? That and $2.50 gets you a ride on the bus.

One team dominating on current market value (according to the global FF community) happens ALL THE TIME when someone is stacked at a position and the trade market is not liquid. Not saying that happened here, but your #1 point is complete bunk. The closer you get to the deadline the more likely it is to happen.

Evaluating trades with no rosters and only the words of someone who is without any doubt selective with the facts is ludicrous.
The 3-7 team admitted he traded to help the other team. I do understand what you are trying to say, but in this case it simply doesn't apply. I have no idea why the OP wouldn't post the rosters, but I've never seen one where losing at three different positions helps. I have also seen questionable trades that appeared bad on one side turn out the other way. Doesn't mean anything here because by all accounts 3-7 said he knew it was a bad trade for his team.
It may have been a bad trade for his team, but was it a good for him personally. I already mentioned that he may have been a fan of one to player/teams and decided since he was going to be watching from the outside, he would rather lose with his favorite players.

Would doing something like this be considered collusion? Or conduct detrimental to the league?
Conduct detrimental to the league. With all the energy and effort put into a fantasy season, do you want a guy dumping his players so he can start all Cardinals? Is that anyone's idea of sportsmanship or competitive integrity?

These threads have gone on long enough... only an idiot or a troll doesn't see this as collusion with the facts as presented.

Who cares that in your grandmother's league, grandma once dealt Barry Sanders for Zack Crockett. Everyone was upset but then Sanders retired, so the lesson is "you never know".

Nice stories... but in a redraft format when a team OUT OF CONTENTION makes lopsided trades with their friend, we CAN call a spade a spade.

Point out the league should have a trade deadline. Debate whether the punishment was fair, but for God's sake, this is collusion.

 
For those who voted "Not collusion, just unethical", does this mean you would let it go as Commissioner, or that you still reverse it and just don't throw anyone out? Or did you just vote on the terminology, and the reaction is no different. Just curious.

 
For those who voted "Not collusion, just unethical", does this mean you would let it go as Commissioner, or that you still reverse it and just don't throw anyone out? Or did you just vote on the terminology, and the reaction is no different. Just curious.
I would reverse it, but by no means is it collusion. Terminology, yes, that's what this is about

 
For those who voted "Not collusion, just unethical", does this mean you would let it go as Commissioner, or that you still reverse it and just don't throw anyone out? Or did you just vote on the terminology, and the reaction is no different. Just curious.
I would reverse it, but by no means is it collusion. Terminology, yes, that's what this is about
So as a commissioner, what would that mean for your action? Collusion vs Unethical. Same?

 
1) This is redraft, right? So can we get past the "who's the backup", "need to see the rest of the roster" stuff. All three positions were upgrades for one team based on current market value on any site, anywhere.
So what? That and $2.50 gets you a ride on the bus.

One team dominating on current market value (according to the global FF community) happens ALL THE TIME when someone is stacked at a position and the trade market is not liquid. Not saying that happened here, but your #1 point is complete bunk. The closer you get to the deadline the more likely it is to happen.

Evaluating trades with no rosters and only the words of someone who is without any doubt selective with the facts is ludicrous.
The 3-7 team admitted he traded to help the other team. I do understand what you are trying to say, but in this case it simply doesn't apply. I have no idea why the OP wouldn't post the rosters, but I've never seen one where losing at three different positions helps. I have also seen questionable trades that appeared bad on one side turn out the other way. Doesn't mean anything here because by all accounts 3-7 said he knew it was a bad trade for his team.
It may have been a bad trade for his team, but was it a good for him personally. I already mentioned that he may have been a fan of one to player/teams and decided since he was going to be watching from the outside, he would rather lose with his favorite players.

Would doing something like this be considered collusion? Or conduct detrimental to the league?
So if my team is bad, but I really like Brandon Lafell, being a Panther fan and all, you'd be OK with me trading Calvin Johnson for him because it would make me happier. YES I have a problem with that. Can you not see how this affects the rest of the league? Unbelievable.
Great, let's continue to work off of your examples. Lafell for Johnson, is this a lopsided trade, absolutely What about Lafell for Burleson. Is this OK? or Lafell for Durham. Is this OK?

Now we have established who you think an acceptable trade should be. Why do you get to decide everything. Even the experts can't predict the future. What do you use to decide on trade is unfair and another is not?

For those who voted "Not collusion, just unethical", does this mean you would let it go as Commissioner, or that you still reverse it and just don't throw anyone out? Or did you just vote on the terminology, and the reaction is no different. Just curious.
I have commished a lot of different leagues over the years. In my current league, I have never reversed a trade. Period. It's in the rules that I will question a trade only if I suspect collusion. Beyond that, we have no votes, no vetos. And if that wasn't enough, we have no trade deadline. (it is a salary and contract league)

I did question one trade this season. Tim Wright (1 year contract) for Reggie Wayne (1 year) contract. The only reason I questioned it, was to confirm the guy that received Wayne was going to use one of our player tags on him. I couldn't wait until February and then discuss that trade.

All of these rules are spelled out in the bylaws. Owners know it coming into the league and that way there are no surprises. If they don't like them, we can discuss changes or they can find a new league. I don't fault anyone if the league is not for them. We did have one owner quit right before the season because he didn't like the trades. Guess what, we found a new owner in a day or two and moved on. We are still having fun, not sure what he is doing.

In effort of full disclosure, this is a very cheap league. We play it for fun with a little money for winning the championship. High stakes leagues are great for some people, I spent some time playing them 10 years ago. But I feel it leads to people wanting to cheat more. There's more to gain, so they are willing to take a risk.

Sorry for the length of the post.

 
1) This is redraft, right? So can we get past the "who's the backup", "need to see the rest of the roster" stuff. All three positions were upgrades for one team based on current market value on any site, anywhere.
So what? That and $2.50 gets you a ride on the bus.

One team dominating on current market value (according to the global FF community) happens ALL THE TIME when someone is stacked at a position and the trade market is not liquid. Not saying that happened here, but your #1 point is complete bunk. The closer you get to the deadline the more likely it is to happen.

Evaluating trades with no rosters and only the words of someone who is without any doubt selective with the facts is ludicrous.
The 3-7 team admitted he traded to help the other team. I do understand what you are trying to say, but in this case it simply doesn't apply. I have no idea why the OP wouldn't post the rosters, but I've never seen one where losing at three different positions helps. I have also seen questionable trades that appeared bad on one side turn out the other way. Doesn't mean anything here because by all accounts 3-7 said he knew it was a bad trade for his team.
It may have been a bad trade for his team, but was it a good for him personally. I already mentioned that he may have been a fan of one to player/teams and decided since he was going to be watching from the outside, he would rather lose with his favorite players.

Would doing something like this be considered collusion? Or conduct detrimental to the league?
So if my team is bad, but I really like Brandon Lafell, being a Panther fan and all, you'd be OK with me trading Calvin Johnson for him because it would make me happier. YES I have a problem with that. Can you not see how this affects the rest of the league? Unbelievable.
Great, let's continue to work off of your examples. Lafell for Johnson, is this a lopsided trade, absolutely What about Lafell for Burleson. Is this OK? or Lafell for Durham. Is this OK?

Now we have established who you think an acceptable trade should be. Why do you get to decide everything. Even the experts can't predict the future. What do you use to decide on trade is unfair and another is not?

For those who voted "Not collusion, just unethical", does this mean you would let it go as Commissioner, or that you still reverse it and just don't throw anyone out? Or did you just vote on the terminology, and the reaction is no different. Just curious.
I have commished a lot of different leagues over the years. In my current league, I have never reversed a trade. Period. It's in the rules that I will question a trade only if I suspect collusion. Beyond that, we have no votes, no vetos. And if that wasn't enough, we have no trade deadline. (it is a salary and contract league)

I did question one trade this season. Tim Wright (1 year contract) for Reggie Wayne (1 year) contract. The only reason I questioned it, was to confirm the guy that received Wayne was going to use one of our player tags on him. I couldn't wait until February and then discuss that trade.

All of these rules are spelled out in the bylaws. Owners know it coming into the league and that way there are no surprises. If they don't like them, we can discuss changes or they can find a new league. I don't fault anyone if the league is not for them. We did have one owner quit right before the season because he didn't like the trades. Guess what, we found a new owner in a day or two and moved on. We are still having fun, not sure what he is doing.

