My Commish Rules

Waivers

Free Agent Auction

A Rule About Waivers

There is a reason the draft is one of the most anticipated events of every season, NFL and Fantasy Football alike. There is heartbreak and surprise and it is a place where dreams come true. It is also a place where you get to berate your buddy as he places a $40 starting bid on that player who just suffered a season-ending injury 6 hours prior to your draft. With all that fun and excitement it is hard to pack it into just one night. And now we have a way to fix that. Introducing the Free Agent Auction, the weekly mini-auction draft for your waiver-wire pickups.

 

 

How It Works

Hopefully by now you’ve checked out our Auction Draft Rule for a complete rundown on our auction specs and details. The beauty of an auction draft for waiver pickups is that, unlike most formats, everybody gets a shot at every available player, week to week. Obviously, we’re not living in some fantasy world (at least not until the season starts) where we think you can gather 10-12 league owners in a room each week in order to hold a live auction draft for waiver pickups (although if you are, please look around at the next meeting and think about how lucky you are). But even if your leaguemates are not close geographically, it doesn’t you can’t hold an auction each week!

 

This should be relatively easy to keep track of, even if just within a group chat. Just as in an auction draft, allow the lowest ranked team to start the nomination process and pick a player at a price point that s/he chooses. Similar to the FAAB Waiver Rule, every team will have a budget they can use to bid from, likely anywhere from $100-$200 for the season (to be clear, this is fake money for the purposes of keeping track of transactions). Keep the start time of the draft consistent week to week so there are no surprises or funny business. Set a standard of 3-5 minutes per nomination, Owners can place their bets by texting or messaging. Owners can forgo their nomination if they so choose and you can also limit the number of rounds to save time. 

 

What will likely happen is you’ll only have a few owners who show up for the auction each week as they look to fill sudden roster holes. This is definitely a rule for the more involved leagues with a lot of interaction. As Commish, you do not necessarily need to monitor each auction, you can simply review the results afterwards to manually add players and deduct budgets accordingly.

 

Nuts and Bolts

  • Decide on a budget for each team to use for weekly waiver auctions prior to the season. We suggest something like 200 FAAB dollars.
  • Determine the day and time each auction will be held and explain to owners the format for the auction, i.e. Group Chat > 3 rounds > 3 minutes per player nomination
  • After the auction has ended, update each roster through manual add/drops and budget deductions.

Change Ups

The freedom of this rule comes with how you decide to format when it comes to specifics on how the auction will take place. Many leagues have the option of a FAAB waiver system already in place, which means you could choose implement a hybrid approach and have just a few auctions throughout the year if you want to try and slowly ease into this rule. The remaining non-auction weeks would work the same way as explained over at FAAB.

 

Related Rules

Redraft at Bernie’s

It is week 7 and you are 2-5 and the season seems lost and for some reason even your own dog looks disappointed in you, but wait. What is this? […]

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Free Agent Acquisition Budget

Boy that’s a mouthful. So let’s stick to FAAB (pronounced FAB), as in “what a fabulous new way to handle waivers in my fantasy league.” If you have never been that person who […]

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Free Agent Auction

There is a reason the draft is one of the most anticipated events of every season, NFL and Fantasy Football alike. There is heartbreak and surprise and it is a […]

Read More »

You're the Commish.
Make your own rules.

Redraft at Bernie’s

A Rule About Waivers

It is week 7 and you are 2-5 and the season seems lost and for some reason even your own dog looks disappointed in you, but wait. What is this? A mid-season draft? It can’t be. It is time to redistribute that wealth people! Here comes the mid-season draft where the bottom half of your league participates in a draft from a pool of the best team’s players. For all you fans of the underdog out there, this rule is for you.

 

How It Works

For the league as a whole, low-morale from bottom dweller teams is not necessarily a good thing. At a certain point in each fantasy football season some of the teams in a league lose hope. They start realizing their postseason dreams are crushed and they just stop paying as much attention. The waiver wire becomes less competitive and trash talking dies down — until the Redraft at Bernie’s.

