Photo: Brian Spurlock, USA Today Sports

In my first column, we shined a light on collusion, noting why it was bad but also illustrating how it had gained an outsized place in fantasy lore. Indeed, collusion is just one of many ways that unscrupulous owners can upset the competitive balance of a league, and each threat to that balance is an equally grave concern. Nothing can destroy a healthy and well-established league quite so fast as an assault on its competitive balance

What form might these other offenses take? And what can concerned owners do to defend against them? This is hardly the definitive guide, but I can still provide…

A Brief List of Ways Nefarious Owners can Ruin A League

Collusion:
Yes, after diminishing the importance of collusion, I’m going to use it to headline my list of “ways to ruin a league”. My problem with collusion is always one of scope, not severity; while it is not the be-all, end-all of bad behavior, it is still a serious concern.

Collusion, for those who missed the last column, is an agreement between two parties to limit competition to gain an unfair market advantage. Often fantasy owners will latch onto the word “secret”, but agreements can be collusive even if they happen out in the open. The key is the agreement to cooperate between two parties who should instead be competitors in an effort to gain an advantage over the rest of the league.

In situations where their agreements do not result in an advantage over the rest of the league— such as decisions among championship game participants to split the prize pool— collusion is a no-harm, no-foul offense. Instead, the collusive behavior to guard against occurs when two teams are working together to enhance their championship odds. Perhaps the most common example of this might be a team that has been eliminated from playoff contention trading his best players in a lopsided deal on the promise that he will be given a portion of the prize pool after the year is over.

Player Renting:
Player renting is the practice of two teams trading players with the understanding that they will trade those same players back after a certain specified amount of time. It may not appear it at first, but player renting is actually a type of collusion. No, neither team is sacrificing their own competitive ability, (in fact, both teams are improving their own title chances), but player renting is an effort by two teams to work together to circumvent certain league rules.

The most common example of player renting will occur during bye weeks, as one team might loan out his RB3 on a week where his top two backs both play in order to secure the services of another team’s RB3 when several of his backs are on bye. Basically, the teams are circumventing the league’s roster limits, pooling their rosters to effectively create an extra-large bench for both. This is unfair to every other owner who abides by the rules and has to deal with the bye-week roster crunch on their own.

Player Dumping:
Player dumping is a move where one owner, out of spite, decides to cut or trade away his best players. Unlike collusion where the owner is working in tandem with a partner, player dumping is a chaotic affair with only one owner operating with malicious intent.

The goal isn’t to improve someone’s championship odds specifically, or to secure a piece of the prize pool. Instead, the goal is to throw the league into disarray. Dynasty leagues have a clear, orderly, and fair process for talent acquisition. Few things will unbalance a league more than owners lucking into top talent by pure random chance, simply because they happened to hold #1 waiver priority or get approached by a vengeful owner looking to leave the league and take it down with him as he goes.

Some men and women, it turns out, just want to watch the world burn.

Tanking:
As was discussed last week, Tanking is making an effort to deliberately lose football games. The competitive balance of a league depends on the assumption that everyone is always trying to win.

Fraud:
This one was much more common ten years ago, before player news became such big business and instant player updates became ubiquitous. You will still see it at times, though, especially when less experienced owners are involved. Fraud is the use of deception to obtain an unfair gain.

The most common form of fraud in early leagues involved acting on knowledge that had not yet become widespread. An owner might learn that a player of theirs was injured and then quickly trade that player to a competitor unaware of the injury. I have heard stories of dynasty owners who couldn’t believe their luck when they were able to acquire Barry Sanders or Steve Young at a huge discount… only to discover that their new acquisition was freshly retired from professional football.

While not technically fraud, an owner who accepts an outstanding trade offer immediately upon the injury of one of the participants is committing a similar category of offense. Basically, deals are being made that one party would object to if they had all of the facts involved.

Predatory Trading:
Most owners who have joined an established fantasy league are aware that it’s common to be bombarded with terrible trade offers within the first week as unscrupulous owners rush to be the first to fleece the new guy. When the new guy is a veteran dynasty owner, this can range from humorous to annoying. When the new guy is an inexperienced owner who does not yet understand basic dynasty concepts like market value, this can be debilitating. A few poorly-conceived trades can scuttle a new owner’s team, leaving him with a terrible squad, a multi-year rebuild, and little taste for the dynasty format as a whole.

I’m ordinarily a believer in the idea that you have to let teams run their team as they see fit. Other owners shouldn’t have to be hand-held by their competition; it’s not the league’s job to protect people from themselves. The one exception, in my mind, is with owners who are relatively new to the hobby. If these owners are preyed upon before they truly understand any better, the entire league suffers as a consequence. And if individual owners know that predatory trading is fair game, it creates a race for each established team to try to rip off the new guy, knowing full well that if they don’t, their competition will.

New dynasty owners are not the only ones who sometimes need the league to look out for them a bit. Anyone who has played in fantasy leagues with children or teenagers knows that sometimes some deference needs to be paid to their age and ability. Occasionally otherwise strong owners will find themselves in a situation where their judgment is impaired— often due to grief or stress as real-world concerns intrude upon fantasy. As the name implies, predatory trading involves preying on another owner’s ignorance, inexperience, or inattention for an ill-gotten advantage.