In effort of full disclosure, this is a very cheap league. We play it for fun with a little money for winning the championship. High stakes leagues are great for some people, I spent some time playing them 10 years ago. But I feel it leads to people wanting to cheat more. There's more to gain, so they are willing to take a risk.

Sorry for the length of the post.
I don't think you do things much differently than I do. As commissioner, and I only act as Commish for one league, I consider it my duty to police, umpire, referee, whatever, the league. Commissioner has total control, no league votes. I have to make a judgement call based on the information I have. If necessary I gather more info. Same with the leagues where I'm not commish. Never reversed a trade, but this one would be an easy judgement call IMO. I don't really need to try to decide whether its a fair trade, but that information is a big factor in whether it gets questioned. It's really all about intent. In this case, with the information posted, I would have to reverse the trade. As posted above, I would have gotten more info from the 6-4 team, but I'm pretty sure this would never fly.

 
Here is my comments made on the league message board in regards to the one trade I questioned this season

"Can one of the two parties involved explain this trade? I don't normally question any trade. And with both teams more than likely missing the playoffs, it's even less relevant"

There was a trade right before the season started that had Romo and Alex Smith involved. I didn't have to question it, because someone else beat me to it. But this explains my thoughts on either trade.

"I question every single trade that is made. The first question as the commish. Is it collusion? If not, I look at it as an owner. Who won the trade, how does it help/hurt each team? Who won, who lost? Why did they make that trade?

The Romo/Smith trade was made before the season started. Nobody knew what each piece of the trade was going to do. (nobody predicted the chiefs would be undefeated). Did one team win, absolutely.

Fast forward to today's trade. Wayne for Wright straight up seems very odd. Only if Wayne is not tagged. As the commish, I had to get past my first question. I'm now comfortable with the trade. Had I waited until the end of the season and Team X didn't tag Wayne, it would have been too late to have this conversation. Now, as an owner, I think one team won and one team lost, but that happens in every trade I evaluate.

I also questioned it here, instead of in private, because I suspected other owners would question the trade. At this point, today's trade is a non issue"


 
For those who voted "Not collusion, just unethical", does this mean you would let it go as Commissioner, or that you still reverse it and just don't throw anyone out? Or did you just vote on the terminology, and the reaction is no different. Just curious.
I would reverse it, but by no means is it collusion. Terminology, yes, that's what this is about
So as a commissioner, what would that mean for your action? Collusion vs Unethical. Same?
I'll contradict myself here, but thinking about this as if it were my league vs if I were in your league.

I have never in my 15 years of being commissioner reversed a trade. Ive had some pretty bad trades and during discussions quite frequently the points comes up of : "who determines the worth of that player, me?" That's just one mans opinion of the worth of that player. Is Calvin Johnson equal to lafell? No. But what if Calvin gets hurt for the rest of the year, then what? As KC points out, where is the line on lafell? Who determines a players worth? One man? What if that one mans value of a player is different than mine? Who is correct? My value on Russell Wilson for dynasty is actually really low, but some other people have him as a too QB dynasty prospect. Who is right? Who determines who is right?

I would only veto a trade with proof of collusion. For me, that means two players decide to combine their teams to win some money and split the winnings.

I don't fault the commish for vetoing that trade in your league. Would I have done this in my league? No, probably not. This is where I contradict myself from the previous post. I wouldn't do it in my league because it would raise such a #### storm. Again, who am I to determine who is worth what? And I pride myself at not vetoing trades- if you want to make the trade who am I to say its a bad trade. But I don't fault the commish for vetoing the trade, which is what I meant earlier.

I would likely not invite that person back the next year because I think it's rather unsportsmanlike to just give up on a season. I a serious league if a person wants to give up, then they don't belong in that league.

 
Which is why I posed the question of a third party site that could evaluate trades based on individual league stats, projections, and 3 or 5 year average. Remove any guessing. If someone could do this, and maintain a 70% accuracy rate, I think you could make some good money. It basically comes down to gather stats and managing a data base. (neither of which I know how to do)

This would be the only way I would accept a veto. I would never allow other owners to vote on any trade they felt was uneven.

 
The 3-7 team admitted he traded to help the other team.
The 3-7 team admitted he had given up.If he doesn't give a rip about his own roster, why should we think he cares about some other team's roster?
Not sure I understand. Are you saying he didn't intend to help the other team?
Correct.Consider this: if 3-7 guy really wanted to help the other team, then why wasn't this deal finalized weeks ago, when the discussion began?

The trade went thru now because 3-7 stopped caring after week 10. End of story. Absent additional info, anything beyond that is speculation.

 
For those who voted "Not collusion, just unethical", does this mean you would let it go as Commissioner, or that you still reverse it and just don't throw anyone out? Or did you just vote on the terminology, and the reaction is no different. Just curious.
I would reverse it, but by no means is it collusion. Terminology, yes, that's what this is about
So as a commissioner, what would that mean for your action? Collusion vs Unethical. Same?
I would reverse the trade once I heard 3-7 guy say he had stopped caring, and trying. I would tell him you don't have to care, but you have to try... For the obvious reason of preserving the competitive fairness for the rest of the league.If I heard there was some more sinister motivation, the response would escalate as i felt appropriate.

 
For those who voted "Not collusion, just unethical", does this mean you would let it go as Commissioner, or that you still reverse it and just don't throw anyone out? Or did you just vote on the terminology, and the reaction is no different. Just curious.
I would reverse it, but by no means is it collusion. Terminology, yes, that's what this is about
So as a commissioner, what would that mean for your action? Collusion vs Unethical. Same?
I'll contradict myself here, but thinking about this as if it were my league vs if I were in your league.

I have never in my 15 years of being commissioner reversed a trade. Ive had some pretty bad trades and during discussions quite frequently the points comes up of : "who determines the worth of that player, me?" That's just one mans opinion of the worth of that player. Is Calvin Johnson equal to lafell? No. But what if Calvin gets hurt for the rest of the year, then what? As KC points out, where is the line on lafell? Who determines a players worth? One man? What if that one mans value of a player is different than mine? Who is correct? My value on Russell Wilson for dynasty is actually really low, but some other people have him as a too QB dynasty prospect. Who is right? Who determines who is right?

I would only veto a trade with proof of collusion. For me, that means two players decide to combine their teams to win some money and split the winnings.

I don't fault the commish for vetoing that trade in your league. Would I have done this in my league? No, probably not. This is where I contradict myself from the previous post. I wouldn't do it in my league because it would raise such a #### storm. Again, who am I to determine who is worth what? And I pride myself at not vetoing trades- if you want to make the trade who am I to say its a bad trade. But I don't fault the commish for vetoing the trade, which is what I meant earlier.

I would likely not invite that person back the next year because I think it's rather unsportsmanlike to just give up on a season. I a serious league if a person wants to give up, then they don't belong in that league.
As far as proof of collusion, that would almost never happen. Judgement call IMO, but as stated earlier, I would question both teams. I would let any trade go through as long as I believe both owners think they are improving their team. That didn't happen here.

To clarify, I am not the commish, nor in the OP's league.

As far as values differing on players, you're preaching to the choir. But there has to be a point where you draw the line, and question the intent. If both owners sound like they thought they got a good deal for their team, then it goes through, regardless of my opinion.

 
For those who voted "Not collusion, just unethical", does this mean you would let it go as Commissioner, or that you still reverse it and just don't throw anyone out? Or did you just vote on the terminology, and the reaction is no different. Just curious.
I would reverse it, but by no means is it collusion. Terminology, yes, that's what this is about
So as a commissioner, what would that mean for your action? Collusion vs Unethical. Same?
I'll contradict myself here, but thinking about this as if it were my league vs if I were in your league.

I have never in my 15 years of being commissioner reversed a trade. Ive had some pretty bad trades and during discussions quite frequently the points comes up of : "who determines the worth of that player, me?" That's just one mans opinion of the worth of that player. Is Calvin Johnson equal to lafell? No. But what if Calvin gets hurt for the rest of the year, then what? As KC points out, where is the line on lafell? Who determines a players worth? One man? What if that one mans value of a player is different than mine? Who is correct? My value on Russell Wilson for dynasty is actually really low, but some other people have him as a too QB dynasty prospect. Who is right? Who determines who is right?I would only veto a trade with proof of collusion. For me, that means two players decide to combine their teams to win some money and split the winnings.I don't fault the commish for vetoing that trade in your league. Would I have done this in my league? No, probably not. This is where I contradict myself from the previous post. I wouldn't do it in my league because it would raise such a #### storm. Again, who am I to determine who is worth what? And I pride myself at not vetoing trades- if you want to make the trade who am I to say its a bad trade. But I don't fault the commish for vetoing the trade, which is what I meant earlier.

