With the schedule working against us, we find ourselves mired within the dead-zone of dynasty analysis. With most leagues past their trade deadlines and more than half of all dynasty teams already eliminated from contention, it seems a little bit late to be talking about strategy. And with a third or more of teams still vying for a title and a few weeks left to go, it seems a bit too early to start conducting postmortems.
Last week, we took a look at tanking— what it was, why it happened, and how to prevent it. Keeping with that theme, let’s examine the other great boogeyman of fantasy leagues. Yes, I’m talking about that-which-shall-not-be-named, a process so evil that even invoking its name is enough to cause long-standing leagues to crumble. Today I want to write about c… c… col…
collusion
Okay, so it’s not really all that hard to write out after all. If we learned nothing else from Harry Potter’s quest to defeat the evil Lord Voldemort, it’s that fear of a word serves no purpose except to grant that word even more power. Not that I could imagine one word having much more power in fantasy football. Collusion has come to represent everything that is evil in fantasy, the one truly unforgivable sin. Since we’re already rolling with our Harry Potter metaphors, it’s the Avada Kedavra of fantasy football.
How did this happen?
I wrote before the season about the history of fantasy football leagues, looking at the ways that, over the years, rules quickly became customs and thence standards. This story of the journey to ubiquity centered mainly on scoring and lineup rules, but other aspects of fantasy underwent the same homogenizing process.
Over the years, collusion went from a specific offense to some sort of catch-all term to describe everything league owners do not approve of. I’ve seen owners seriously suggest a practice should be banned as “collusion” even when said practice only involved a single owner, (such as dumping all of his good players once eliminated from the playoffs).
I’ve also seen the sentiment, widely expressed as an article of faith, that all trades are acceptable unless they are collusion. While this is usually said to discourage others from legislating against trades just because they don’t like them, (a worthy cause!), it effectively creates a situation where nefarious intent is perfectly acceptable so long as it is asymmetric.
What is collusion?
But let’s back up a little bit and start by defining our terms. Collusion comes to us from the fields of economics and law, and is defined by Webster, (no, not that Webster), as a “secret agreement or cooperation especially for an illegal or deceitful purpose”. When manufacturers of electrical equipment reach an agreement to divide production and fix prices in an effort to reduce competition, that’s collusion. When MLB owners agree not to sign free agents from each others’ teams, that’s collusion. And when one fantasy owner agrees to a lopsided trade because he’s promised a share of the prize pool should the other team win, that’s collusion.
Why is that collusion? Some would focus on the word “secret” in the common definition of collusion. For many, secrecy is the sine qua non of collusion; in the absence of secrecy there is no collusion. In truth, while collusion is almost always secret, the secrecy is a condition of the collusion and not a contributing factor. Collusion is illegal, and people keep their illegal actions secret. The causal arrow runs in the wrong direction— secrecy does not result in collusion, but collusion results in secrecy.
In fact, if the same two owners who agreed to the lopsided trade did so out in the open, the trade would still be collusive and would still be bad for the league. Both owners could announce from the rooftops that the worse team was out of contention and was therefore deliberately selling his players for a share of the cash prize. Even sans secrecy, the agreement would still be collusive.
No, the real defining characteristic of collusion is the non-competitive nature of the agreement. Collusion occurs when ostensible competitors instead decide to cooperate. That is the truly damaging aspect of collusion, the reality that needs to be abolished from fantasy leagues. Most leagues are founded on the principle that each owner is facing each other owner in a fair competition, and collusive agreements put every non-participant at a serious competitive disadvantage, whether those agreements are secret or not.
And this brings us to the key point— collusion isn’t bad because it’s secret. It’s not even bad because it causes competitors to cooperate. It’s bad because it destroys the competitive balance of the league.
Balancing the competition
This idea carries with it surprising implications. First off, not all that is bad is collusion. More radically… not all that is collusion is bad.
Consider the following situation: two owners with evenly matched teams meet in the championship. The winner of the game will take home $1000, while the loser gets nothing. Both owners feel nervous and would hate to walk away from their great season with nothing to show for it, so they instead agree to “chop” the prize pool, effectively creating a different split. They might decide that the winner will give $400 of his winnings to the loser, or they might even decide to split the prize evenly and both walk out with $500 regardless of who wins.
Now, this easily fits the definition of collusion, at least according to Webster. At the same time, it’s a very common and widely-accepted practice in both poker and fantasy football, two hobbies where collusion is typically considered akin to treason. Why does this type of agreement get a pass?
The key, of course, comes down to the competitive balance of the league. By the time the prize pool is chopped, all other players have been eliminated. They are wholly unaffected by the decision one way or another, and so they are, (rightly), indifferent to the agreement.
By drilling down into the definition and the practices, we will repeatedly see that collusion is just a buzzword, a scapegoat, a convenient catch-all for the real problem. The purpose of rulebooks and commissioners and the very structure of leagues is to safeguard the competitive balance. Over time, many have lost sight of that original goal. Or they’ve remembered that original goal but, lacking a language or framework of understanding, have decided that everything that violates that balance must be collusion.
Last week we looked at tanking, a clearly non-collusive practice that still undermined competitive balance and was, therefore, antithetical to healthy fantasy leagues. There are other anticompetitive practices that must be guarded against, too. In my next column, I’ll take a look at some of these practices, and discuss ways to protect against them in fantasy leagues.
