The new SuperQuince wasted no time wielding his new found influence on 2011 rulemaking. Rushing Russians is strongly urging a switch off the AllStarStats host platform. It’s the same plea every year, but the SuperQuince actually did some research. Gathering opinions in comment area. The main obstacle is still changing our free agency and waiver rules.
From SuperQuince.
I’m sure you’ve looked into this in more detail than me, but from what I can tell CBS can keep track of contracts (there’s a section called salaries/wildcards in the league set-up that allow for salaries, contracts and up to 3 other variables).
The problems I can see with CBS are mainly associated with our waiver process, but could conceivably have a work-around. Â The two problems I see are as follows along with possible workarounds. Â Again, apologies if you’ve already thought this through and rejected it:
1) You’d have to impose some artificial system like I said in my original e-mail to separate waivers claims from free agent bids (e.g. owners are instructed to bid $0 on Tuesdays for players on waivers and $1+ on Wednesdays for players that are Free Agents). Â The problem with this is that people couldn’t set free agent bids in advance of Tuesday like they can now. Â The other problem is that people would probably mess up their bids on accident all the time (at least initially) and that could lead to some chaos.
2) The second issue seems to be that the only options they have for resetting contracts are when a player is “dropped” or for them “never” to reset. Â We’d have to use “never” since we have waivers (where players keep their designations after they are dropped). Â That means that the commish would have to manually update contracts on every dropped player who clears waivers each week.
So those are two things we’d have to overcome, unless I’m missing something…
Another option is this site: http://www.myfantasyleague.com/.  It seems like it could do pretty much anything but the options are almost overwhelming to the point of being confusing. Also, in my opinion, the look and feel of the sites while totally customizable all end up being pretty ugly (see some examples here).  So not sure it would necessarily be better than what we have now.  I’d also have a concern that this site would go belly up someday and we’d have to start over again somewhere else.
Actually, in looking at that myfantasyleague site in a bit more detail, there does seem to be a pretty active community using that software with responsive customer support. It could be an option. Also, it seems as if there are even some outside sites that other custom design to make it look sleeker (http://www.mfladdons.com/). Anyway, not 100% sure here as I only took a look for about 15 minutes but could be an option.
The core issue preventing a switch to any other host platform is the weekly free agency and waiver rules. We have to ask ourselves what kind of changes we can tolerate in that area.
Shades
Seth and I looked at myfantasyleague.com at the beginning of the 2010 season. I actually set up the QFL as a league, but it didn’t work for some reason. I can’t remember exactly why, but I think that you could only run a waiver system or free agency system, but not both.
Anyway, I’m strongly considering the idea of bagging our blind bid free agency system and moving to a yahoo-style first-come-first-serve model.
All free agents could be had for $1 at any time.
This would eliminate the following problems:
1. The last minute kicker injury problems we have been having
2. The need for anyone to bid $16 on a backup RB that will only be used for one week
3. The annoying free agency tiebreakers we have to deal with for the first couple weeks of every season
This would also reward owners who bother to pay attention.
Finally, as an added bonus we could take advantage of other functionality such as email notifications and trade functionality that most non-A.S.S. sites have.
It actually looks like MyFantasyLeague.com supports multiple waiver/free agent bidding processes in the test league I set up although I can’t swear by it since that site’s set-up is pretty confusing. But it looks possible to me so I wouldn’t dismiss it for that reason alone.
On another note, having played first come, first serve for many years in other leagues, I’m not a huge fan because it often rewards people who happen to be at a computer at any given moment (e.g. Ryan Grant is said to be out for the reason on a Tuesday and then there is a mad rush to get Brandon Jackson ASAP. That’s not necessarily the “fairest” way to do it). Also, in a salary cap league like this, I think you want to make people “pay” for a good player who happens to be available due to an injury.
But you could expand the number free agent bidding periods (once on Wednesday and once on Saturday or something) to take care of the kicker problem.