I would likely not invite that person back the next year because I think it's rather unsportsmanlike to just give up on a season. I a serious league if a person wants to give up, then they don't belong in that league.
As far as proof of collusion, that would almost never happen. Judgement call IMO, but as stated earlier, I would question both teams. I would let any trade go through as long as I believe both owners think they are improving their team. That didn't happen here.To clarify, I am not the commish, nor in the OP's league.

As far as values differing on players, you're preaching to the choir. But there has to be a point where you draw the line, and question the intent. If both owners sound like they thought they got a good deal for their team, then it goes through, regardless of my opinion.
I think there lines the dilemma; where to draw the line.

Where we disagree on allowing the trade going through is where both owners must feel they are improving their team. I really don't care if one owner thinks he is improving his team. If he likes a certain player and wants to over pay for that player, ah be he made his team worse but he got his guy.

I would ask both players why this trade was completed. Hear both out and figure it out from there. If one guy says, well I gave up, well then there's a discussion to be had about vetoing or allowing the trade. You're right, collusion is a judgement call, but collusion is a very very serious accusation. I don't take that lightly and I think the OP in this case was quick to call it collusion, which it don't feel it is. I think it's unsportsmanlike and I wouldn't want to be in a league with someone that does that.

 
Which is why I posed the question of a third party site that could evaluate trades based on individual league stats, projections, and 3 or 5 year average. Remove any guessing. If someone could do this, and maintain a 70% accuracy rate, I think you could make some good money. It basically comes down to gather stats and managing a data base. (neither of which I know how to do)

This would be the only way I would accept a veto. I would never allow other owners to vote on any trade they felt was uneven.
I was suprised to see Yahoo had a fairly decent trade evaluator. It is slightly flawed, and uses their projections(which haven't been too bad) and shows both team's starting lineup's projections for the rest of the season, with and without the trade. The slight flaw is it can't take into account what you could get by just getting a guy off the waiver wire instead of trading. For instance, if your TE goes out and you only have one, any trade for a TE will look great because his stats always replace a zero.

 
Which is why I posed the question of a third party site that could evaluate trades based on individual league stats, projections, and 3 or 5 year average. Remove any guessing. If someone could do this, and maintain a 70% accuracy rate, I think you could make some good money. It basically comes down to gather stats and managing a data base. (neither of which I know how to do)

This would be the only way I would accept a veto. I would never allow other owners to vote on any trade they felt was uneven.
I was suprised to see Yahoo had a fairly decent trade evaluator. It is slightly flawed, and uses their projections(which haven't been too bad) and shows both team's starting lineup's projections for the rest of the season, with and without the trade. The slight flaw is it can't take into account what you could get by just getting a guy off the waiver wire instead of trading. For instance, if your TE goes out and you only have one, any trade for a TE will look great because his stats always replace a zero.
yeah, I envision something like the way leaguesafe handles the cash for fantasy football. I know they have their problems, but it solves a problem for commissioners and owners.

It has to be separate from the site hosting the leagues. And it should use multiple categories to establish player values. It could take rankings from other places, but those shouldn't weigh too heavy in the final value. (think of the way the BCS does its rankings) It would be awesome to pay an extra $30-50 a season to have every trade monitored. When a specific offset of value is reached, the commish would get an email requesting his review.

 
Which is why I posed the question of a third party site that could evaluate trades based on individual league stats, projections, and 3 or 5 year average. Remove any guessing. If someone could do this, and maintain a 70% accuracy rate, I think you could make some good money. It basically comes down to gather stats and managing a data base. (neither of which I know how to do)

This would be the only way I would accept a veto. I would never allow other owners to vote on any trade they felt was uneven.
I was suprised to see Yahoo had a fairly decent trade evaluator. It is slightly flawed, and uses their projections(which haven't been too bad) and shows both team's starting lineup's projections for the rest of the season, with and without the trade. The slight flaw is it can't take into account what you could get by just getting a guy off the waiver wire instead of trading. For instance, if your TE goes out and you only have one, any trade for a TE will look great because his stats always replace a zero.
yeah, I envision something like the way leaguesafe handles the cash for fantasy football. I know they have their problems, but it solves a problem for commissioners and owners. It has to be separate from the site hosting the leagues. And it should use multiple categories to establish player values. It could take rankings from other places, but those shouldn't weigh too heavy in the final value. (think of the way the BCS does its rankings) It would be awesome to pay an extra $30-50 a season to have every trade monitored. When a specific offset of value is reached, the commish would get an email requesting his review.
Point system? Like nfl draft pick trades?FBG could do this.... They already have a system in place (with only their rankings of course) that shows your strength at each position on draft dominator. Perhaps using that and,tweaking it, FBG could come up with a trade evaluator.

I thought they had a "trade dominator" program a while back. Did they get rid of it? I know I always had a hard time figuring it out, and I'm pretty tech savvy

 
Last edited by a moderator:
For those who voted "Not collusion, just unethical", does this mean you would let it go as Commissioner, or that you still reverse it and just don't throw anyone out? Or did you just vote on the terminology, and the reaction is no different. Just curious.
I would reverse it, but by no means is it collusion. Terminology, yes, that's what this is about
So as a commissioner, what would that mean for your action? Collusion vs Unethical. Same?
I'll contradict myself here, but thinking about this as if it were my league vs if I were in your league.

I have never in my 15 years of being commissioner reversed a trade. Ive had some pretty bad trades and during discussions quite frequently the points comes up of : "who determines the worth of that player, me?" That's just one mans opinion of the worth of that player. Is Calvin Johnson equal to lafell? No. But what if Calvin gets hurt for the rest of the year, then what? As KC points out, where is the line on lafell? Who determines a players worth? One man? What if that one mans value of a player is different than mine? Who is correct? My value on Russell Wilson for dynasty is actually really low, but some other people have him as a too QB dynasty prospect. Who is right? Who determines who is right?

I would only veto a trade with proof of collusion. For me, that means two players decide to combine their teams to win some money and split the winnings.

I don't fault the commish for vetoing that trade in your league. Would I have done this in my league? No, probably not. This is where I contradict myself from the previous post. I wouldn't do it in my league because it would raise such a #### storm. Again, who am I to determine who is worth what? And I pride myself at not vetoing trades- if you want to make the trade who am I to say its a bad trade. But I don't fault the commish for vetoing the trade, which is what I meant earlier.

I would likely not invite that person back the next year because I think it's rather unsportsmanlike to just give up on a season. I a serious league if a person wants to give up, then they don't belong in that league.
Glad to see you coming around but you wouldn't veto an egregious collusive trade to protect your track record of no vetoes?

If it were earlier in the season, I would agree with your concern over the subjectivity of player evaluation. It wouldn't be your place. But... late in the season, when a team is out of contention and makes a trade with his good friend that 99.999% of the fantasy population would not do, your eye brows have to raise a little, no?

 
Which is why I posed the question of a third party site that could evaluate trades based on individual league stats, projections, and 3 or 5 year average. Remove any guessing. If someone could do this, and maintain a 70% accuracy rate, I think you could make some good money. It basically comes down to gather stats and managing a data base. (neither of which I know how to do)

This would be the only way I would accept a veto. I would never allow other owners to vote on any trade they felt was uneven.
That is where your thinking is flawed. Vetoes and league votes are NOT a good thing. The vast majority of trades are legitimate - they may be one sided - but they are made with good faith intentions. But, just because they're "generally" bad does not mean they're always bad. Collusive situations do occur.

Funny that you would accept a veto if a 3rd party site evaluated the trade but not recognize it with an admission and the circumstances to back up motive.