 

At the mid-season point, the teams in the bottom half of your league engage in a draft from the top team’s players. The idea here is not to turn the league completely on its head, so every team in the top half will be allowed to protect its most important players. We suggest allowing each team to select as many keepers as you have starters in your active roster.

 

From there, no one is safe. All remaining players on the teams in the top half of the standings are thrown into a pool where the bottom half drafts, just as you held your initial draft in the beginning of the year. A one to three round draft works best to not only limit the amount of work for yourself as commissioner but also to limit any crazy shifts in the league. The main goal is to level the playing field by involving those teams who may not have much to play for and inspire them to stay engaged.

 

Nuts and Bolts

  • Pick a mid-season point for your league to hold a redraft involving the bottom teams.
  • Give the top half of the league a week to select their “off-limit” players for this draft. We recommend this number be approximately the number of starters per roster.
  • Establish how many rounds this draft will be. We recommend one to three rounds so there is not too dramatic of a shift, but enough for teams to get back to competitive.
  • The last place team will have the first pick and second to last the second pick and so on and so forth.
  • As Commish, you will have to hold this draft manually, either through a Skype session, preferably in person with hors d’oeuvres, or just in a text thread.
  • The teams participating in the draft will have to choose the players they will drop to accommodate the new players post-draft.

Change Ups

You obviously have some flexibility with the point in the season you hold the draft, and how many rounds the draft will be. To limit detrimental losses to the top teams you can also put a limit on number of players drafted from each team. Once the limit is reached in the draft, that team’s remaining player pool will be removed.

 

Related Rules

You're the Commish.
Make your own rules.

Free Agent Acquisition Budget

A Rule About Waivers

Boy that’s a mouthful. So let’s stick to FAAB (pronounced FAB), as in “what a FAABulous new way to handle waivers in my fantasy league.” If you have never been that person who put in a waiver claim only to have some bottom-rung-no-chance-at-making-playoffs team scoop up that player ahead of you then you have likely been that bottom rung team stealing players and creating arch enemies along the way. And we here at MCR are sick of it! But we have a solution. FAAB waivers. A yearly budget for your waiver claims. Imagine a world where every team has an equal opportunity to pick up any players from waivers. Ahh. It’s nice isn’t it? Feels good? That’s what we thought.

 

 

How It Works

As Wyclef Jean famously(?) sung(?), it is indeed about dollar dollar bills y’all. Each team is allotted a budget at the beginning of the fantasy year, we suggest either $100 or $200. If you are living the high life this can be actual money, but that is not at all necessary. Think of this budget as Monopoly money, or points even. During the season, the weekly waiver adds take place just like in any other format, but the priority goes to the team who allots the most money for that transaction.

 

For example, a claim is put in for a WR and Owner 1 puts $5 on the claim. Owner 2 puts in a claim for the same player but wagers $7. Owner 2 would then get that player and $7 would be deducted from their total. Owner 1 retains the $5 they bid since their transaction did not go through. Claims can be placed on multiple players during the week and it is up to the owner to determine the amount they want to spend for each transaction individually. When the waiver wire closes, the priority will always go to the owner who wagered the higher amount of FAAB waiver dollars.

 

Nuts and Bolts

  • Set the amount of money each team will receive at the beginning of the season and make sure owners are aware of the changes to waiver claims.
  • Change Waivers in league settings be determined by FAAB dollars. The league site will keep track of dollars spent and remaining balances for each owner.
  • Once a team is out of their allotted FAAB, they will still be able to make claims, but only for $0.
  • Decide whether there will be a way to get FAAB dollars back throughout the year.

Change Ups

Most leagues decide that once a team depletes their FAAB waiver dollars, that’s all folks. But you could create ways for teams to replenish their funds throughout the year. Our Weekly Goal Rule is intended to provide real cash payouts each week, but could be modified to be a FAAB dollar payout each week. FAAB dollars can also be used as an incentive to get owners to trade, or even be offered as an additional bargaining chip in trades as well.

 

Related Rules

You're the Commish.
Make your own rules.