Pushing In The Chips:
Occasionally, dynasty leagues will see a team that plans on leaving after the season. Normally this isn’t a problem, but some such teams will decide, since they will not be around to suffer the long-term consequences, to cash out all of their future assets for one last run at the title.

The problem with this is twofold. From a logistical standpoint, finding a replacement owner for a gutted team is often nearly impossible. From a competitive balance standpoint, however, an owner who plays like there is no tomorrow has the advantage of playing a fundamental game from the rest of the league. When freed from worry about long-term consequences, departing owners are free to play a dynasty league as if it were a redraft league, instead. Not only is it not fair to the guy who will inherit the abandoned team, but it’s not fair to the other members of the league while he’s going on his run.

How to protect against these abuses

This is not meant to be a complete, definitive list of ways that owners might upset the competitive balance. Indeed, some owners are creative and will never cease to amaze with the innovative new ways they will invent to ruin a league. Instead, this is designed to serve as a starting point, to help identify what the problem is and why it is a problem so that owners can be on the lookout.

The way to protect against these various abuses is not to enshrine in the rulebook that everything that is collusion is bad, and everything that is not collusion is fair game, as many leagues do. At the same time, the way to protect against these abuses is likewise not to implement a vague or overly broad veto procedure, especially one that lets owners vote on their competitors’ trades. These systems are ripe for abuse, as many owners will vote their own interests rather than voting the league’s interests.

Instead, the best way to guard against these abuses is to emphasize in the rulebook the importance of maintaining the integrity of the competition, while keeping the rules broad enough to be generally applicable in unanticipated situations.

Unfortunately, having broad rules requires having a trustworthy commissioner who can be trusted to set aside his own individual interests and act in the best interest of the league. There’s really no way around that- if you want a durable dynasty league that will last for decades, you need a trustworthy commissioner. Full stop.

Finding trustworthy commissioners is quite a task on its own, but should you succeed, the best approach is to endow him with great power to combat abuses. And if you are one of those trustworthy commissioners, it is important to resolve each infraction with the bare minimum amount of force or disruption necessary to maintain or restore the competitive balance of the league.

Remember, owners should be free to run their own teams. Maintaining competitive balance does not mean protecting owners from themselves, (unless, due to inexperience or other extenuating circumstance, an owner truly does need to be protected from himself). If an owner makes a trade that looks lopsided, but is able to clearly articulate why they feel they are improving their team, then the trade should stand.

Sometimes this means making judgment calls. Typically, those judgment calls will be unpopular. Again, the key is to use the minimum amount of force necessary, and for the commissioner to take great pains to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. When a commissioner takes action, someone will always wind up upset, but if the league has enough trust and respect for the commissioner the hurt feelings will be short-lived. If owners become convinced the league is not fair, however, they will quickly abandon and leave the league in a death-spiral from which it can never recover.

As a corollary to the idea that the long-term health of a league depends on the quality of the commissioner, leagues with poor commissioners should never be trusted to last. If you find yourself in such a league, it might not be unwise to alter your strategy to be a little bit more short-sighted than you otherwise might be.

Mostly, ensuring a league survives and thrives for decades is a matter of shifting the focus from collusion to competitive balance. True collusion is a rare event, and nearly impossible to prove. Transgressions against the competitive balance are much more common, and must be taken equally seriously.

Second Thoughts

I had a great discussion with Sigmund Bloom (@SigmundBloom) on Twitter this last week about T.Y. Hilton. For a 25-year-old fantasy receiver who currently ranks in the top 10 at his position in all scoring formats, Hilton is getting remarkably little love. Even given the glut of talent at the position, it’s hard to imagine having Hilton outside the top 15 at the position.

At the same time, there is an idea in dynasty circles that, for young players, improvement is a birthright. Many Hilton supporters will scoff at the idea that we’ve seen the best that there is from him. After all, he’s just 25 years old! How many receivers peak at 25?

The answer, surprisingly, is “lots of them”. In NFL history, 69 players topped 1200 receiving yards at age 25 or younger. Larry Fitzgerald (three times), Lance Alworth (three times), and Randy Moss (five times!!!) are the only players to do so more than twice. While many of the members proved to have staying power, maybe half never again regained their early-career heights.

Just in recent years, we’ve seen Victor Cruz, Mike Wallace, and Miles Austin reach top-10 dynasty WR status on the back of a huge age-24 or age-25 season, only to steadily fall back down the ranks afterwards. Other players from the past 20 years who have never again approached within 300 yards of their age-24 or age-25 peak include: Santonio Holmes, Sidney Rice, Steve Smith (Giants version), Braylon Edwards, Roy Williams, Koren Robinson, David Boston, Germane Crowell, Marcus Robinson, Isaac Bruce, and Robert Brooks. Many of those players couldn’t even get within 500 yards of their pre-26 career high. Lee Evans set his career high by 275 yards at age 25.

The point isn’t that T.Y. Hilton is destined to regress. For many players, an early breakout was just a sign of things to come. The point is to suggest that many dynasty owners fetishize age and overrate the predictability of player careers. Someone who is young is not always on the way up. Someone who is old is not always on the way down. Ultimately, the best predictor of longevity is not age… but talent.

That talent component is why a player like T.Y. Hilton can rank behind Dez Bryant, despite being younger and more productive. It’s why Emmanual Sanders- 27 years old and currently in the top 10- is ranking behind older players like Jordy Nelson and Calvin Johnson. Age is a very important ingredient in dynasty value, but talent trumps all else.

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