 
Which is why I posed the question of a third party site that could evaluate trades based on individual league stats, projections, and 3 or 5 year average. Remove any guessing. If someone could do this, and maintain a 70% accuracy rate, I think you could make some good money. It basically comes down to gather stats and managing a data base. (neither of which I know how to do)

This would be the only way I would accept a veto. I would never allow other owners to vote on any trade they felt was uneven.
That is where your thinking is flawed. Vetoes and league votes are NOT a good thing. The vast majority of trades are legitimate - they may be one sided - but they are made with good faith intentions. But, just because they're "generally" bad does not mean they're always bad. Collusive situations do occur.

Funny that you would accept a veto if a 3rd party site evaluated the trade but not recognize it with an admission and the circumstances to back up motive.
I also said that i would need to see a 70% success rate over a period of time. Not to mention that the I said it would notify the commissioner when there was an unbalanced trade. Not automatically veto trades. It would be a much better starting point than other people voting that are in the same league.

Look at the bolded parts. I already said I would never want to have owners vote.

You must not have read my posts, I don't reverse trades without proven collusion. (which means, I have never overturned a trade) But, I'm not so stubborn that I wouldn't be open to new things that can help our league. You seem to want to pigeon hole me into some inflexible tyrant.

If you want to continue to discuss the specifics of this case, let's start with the fact that there were no rules on how to handle unfair trades, collusion, cheating, tanking, arson, espionage, or tax evasion. It sounds like they were flying by the seat of their pants. Now when a problem occurs, they went off the deep end. Which included owners voting to remove two players from the league. Again, read my posts. I already said it was a bad trade. But, I don't believe we have all the facts and I don't believe that the penalty was fair for each team based on individual involvement.

 
Any business with a 70% accuracy rate on this question will make more money in gambling than in selling fantasy services.
Sweet. Thanks for extending my point. If professionals can't accurately predict who is the better fantasy player, what makes you think any fantasy owner will do any better?

Even with all the stats and input handled by NASA super computers, what are we looking at? 55%? 60%? How about a team that's 3-7? He's already had ten weeks to prove he made some poor choices. Do we think he's hitting any better than 50% on his evaluations? So, is his trade collusion or poor choices?

 
I'd like to apologize to the majority in the pool, didn't mean to clutter the space. Please take note that there were other posters that far out posted me in these threads.

We reached a final resolution. 6-4 admits what he did was wrong, took his DQ, left his money in and will return next year. Cheating with your best friend is not acceptable. He apologized to the league as well. If you missed it in the weeds, both players were given the option to take their money and leave the league or leave their money in and return next season.

The facts were laid out very simply, nothing has changed in the last two days, although when someone is wrong, sometimes yelling the loudest is their solution. If you go through these threads it is easy to identify these individuals.

The conclusion is simple, even if there hasn't been any monetary exchange (which I admitted, and should've earned some healthy credibility by including that extremely important info), collusion can still take place by trying to help your buddy.

For the 70% who voted yes, thanks for using sound judgement.

 
Doctor DR said:
Collusion is trading Matt Shaub for Peyton manning.

I think when you are talking about throwing two players out of a league because of collusion, semantics and definitions become quite important. These two were removed for completing a bad trade. Maybe it had poor intentions, but it wasn't collusion. Who could argue about this forever, so this is just my opinion.
What happened to the collective IQ of this board?

Trades that are grossly unfair like Schaub for Manning are not necessary for collusion. They're generally necessary to prove collusion since collusion doesn't exist when both parties are trying to legitimately improve their teams in a legitimate way and we don't hack into their e-mails and bug their phones to prove it.

Here, though, collusion is admitted. They're two competitors working cooperatively under a secret agreement for the detriment of the league. This is, literally, what the textbook says is collusion. There's no gray area here. You don't need to see the rest of their team. You don't need to know the settings. You don't need to know who is available on the waiver wire. You don't need to know anything else. This is collusion. Once you understand that, you might understand what other deals may or may not be collusion in the future.

The short and sweet of it is that collusion is about intent. Barring an investigation into people's intent, we use some objective test to see if it was possible that they had a pro-competitive intent. And, generally speaking, if we find one, we say it's not collusion and move on. But where intent is admitted, you can just stop. It's collusion. It's cheating. You can kick the bums out.

 
KCitons said:
I posted this in the other thread, but I think it needs to be posted here. (and any time some uses integrity of league as an excuse to overturn trades)

Should the same apply to every teams draft pick in a startup draft? If someone was to take Jay Cutler with the 10th overall pick, would you stop the draft, demand the owner be removed from the league and keep his fees?

As the teams move through the season, should you monitor everyone teams waivers? If an owner acquires the wrong player, should you kick him out of the league and keep his fees?

Lastly, should you monitor every owners starting lineup to make sure they are starting the players you would start? What if they end up losing the game and it becomes obvious that the players you would have started would have earn him the win? Should this owner be removed from the league and his fees kept?

Bottom line. It's your league, but it's not your team. If NFL owners acted like this, they would have kicked the Browns, Jags and Raiders out of the league years ago. Without specific rules on how to handle things, there is only one agreement between owners and the league. The owner pays a fee and in return he manages a team.
You're one confused dude.

 
I'd like to apologize to the majority in the pool, didn't mean to clutter the space. Please take note that there were other posters that far out posted me in these threads.

We reached a final resolution. 6-4 admits what he did was wrong, took his DQ, left his money in and will return next year. Cheating with your best friend is not acceptable. He apologized to the league as well. If you missed it in the weeds, both players were given the option to take their money and leave the league or leave their money in and return next season.

The facts were laid out very simply, nothing has changed in the last two days, although when someone is wrong, sometimes yelling the loudest is their solution. If you go through these threads it is easy to identify these individuals.

The conclusion is simple, even if there hasn't been any monetary exchange (which I admitted, and should've earned some healthy credibility by including that extremely important info), collusion can still take place by trying to help your buddy.

For the 70% who voted yes, thanks for using sound judgement.
Self Serving right to the end. In case you missed it, the guys speaking the loudest in this thread are also the guys speaking towards a better understanding/definition of collusion. Because your situation is the latest in a long line of collusion threads, the particulars kept popping up in the discussion.

There's a reason why you don't see a sticky or fantasy sites with clear explanations of collusion. It's just not an easy thing to do. Other posters have given scenarios from their leagues, so quit thinking it is all about you. As far as the 30% of the people that voted against you, you're lucky five of them weren't in your league. .

You were also lucky that the owners responded with an admission. Other commissioners/leagues don't usually get a confession. But, I will remind you that we are less than 24 hours since you grabbed your noose and pitchfork, and went on a witch hunt. Had you waited a few more hours, you could have had your answers and saved yourself the embarrassment. Your situation with collusion is over. Anything we say here isn't going to change that.

The discussion here shifted to a lot of what if scenarios that are relevant to fantasy football commissioners. What if the owners responded with an excuse, no matter what it was? What if the roster was such that the trade actually helped the 3-7 team? When should a commissioner overturn trades? People were posting what there league uses to handle situations like this. Perhaps you should point your commissioner to this thread. It may help him develop rules for your league going forward.

 
KCitons said:
I posted this in the other thread, but I think it needs to be posted here. (and any time some uses integrity of league as an excuse to overturn trades)

Should the same apply to every teams draft pick in a startup draft? If someone was to take Jay Cutler with the 10th overall pick, would you stop the draft, demand the owner be removed from the league and keep his fees?

As the teams move through the season, should you monitor everyone teams waivers? If an owner acquires the wrong player, should you kick him out of the league and keep his fees?

Lastly, should you monitor every owners starting lineup to make sure they are starting the players you would start? What if they end up losing the game and it becomes obvious that the players you would have started would have earn him the win? Should this owner be removed from the league and his fees kept?

Bottom line. It's your league, but it's not your team. If NFL owners acted like this, they would have kicked the Browns, Jags and Raiders out of the league years ago. Without specific rules on how to handle things, there is only one agreement between owners and the league. The owner pays a fee and in return he manages a team.
You're one confused dude.
How so?

 
KCitons said:
DropKick said:
KCitons said:
Which is why I posed the question of a third party site that could evaluate trades based on individual league stats, projections, and 3 or 5 year average. Remove any guessing. If someone could do this, and maintain a 70% accuracy rate, I think you could make some good money. It basically comes down to gather stats and managing a data base. (neither of which I know how to do)

This would be the only way I would accept a veto. I would never allow other owners to vote on any trade they felt was uneven.
That is where your thinking is flawed. Vetoes and league votes are NOT a good thing. The vast majority of trades are legitimate - they may be one sided - but they are made with good faith intentions. But, just because they're "generally" bad does not mean they're always bad. Collusive situations do occur.

