Madden League Off-Season

4th Stringers:

The Security Council have been discussing the order and the particulars of the off-season recently to prepare for the upcoming off-season, and hopefully make some sense of it in advance this time. We've come to some sort of conclusion and would like to outline the preliminary order of proceedings.

1. Playoffs
Once the playoffs begin, any and all information on the upcoming rookie class will be published, and people can start their scouting. If you are not in the playoffs, or when you get eliminated, you should begin planning your off-season moves (what you need to draft, etc.)

2. Re-signing Period
After the Superbowl is played, we will open up the re-signing period in league manager for 24 hours. Here you need to re-sign players coming off-contract, and release (by not re-signing) those whose contracts are expiring and you don't intend to re-sign. You must keep your team under the cap of 700. You may release players from their contracts early if you need to, but they will go into the Free Agency. All players who were on the IR List need to be re-instated to their team or released for good during this period.

If you are unable to log in to league manager during this 24 hours, it is recommended that EVERY team e-mail who they intend to re-sign and who to release to a member of the off-season commissioner team (Me & Jeff) so that they can be re-signed if not done by the end of the re-signing 24 hour period.

If everybody is done before the 24 hours is up, we will move onto the rookie draft early, just like we do with weekly games.

3. Rookie Draft
The draft will run as a manual draft like we did last year, but with some parameters this time around. For those were have joined the league during this season, I will try to explain. The draft is too manic (15 seconds per pick max) to do it live, and with the worldly timezones is impossible to do properly. What we will do, and did last year, is have the draft CPU automated, and drop all of the players drafted into the Free Agency. We then email our pick selections through and pick the players up off the Free Agency.

It is important that PRIOR to the draft, you ensure that you have some roster spots available, otherwise your some of your players will be automatically dropped by Madden.

We will run only 3 rounds of the draft, the remaining rookies will go into Free Agency. Each league member must make their selection within a certain time limit, or the pick may be auto-selected (highest-rated player available, in a position that makes sense). We will limit the time limit to 9am-5pm in the local time zone of the player who is on the clock. The time limit will be 4 hours per pick in the 1st round, and 2 hours per pick in the 2nd and 3rd rounds. An example is if pick #26 is made by 4:30pm, Pick #27 will need to be made that night, within 4 hours. The clock for Pick #28 however will not begin until 9am the next morning (in their local time zone). If the team with pick #28 is online and checking, etc, the pick should still be made, but the autopick will not be enforced until the next morning.

Remember, the idea is not for this draft to take a million years, but rather to have a fair system in place if somebody is non in contact, and keep the draft moving. Realistically, if you are checking your emails regularly during the draft, you should be able to scout well in advance and make your pick in 10 minutes or so.

A member of the off-season commissioner team (Me and Jeff) will email teams who have one of the next 5-picks and attempt to have them prioritise their picks in order to try and get things moving. The off-season commissioners WILL NOT make a pick for somebody unless their time has run out or they have been given the go-ahead via email.

4. FREE AGENCY
All players released and the remaining rookies will be available to be made offers in the Free Agency in League Manager (it is key to not sign players through Madden, it must be done through league manager). We will have a 3-day period for making offers on Free Agents, and there will likely be some stupid offers made on players of mediocre ability, but use your cap sensibly. You will only be allowed to make offers which will fit within your cap room during the Free Agency.

Once the Free Agency is closed, and players have been put on teams, Week 1 may begin, but games must not be played until the Off-Season is officially over.

5. LEAGUE MANAGER CAP
The league manager Cap is currently at 700 (loaves of bread, not million dollars). For next season, the cap will remain at 700. We are thinking about increasing it for the season AFTER next. Not by much, maybe 10-20 (loaves) just to allow for higher re-signing costs and rookie contracts.

6. OFF-SEASON COMMISSIONERS
In order to keep the ball rolling and keep everyone informed of what is going on, there will be 2/3 guys MC'ing the off-season, to make announcements and answer questions and manually sign/release players when necessary. They will be myself (Aussie Chris) and Jeff Solomon, with Todd acting in an advisory role. The idea of having 2 /3 of us is to have an active commish no matter what the time/timezone is.

7. FORMS OF COMMUNICATION
Last off-season the emails were ridiculous. Some good, some bad. There is nothing bad about a fantastically active league, but sometimes people need their inboxs to be kept fairly clean.