Funny that you would accept a veto if a 3rd party site evaluated the trade but not recognize it with an admission and the circumstances to back up motive.
I also said that i would need to see a 70% success rate over a period of time. Not to mention that the I said it would notify the commissioner when there was an unbalanced trade. Not automatically veto trades. It would be a much better starting point than other people voting that are in the same league.

Look at the bolded parts. I already said I would never want to have owners vote.

You must not have read my posts, I don't reverse trades without proven collusion. (which means, I have never overturned a trade) But, I'm not so stubborn that I wouldn't be open to new things that can help our league. You seem to want to pigeon hole me into some inflexible tyrant.

If you want to continue to discuss the specifics of this case, let's start with the fact that there were no rules on how to handle unfair trades, collusion, cheating, tanking, arson, espionage, or tax evasion. It sounds like they were flying by the seat of their pants. Now when a problem occurs, they went off the deep end. Which included owners voting to remove two players from the league. Again, read my posts. I already said it was a bad trade. But, I don't believe we have all the facts and I don't believe that the penalty was fair for each team based on individual involvement.
The main discussion of the thread is collusion. Nowhere have I defended the handling of the situation. In fact, I've said that it is more debatable than the collusive aspect.

You can't legislate every situation. You also can't assume every act that is not expressly prohibited is legal. Their primary omission is lack of a trade dead line, which is hard to justify in a redraft league.

 
DropKick said:
Doctor DR said:
Pantherz said:
Doctor DR said:
Pantherz said:
For those who voted "Not collusion, just unethical", does this mean you would let it go as Commissioner, or that you still reverse it and just don't throw anyone out? Or did you just vote on the terminology, and the reaction is no different. Just curious.
I would reverse it, but by no means is it collusion. Terminology, yes, that's what this is about
So as a commissioner, what would that mean for your action? Collusion vs Unethical. Same?
I'll contradict myself here, but thinking about this as if it were my league vs if I were in your league.

I have never in my 15 years of being commissioner reversed a trade. Ive had some pretty bad trades and during discussions quite frequently the points comes up of : "who determines the worth of that player, me?" That's just one mans opinion of the worth of that player. Is Calvin Johnson equal to lafell? No. But what if Calvin gets hurt for the rest of the year, then what? As KC points out, where is the line on lafell? Who determines a players worth? One man? What if that one mans value of a player is different than mine? Who is correct? My value on Russell Wilson for dynasty is actually really low, but some other people have him as a too QB dynasty prospect. Who is right? Who determines who is right?

I would only veto a trade with proof of collusion. For me, that means two players decide to combine their teams to win some money and split the winnings.

I don't fault the commish for vetoing that trade in your league. Would I have done this in my league? No, probably not. This is where I contradict myself from the previous post. I wouldn't do it in my league because it would raise such a #### storm. Again, who am I to determine who is worth what? And I pride myself at not vetoing trades- if you want to make the trade who am I to say its a bad trade. But I don't fault the commish for vetoing the trade, which is what I meant earlier.

I would likely not invite that person back the next year because I think it's rather unsportsmanlike to just give up on a season. I a serious league if a person wants to give up, then they don't belong in that league.
Glad to see you coming around but you wouldn't veto an egregious collusive trade to protect your track record of no vetoes?

If it were earlier in the season, I would agree with your concern over the subjectivity of player evaluation. It wouldn't be your place. But... late in the season, when a team is out of contention and makes a trade with his good friend that 99.999% of the fantasy population would not do, your eye brows have to raise a little, no?
This is why my trade deadline is earlier in the season. If I were commish in this league, I wouldnt have grabbed my bull horn and started screaming collusion at the top of my lungs, starting multiple threads to try and get a lynch mob behind me.

I would have asked both owners to explain it and look at both rosters to try and justyify it.

If, in their explanation it would appear that collusion was taking place, then yeah I would veto. If not, then I wouldn't. We don't know what those owners would have said because this trade was vetoed before that. And we don't know what their rosters were because the OP still has not posted the rosters.... why? What does he have to hide?

 
KCitons said:
I posted this in the other thread, but I think it needs to be posted here. (and any time some uses integrity of league as an excuse to overturn trades)

Should the same apply to every teams draft pick in a startup draft? If someone was to take Jay Cutler with the 10th overall pick, would you stop the draft, demand the owner be removed from the league and keep his fees?

Of course not. This is 1 team, not an agreement between 2. Additionally, if there is a harm to the league here, it is distributed across the entire league. By making a terrible pick in the 1st round, all a team does is essentially remove their pick. Everyone else in the league benefits as the available players all just slide down 1 spot. The guy who picks 11th gets now the 10th best pick, the guy who picks 12th gets now the 11th best pick and so on and so forth.

As the teams move through the season, should you monitor everyone teams waivers? If an owner acquires the wrong player, should you kick him out of the league and keep his fees?

Of course not. Same reason as above.

Lastly, should you monitor every owners starting lineup to make sure they are starting the players you would start? What if they end up losing the game and it becomes obvious that the players you would have started would have earn him the win? Should this owner be removed from the league and his fees kept?

For a third time, you have a player acting unilaterally. That's not collusion.

Bottom line. It's your league, but it's not your team. If NFL owners acted like this, they would have kicked the Browns, Jags and Raiders out of the league years ago. Without specific rules on how to handle things, there is only one agreement between owners and the league. The owner pays a fee and in return he manages a team.

You're not an NFL team, chach. The NFL rightly believes that teams that value at the hundreds of millions of dollars with millions of dollars of revenue on every game are not going to, on a whim, decide to give away their best talent just to help another owner. They may suck. They may be terrible. They may be trading their best player for something in the future. But they're still acting in their own perceived best interest. You chipping in $30 and drafting players who will all be dropped off of your team at the end of the season are in no way comparable.
You're one confused dude.
How so?
In every way. See above.

Keep in mind collusion is a secret agreement among 2 players to harm competition, not some asinine standard of what is, will, or should be however you want to define "fair" in your mind.

It would be embarrassing enough for me to post that claptrap you did just once. Feeling like you needed to re-post it so others could see it is just jabbing your eyes out with a fork.

 
I'd like to apologize to the majority in the pool, didn't mean to clutter the space. Please take note that there were other posters that far out posted me in these threads.

We reached a final resolution. 6-4 admits what he did was wrong, took his DQ, left his money in and will return next year. Cheating with your best friend is not acceptable. He apologized to the league as well. If you missed it in the weeds, both players were given the option to take their money and leave the league or leave their money in and return next season.

The facts were laid out very simply, nothing has changed in the last two days, although when someone is wrong, sometimes yelling the loudest is their solution. If you go through these threads it is easy to identify these individuals.

The conclusion is simple, even if there hasn't been any monetary exchange (which I admitted, and should've earned some healthy credibility by including that extremely important info), collusion can still take place by trying to help your buddy.

For the 70% who voted yes, thanks for using sound judgement.
Self Serving right to the end. In case you missed it, the guys speaking the loudest in this thread are also the guys speaking towards a better understanding/definition of collusion. Because your situation is the latest in a long line of collusion threads, the particulars kept popping up in the discussion.

There's a reason why you don't see a sticky or fantasy sites with clear explanations of collusion. It's just not an easy thing to do. Other posters have given scenarios from their leagues, so quit thinking it is all about you. As far as the 30% of the people that voted against you, you're lucky five of them weren't in your league. .

You were also lucky that the owners responded with an admission. Other commissioners/leagues don't usually get a confession. But, I will remind you that we are less than 24 hours since you grabbed your noose and pitchfork, and went on a witch hunt. Had you waited a few more hours, you could have had your answers and saved yourself the embarrassment. Your situation with collusion is over. Anything we say here isn't going to change that.

The discussion here shifted to a lot of what if scenarios that are relevant to fantasy football commissioners. What if the owners responded with an excuse, no matter what it was? What if the roster was such that the trade actually helped the 3-7 team? When should a commissioner overturn trades? People were posting what there league uses to handle situations like this. Perhaps you should point your commissioner to this thread. It may help him develop rules for your league going forward.
Well said. I think the OP flew off the deep end and went crazy without really stepping back and taking a look. He realized he didn't have good support so then he started a second thread to try to make his point a different way. He takes 70% and gives himself a pat on the back, when 70% is pretty poor; hardly a solid, definitive answer.

Regardless of whether you are on one side or the other, this was handled completely wrong and is best served by this commissioner and others who run their own leagues as an educational moment.

 
KCitons said:
Johnny Blood said:
Any business with a 70% accuracy rate on this question will make more money in gambling than in selling fantasy services.
Sweet. Thanks for extending my point. If professionals can't accurately predict who is the better fantasy player, what makes you think any fantasy owner will do any better?

Even with all the stats and input handled by NASA super computers, what are we looking at? 55%? 60%? How about a team that's 3-7? He's already had ten weeks to prove he made some poor choices. Do we think he's hitting any better than 50% on his evaluations? So, is his trade collusion or poor choices?
I think you will have to revert to common sense. Leagues have too many custom nuances (Salary or contractual caps, keeper restrictions, current standings, etc.) so sometimes even trades that appear imbalanced may make sense within the context of a league or situation.

People find the need to over analyze every trade. Who got the better end of the deal? Who got shafted? And, isn't this where we jump the shark? Bad trades aren't necessarily collusion. Heck, even a "fair" trade could be collusive in nature. But, someone slaps the "collusion" label whenever they feel the trade is imbalanced. So, the word "collusion" gets a bad rep from overuse. Are we just tired of the word?

My definition of collusion, for fantasy football purposes, is "multiple teams working in cooperation for unethical or unsportsmanlike purpose". It is that simple.

Two teams agree to stack one team? Collusion.

Three teams agree to grab remaining QBs off the waiver wire to block a fourth team? Collusion.

Two teams agree to swap players for a week to cover byes? Collusion.

A team trades a proven veteran for an unheralded rookie? Not necessarily collusion.

 
KCitons said:
I posted this in the other thread, but I think it needs to be posted here. (and any time some uses integrity of league as an excuse to overturn trades)

Should the same apply to every teams draft pick in a startup draft? If someone was to take Jay Cutler with the 10th overall pick, would you stop the draft, demand the owner be removed from the league and keep his fees?

Of course not. This is 1 team, not an agreement between 2. Additionally, if there is a harm to the league here, it is distributed across the entire league. By making a terrible pick in the 1st round, all a team does is essentially remove their pick. Everyone else in the league benefits as the available players all just slide down 1 spot. The guy who picks 11th gets now the 10th best pick, the guy who picks 12th gets now the 11th best pick and so on and so forth.

As the teams move through the season, should you monitor everyone teams waivers? If an owner acquires the wrong player, should you kick him out of the league and keep his fees?

Of course not. Same reason as above.

Lastly, should you monitor every owners starting lineup to make sure they are starting the players you would start? What if they end up losing the game and it becomes obvious that the players you would have started would have earn him the win? Should this owner be removed from the league and his fees kept?

For a third time, you have a player acting unilaterally. That's not collusion.

Bottom line. It's your league, but it's not your team. If NFL owners acted like this, they would have kicked the Browns, Jags and Raiders out of the league years ago. Without specific rules on how to handle things, there is only one agreement between owners and the league. The owner pays a fee and in return he manages a team.

You're not an NFL team, chach. The NFL rightly believes that teams that value at the hundreds of millions of dollars with millions of dollars of revenue on every game are not going to, on a whim, decide to give away their best talent just to help another owner. They may suck. They may be terrible. They may be trading their best player for something in the future. But they're still acting in their own perceived best interest. You chipping in $30 and drafting players who will all be dropped off of your team at the end of the season are in no way comparable.
You're one confused dude.
How so?
In every way. See above.

Keep in mind collusion is a secret agreement among 2 players to harm competition, not some asinine standard of what is, will, or should be however you want to define "fair" in your mind.

It would be embarrassing enough for me to post that claptrap you did just once. Feeling like you needed to re-post it so others could see it is just jabbing your eyes out with a fork.
I think you are applying my quotes to collusion. I was not. I used these examples in response to others that believe trades need to be monitored for league integrity and that it upsets a competitive balance when there is a lopsided trade.

Even when a trade is clearly not collusion, just a dumb owner making a bad trade, there are people here that feel the need to step in and reverse that trade. This is why I gave the examples of draft picks, waivers, and starting lineups.

KCitons said:
Johnny Blood said:
Any business with a 70% accuracy rate on this question will make more money in gambling than in selling fantasy services.
Sweet. Thanks for extending my point. If professionals can't accurately predict who is the better fantasy player, what makes you think any fantasy owner will do any better?

Even with all the stats and input handled by NASA super computers, what are we looking at? 55%? 60%? How about a team that's 3-7? He's already had ten weeks to prove he made some poor choices. Do we think he's hitting any better than 50% on his evaluations? So, is his trade collusion or poor choices?
I think you will have to revert to common sense. Leagues have too many custom nuances (Salary or contractual caps, keeper restrictions, current standings, etc.) so sometimes even trades that appear imbalanced may make sense within the context of a league or situation.

People find the need to over analyze every trade. Who got the better end of the deal? Who got shafted? And, isn't this where we jump the shark? Bad trades aren't necessarily collusion. Heck, even a "fair" trade could be collusive in nature. But, someone slaps the "collusion" label whenever they feel the trade is imbalanced. So, the word "collusion" gets a bad rep from overuse. Are we just tired of the word?

My definition of collusion, for fantasy football purposes, is "multiple teams working in cooperation for unethical or unsportsmanlike purpose". It is that simple.

Two teams agree to stack one team? Collusion.

Three teams agree to grab remaining QBs off the waiver wire to block a fourth team? Collusion.

Two teams agree to swap players for a week to cover byes? Collusion.

A team trades a proven veteran for an unheralded rookie? Not necessarily collusion.
I was mostly in agreement with you until I hit the bolded part.

For one how would you know the three owners discussed this? If it was done in league chat or on message board, then it is public knowledge for all other league members and not secret. You could apply the same principle to one team grabbing the last two QB's on waivers, just to keep another team he is playing from having a starting qb. Is this unsportsmanlike? or a Shark move? Is discussing draft picks while the draft is in progress collusion?

I was just spit balling ideas for a solution to this problem. One was the third party web site that evaluates trades. Point remains, there is no accurate way to evaluate any trade, so why do people feel the need to overturn them?

Lastly, I continue to urge commissioners to look at their rules. They will never be complete because new things pop up every year. Develop terminology that allows you to make educated decisions when those things happen. Never paint yourself into a corner by using absolutes. And build in a cooling off period, to allow all parties involved, a chance to find the truth.

 
KCitons said:
I posted this in the other thread, but I think it needs to be posted here. (and any time some uses integrity of league as an excuse to overturn trades)

Should the same apply to every teams draft pick in a startup draft? If someone was to take Jay Cutler with the 10th overall pick, would you stop the draft, demand the owner be removed from the league and keep his fees?

Of course not. This is 1 team, not an agreement between 2. Additionally, if there is a harm to the league here, it is distributed across the entire league. By making a terrible pick in the 1st round, all a team does is essentially remove their pick. Everyone else in the league benefits as the available players all just slide down 1 spot. The guy who picks 11th gets now the 10th best pick, the guy who picks 12th gets now the 11th best pick and so on and so forth.

As the teams move through the season, should you monitor everyone teams waivers? If an owner acquires the wrong player, should you kick him out of the league and keep his fees?

Of course not. Same reason as above.

Lastly, should you monitor every owners starting lineup to make sure they are starting the players you would start? What if they end up losing the game and it becomes obvious that the players you would have started would have earn him the win? Should this owner be removed from the league and his fees kept?

For a third time, you have a player acting unilaterally. That's not collusion.

Bottom line. It's your league, but it's not your team. If NFL owners acted like this, they would have kicked the Browns, Jags and Raiders out of the league years ago. Without specific rules on how to handle things, there is only one agreement between owners and the league. The owner pays a fee and in return he manages a team.

You're not an NFL team, chach. The NFL rightly believes that teams that value at the hundreds of millions of dollars with millions of dollars of revenue on every game are not going to, on a whim, decide to give away their best talent just to help another owner. They may suck. They may be terrible. They may be trading their best player for something in the future. But they're still acting in their own perceived best interest. You chipping in $30 and drafting players who will all be dropped off of your team at the end of the season are in no way comparable.
You're one confused dude.
How so?
In every way. See above.