This off-season lets try to limit the emails by only making announcements through emails, and all comments and jibber-jabber maintained in the fantastically-Suszek-produced 4th String Forums. Announce your draft pick or trade availability through the emails, but post it on the forums and put a link in your email for discussion. I'm sure we will have a best nickname thread, and a trade block thread, etc. Obviously trade discussions are best done through private emails.

All information from the Security Council and Off-Season Commissioners will be through e-mail.

The wiki will still be used to keep track of who owns which draft pick for the upcoming season, as well as the order of the draft and who gets selected, just like we did last year.

8. WRAP-UP
That's all, hopefully it clears up and paves the way for a cleaner, quicker off-season, with little to no confusion.

On that note, if you have anything to say about this - discuss in the forums!

Can I put Randy Moss on the trade block now?

I like this

A reminder. It is not in the list above but is still a rule. NO OFF SEASON MOVES MAY BE MADE DURING THE PLAYOFFS.

That means do not make your cuts until after the superbowl. For those in the playoffs, people may be signed if you remain under cap.

This is to avoid Randy Moss or such being signed as a AFC Championship game replacement player and the like. Or having a first come first serve free agency that cheats the real free agency period.

http://4thstringleagues.pbworks.com/w/page/34693997/Season-4-Draft

The draft as it is now, with out being reordered from last year.

Bump!

This is the plan we're following. You can discuss private trades.... privately. But no posting of players on the trading block just yet. Also, all trades are currently "in principle," so don't go through with the actual trade yet. We aren't done with the season yet.

Yes, trades can not be made/announced/ANYTHING until AFTER the player re-signing period.

This means 2 things:

1 - The team must have the cap space to re-sign the player before trading him, if his contract is expiring.

2 - The team who gets the player from the trade must be able to afford a newer, more expensive contract.

Once the superbowl has been played, feel free to post your trade blocks.

So, how about that rookie info getting published?

Can I list the players NOT on the trading block?

Can I suggest the rookie draft take place only in it's own dedicated thread?

May I suggest having a second GoogleGroup for people who don't care (or enjoy) having their inboxes stuffed with 1000 league related messages.

hardcore4sl@googlegroups.com

Reasons why this is a great idea...
A) It will keep people from complaining about too many emails, while other people who love the emails can get every last detail of information on whats going on in the league.
B) Everyone at work peering over your shoulder will think you are a badass who is getting over 100 emails from a porn website. Because getting emailed by porn websites is cool, right?

Edit: I have not made the GoogleGroup yet, I'm just suggesting it.

PoopieDeLoopie wrote:May I suggest having a second GoogleGroup for people who don't care (or enjoy) having their inboxes stuffed with 1000 league related messages.

hardcore4sl@googlegroups.com

Reasons why this is a great idea...
A) It will keep people from complaining about too many emails, while other people who love the emails can get every last detail of information on whats going on in the league.
B) Everyone at work peering over your shoulder will think you are a badass who is getting over 100 emails from a porn website. Because getting emailed by porn websites is cool, right?

Edit: I have not made the GoogleGroup yet, I'm just suggesting it.

That's not a bad idea - but it would be important not to assume that people know about important league matters

PoopieDeLoopie wrote:May I suggest having a second GoogleGroup for people who don't care (or enjoy) having their inboxes stuffed with 1000 league related messages.

hardcore4sl@googlegroups.com

Reasons why this is a great idea...
A) It will keep people from complaining about too many emails, while other people who love the emails can get every last detail of information on whats going on in the league.
B) Everyone at work peering over your shoulder will think you are a badass who is getting over 100 emails from a porn website. Because getting emailed by porn websites is cool, right?

Edit: I have not made the GoogleGroup yet, I'm just suggesting it.

Rather than that - I would recommend setting your emails to a daily digest.

We should be using the forum for ongoing discussions - and the group should only be used for Admin messages (in fact I would suggest disabling everyone bar Admins from posting to the google groups email address.

(And yes, I tar myself as a big hipocrite by writing the above due to what happened with Madden cutting Fitzgerald today - I wanted to ensure that everyone knew that even I with my Madden rookieness wouldnt do such a dumb move).

RE-SIGNING PERIOD IS NOW LIVE IN LM.

When are we starting the draft?