Keep in mind collusion is a secret agreement among 2 players to harm competition, not some asinine standard of what is, will, or should be however you want to define "fair" in your mind.

It would be embarrassing enough for me to post that claptrap you did just once. Feeling like you needed to re-post it so others could see it is just jabbing your eyes out with a fork.
I think you are applying my quotes to collusion. I was not. I used these examples in response to others that believe trades need to be monitored for league integrity and that it upsets a competitive balance when there is a lopsided trade.

Even when a trade is clearly not collusion, just a dumb owner making a bad trade, there are people here that feel the need to step in and reverse that trade. This is why I gave the examples of draft picks, waivers, and starting lineups.

KCitons said:
Johnny Blood said:
Any business with a 70% accuracy rate on this question will make more money in gambling than in selling fantasy services.
Sweet. Thanks for extending my point. If professionals can't accurately predict who is the better fantasy player, what makes you think any fantasy owner will do any better?

Even with all the stats and input handled by NASA super computers, what are we looking at? 55%? 60%? How about a team that's 3-7? He's already had ten weeks to prove he made some poor choices. Do we think he's hitting any better than 50% on his evaluations? So, is his trade collusion or poor choices?
I think you will have to revert to common sense. Leagues have too many custom nuances (Salary or contractual caps, keeper restrictions, current standings, etc.) so sometimes even trades that appear imbalanced may make sense within the context of a league or situation.

People find the need to over analyze every trade. Who got the better end of the deal? Who got shafted? And, isn't this where we jump the shark? Bad trades aren't necessarily collusion. Heck, even a "fair" trade could be collusive in nature. But, someone slaps the "collusion" label whenever they feel the trade is imbalanced. So, the word "collusion" gets a bad rep from overuse. Are we just tired of the word?

My definition of collusion, for fantasy football purposes, is "multiple teams working in cooperation for unethical or unsportsmanlike purpose". It is that simple.

Two teams agree to stack one team? Collusion.

Three teams agree to grab remaining QBs off the waiver wire to block a fourth team? Collusion.

Two teams agree to swap players for a week to cover byes? Collusion.

A team trades a proven veteran for an unheralded rookie? Not necessarily collusion.
I was mostly in agreement with you until I hit the bolded part.

For one how would you know the three owners discussed this? If it was done in league chat or on message board, then it is public knowledge for all other league members and not secret. You could apply the same principle to one team grabbing the last two QB's on waivers, just to keep another team he is playing from having a starting qb. Is this unsportsmanlike? or a Shark move? Is discussing draft picks while the draft is in progress collusion?

I was just spit balling ideas for a solution to this problem. One was the third party web site that evaluates trades. Point remains, there is no accurate way to evaluate any trade, so why do people feel the need to overturn them?

Lastly, I continue to urge commissioners to look at their rules. They will never be complete because new things pop up every year. Develop terminology that allows you to make educated decisions when those things happen. Never paint yourself into a corner by using absolutes. And build in a cooling off period, to allow all parties involved, a chance to find the truth.
Three teams "agree"....

Reading is fundamental,

 
KCitons said:
I posted this in the other thread, but I think it needs to be posted here. (and any time some uses integrity of league as an excuse to overturn trades)

Should the same apply to every teams draft pick in a startup draft? If someone was to take Jay Cutler with the 10th overall pick, would you stop the draft, demand the owner be removed from the league and keep his fees?

Of course not. This is 1 team, not an agreement between 2. Additionally, if there is a harm to the league here, it is distributed across the entire league. By making a terrible pick in the 1st round, all a team does is essentially remove their pick. Everyone else in the league benefits as the available players all just slide down 1 spot. The guy who picks 11th gets now the 10th best pick, the guy who picks 12th gets now the 11th best pick and so on and so forth.

As the teams move through the season, should you monitor everyone teams waivers? If an owner acquires the wrong player, should you kick him out of the league and keep his fees?

Of course not. Same reason as above.

Lastly, should you monitor every owners starting lineup to make sure they are starting the players you would start? What if they end up losing the game and it becomes obvious that the players you would have started would have earn him the win? Should this owner be removed from the league and his fees kept?

For a third time, you have a player acting unilaterally. That's not collusion.

Bottom line. It's your league, but it's not your team. If NFL owners acted like this, they would have kicked the Browns, Jags and Raiders out of the league years ago. Without specific rules on how to handle things, there is only one agreement between owners and the league. The owner pays a fee and in return he manages a team.

You're not an NFL team, chach. The NFL rightly believes that teams that value at the hundreds of millions of dollars with millions of dollars of revenue on every game are not going to, on a whim, decide to give away their best talent just to help another owner. They may suck. They may be terrible. They may be trading their best player for something in the future. But they're still acting in their own perceived best interest. You chipping in $30 and drafting players who will all be dropped off of your team at the end of the season are in no way comparable.
You're one confused dude.
How so?
In every way. See above.

Keep in mind collusion is a secret agreement among 2 players to harm competition, not some asinine standard of what is, will, or should be however you want to define "fair" in your mind.

It would be embarrassing enough for me to post that claptrap you did just once. Feeling like you needed to re-post it so others could see it is just jabbing your eyes out with a fork.
I think you are applying my quotes to collusion. I was not. I used these examples in response to others that believe trades need to be monitored for league integrity and that it upsets a competitive balance when there is a lopsided trade.

Even when a trade is clearly not collusion, just a dumb owner making a bad trade, there are people here that feel the need to step in and reverse that trade. This is why I gave the examples of draft picks, waivers, and starting lineups.

KCitons said:
Johnny Blood said:
Any business with a 70% accuracy rate on this question will make more money in gambling than in selling fantasy services.
Sweet. Thanks for extending my point. If professionals can't accurately predict who is the better fantasy player, what makes you think any fantasy owner will do any better?

Even with all the stats and input handled by NASA super computers, what are we looking at? 55%? 60%? How about a team that's 3-7? He's already had ten weeks to prove he made some poor choices. Do we think he's hitting any better than 50% on his evaluations? So, is his trade collusion or poor choices?
I think you will have to revert to common sense. Leagues have too many custom nuances (Salary or contractual caps, keeper restrictions, current standings, etc.) so sometimes even trades that appear imbalanced may make sense within the context of a league or situation.

People find the need to over analyze every trade. Who got the better end of the deal? Who got shafted? And, isn't this where we jump the shark? Bad trades aren't necessarily collusion. Heck, even a "fair" trade could be collusive in nature. But, someone slaps the "collusion" label whenever they feel the trade is imbalanced. So, the word "collusion" gets a bad rep from overuse. Are we just tired of the word?

My definition of collusion, for fantasy football purposes, is "multiple teams working in cooperation for unethical or unsportsmanlike purpose". It is that simple.

Two teams agree to stack one team? Collusion.

Three teams agree to grab remaining QBs off the waiver wire to block a fourth team? Collusion.

Two teams agree to swap players for a week to cover byes? Collusion.

A team trades a proven veteran for an unheralded rookie? Not necessarily collusion.
I was mostly in agreement with you until I hit the bolded part.

For one how would you know the three owners discussed this? If it was done in league chat or on message board, then it is public knowledge for all other league members and not secret. You could apply the same principle to one team grabbing the last two QB's on waivers, just to keep another team he is playing from having a starting qb. Is this unsportsmanlike? or a Shark move? Is discussing draft picks while the draft is in progress collusion?

I was just spit balling ideas for a solution to this problem. One was the third party web site that evaluates trades. Point remains, there is no accurate way to evaluate any trade, so why do people feel the need to overturn them?

Lastly, I continue to urge commissioners to look at their rules. They will never be complete because new things pop up every year. Develop terminology that allows you to make educated decisions when those things happen. Never paint yourself into a corner by using absolutes. And build in a cooling off period, to allow all parties involved, a chance to find the truth.
Three teams "agree"....

Reading is fundamental,
Doesn't matter, the 4th team has the opportunity to grab one of the qb's left on waivers. This isn't like a trade where there is no opportunity for other teams to be involved in the transaction.

Again, what if two or three teams discuss players during a draft. Is this collusion?

 
Last edited by a moderator:
KCitons said:
I posted this in the other thread, but I think it needs to be posted here. (and any time some uses integrity of league as an excuse to overturn trades)

Should the same apply to every teams draft pick in a startup draft? If someone was to take Jay Cutler with the 10th overall pick, would you stop the draft, demand the owner be removed from the league and keep his fees?

Of course not. This is 1 team, not an agreement between 2. Additionally, if there is a harm to the league here, it is distributed across the entire league. By making a terrible pick in the 1st round, all a team does is essentially remove their pick. Everyone else in the league benefits as the available players all just slide down 1 spot. The guy who picks 11th gets now the 10th best pick, the guy who picks 12th gets now the 11th best pick and so on and so forth.

As the teams move through the season, should you monitor everyone teams waivers? If an owner acquires the wrong player, should you kick him out of the league and keep his fees?

Of course not. Same reason as above.

Lastly, should you monitor every owners starting lineup to make sure they are starting the players you would start? What if they end up losing the game and it becomes obvious that the players you would have started would have earn him the win? Should this owner be removed from the league and his fees kept?

For a third time, you have a player acting unilaterally. That's not collusion.

Bottom line. It's your league, but it's not your team. If NFL owners acted like this, they would have kicked the Browns, Jags and Raiders out of the league years ago. Without specific rules on how to handle things, there is only one agreement between owners and the league. The owner pays a fee and in return he manages a team.

You're not an NFL team, chach. The NFL rightly believes that teams that value at the hundreds of millions of dollars with millions of dollars of revenue on every game are not going to, on a whim, decide to give away their best talent just to help another owner. They may suck. They may be terrible. They may be trading their best player for something in the future. But they're still acting in their own perceived best interest. You chipping in $30 and drafting players who will all be dropped off of your team at the end of the season are in no way comparable.
You're one confused dude.
How so?
In every way. See above.

Keep in mind collusion is a secret agreement among 2 players to harm competition, not some asinine standard of what is, will, or should be however you want to define "fair" in your mind.

It would be embarrassing enough for me to post that claptrap you did just once. Feeling like you needed to re-post it so others could see it is just jabbing your eyes out with a fork.
I think you are applying my quotes to collusion. I was not. I used these examples in response to others that believe trades need to be monitored for league integrity and that it upsets a competitive balance when there is a lopsided trade.

Even when a trade is clearly not collusion, just a dumb owner making a bad trade, there are people here that feel the need to step in and reverse that trade. This is why I gave the examples of draft picks, waivers, and starting lineups.

KCitons said:
Johnny Blood said:
Any business with a 70% accuracy rate on this question will make more money in gambling than in selling fantasy services.
Sweet. Thanks for extending my point. If professionals can't accurately predict who is the better fantasy player, what makes you think any fantasy owner will do any better?

Even with all the stats and input handled by NASA super computers, what are we looking at? 55%? 60%? How about a team that's 3-7? He's already had ten weeks to prove he made some poor choices. Do we think he's hitting any better than 50% on his evaluations? So, is his trade collusion or poor choices?
I think you will have to revert to common sense. Leagues have too many custom nuances (Salary or contractual caps, keeper restrictions, current standings, etc.) so sometimes even trades that appear imbalanced may make sense within the context of a league or situation.

People find the need to over analyze every trade. Who got the better end of the deal? Who got shafted? And, isn't this where we jump the shark? Bad trades aren't necessarily collusion. Heck, even a "fair" trade could be collusive in nature. But, someone slaps the "collusion" label whenever they feel the trade is imbalanced. So, the word "collusion" gets a bad rep from overuse. Are we just tired of the word?

My definition of collusion, for fantasy football purposes, is "multiple teams working in cooperation for unethical or unsportsmanlike purpose". It is that simple.

Two teams agree to stack one team? Collusion.

Three teams agree to grab remaining QBs off the waiver wire to block a fourth team? Collusion.

Two teams agree to swap players for a week to cover byes? Collusion.

A team trades a proven veteran for an unheralded rookie? Not necessarily collusion.
I was mostly in agreement with you until I hit the bolded part.

For one how would you know the three owners discussed this? If it was done in league chat or on message board, then it is public knowledge for all other league members and not secret. You could apply the same principle to one team grabbing the last two QB's on waivers, just to keep another team he is playing from having a starting qb. Is this unsportsmanlike? or a Shark move? Is discussing draft picks while the draft is in progress collusion?

I was just spit balling ideas for a solution to this problem. One was the third party web site that evaluates trades. Point remains, there is no accurate way to evaluate any trade, so why do people feel the need to overturn them?

Lastly, I continue to urge commissioners to look at their rules. They will never be complete because new things pop up every year. Develop terminology that allows you to make educated decisions when those things happen. Never paint yourself into a corner by using absolutes. And build in a cooling off period, to allow all parties involved, a chance to find the truth.
Three teams "agree"....

Reading is fundamental,
Doesn't matter, the 4th team has the opportunity to grab one of the qb's left on waivers. This isn't like a trade where there is no opportunity for other teams to be involved in the transaction.

Again, what if two or three teams discuss players during a draft. Is this collusion?
I specifically put that example in because it demonstrates collusion outside the context of a trade, the definition so narrowly applied here. If teams pick up QBs independently, it isn't collusion. When they CONSPIRE to do it, it becomes collusion.

Answer your own question. What part of discussing players during a draft (at face value) suggests cooperation for unsportsmanlike purpose? Now, if a group of owners conspired to discuss something at the draft specifically to persuade someone to do the wrong thing, it does become collusive.

 
Wait, your now categorizing the discussion (conspiring) as falling under the rules of collusion. I am pointing out that the act must be completed in order for it to be collusion. Since the act is acquiring the QB, all teams have the same opportunity participate.

Based on your scenario, both the 6-4 team should have been guilty of collusion even if the 3-7 team never went through with the trade? The trade had to go through to complete the act of collusion.

 
Wait, your now categorizing the discussion (conspiring) as falling under the rules of collusion. I am pointing out that the act must be completed in order for it to be collusion. Since the act is acquiring the QB, all teams have the same opportunity participate.

Based on your scenario, both the 6-4 team should have been guilty of collusion even if the 3-7 team never went through with the trade? The trade had to go through to complete the act of collusion.
The essence of collusion is conspiracy between multiple parties. We use it in fantasy football to distinguish between unilateral or independent acts. It is generally accepted that if someone does something on their own (poor trades, bad drafting) you must allow them to manage their team. However, we must draw a line somewhere and opt to do it when teams cooperate to do something sneaky or wrong.

I am not categorizing simple discussion as collusion. I said that if teams conspire to discuss something specifically to mislead or persuade someone to do the wrong thing and they then follow through with that discussion, it is collusive. In this example, the "act" is discussion.

In your example, if two teams discuss a collusive trade, but never complete it, I agree there is no act and no collusion.

 
Wait, your now categorizing the discussion (conspiring) as falling under the rules of collusion. I am pointing out that the act must be completed in order for it to be collusion. Since the act is acquiring the QB, all teams have the same opportunity participate.

Based on your scenario, both the 6-4 team should have been guilty of collusion even if the 3-7 team never went through with the trade? The trade had to go through to complete the act of collusion.
The essence of collusion is conspiracy between multiple parties. We use it in fantasy football to distinguish between unilateral or independent acts. It is generally accepted that if someone does something on their own (poor trades, bad drafting) you must allow them to manage their team. However, we must draw a line somewhere and opt to do it when teams cooperate to do something sneaky or wrong.

I am not categorizing simple discussion as collusion. I said that if teams conspire to discuss something specifically to mislead or persuade someone to do the wrong thing and they then follow through with that discussion, it is collusive. In this example, the "act" is discussion.

In your example, if two teams discuss a collusive trade, but never complete it, I agree there is no act and no collusion.
I can agree with 99% of the first paragraph. It is an excellent start to something everyone can use in a league rule. The wording of the last sentence can be open to interpretation. "sneaky" or "wrong" by one persons definition may not be the same as another persons.

As much as I don't want to use the OP's example, I will. The OP was obviously angry about what happened in his league. What we don't know is how other people in his league viewed it. This poll is testament to that. Not everyone views things the same way.

So, now we are left defining actions that are wrong or sneaky. Also understanding intent is an important part of the equation.

 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top