duggan, Chest Rockwell, NorCalfan, et al, I apologize for being too serious in my commitment to this. Some of the posts caught me the wrong way and I probably could have used a little better judgment in my responses.
Chest, if we can make a Braves game, Wayne will get the first round, I'll get the second, and I'll owe you a third for missing a lot of the sarcasm in your posts.
Again, I feel very committed to this and I may have gone a little overboard at times.
Now, Lance! Where the heck were you while I was taking them all on by myself?!
You did a great job of outlining what I was hoping that people would realize without me having to spell it out. Shawn also gave the details of how collusion could occur as well. If Shawn had had ill-motives last season, what he did could easily be construed as collusion.
Why did I pick the word collusion to start this mess? Well, because it's the right word. Collusion is two entities working together in secret for an ill-purpose. It doesn't necessarily have to be two owners colluding. It could be one owner with two teams colluding together. The teams themselves then become the entities. Since we can't open up the owner's head and read what's in his mind, then that constitutes the secrecy part.
My guess is that if you don't have a high moral standing within yourself and a universal ethic of good about you, then it would be almost impossible to resist the temptation of what you could gain from having two teams, or even several ponies. It would be difficult to execute but it would be possible.
Using Shawn again as the example, what would have happened in the Fantasy World after last year if Shawn had actually secured #1 and #2? To all of the operators out there, how do you think that would have affected the market?
Now, not to question anything about Gekko. I don't know anything about him other than what he posts and what data I have collected on him through the NFBC. So, Mark, when you read this, don't just pop your top thinking that I am insinuating something about you. I'm not. I am going to use something that you posted as an example.
Didn't you say yourself that you were in it for the money and not the competition?
Flip-flop Mark and Shawn in the multiple team ownership scenario and suppose that Mark had had two teams. Since we know that his motivation is about the money and his own personal gain, then if he captured #1 and #2 would anyone question how he actually got there? Again, Mark, I'm not dissing you. I'm just using your words as an example of what could bring the down the integrity of the NFBC.
As for the FA pool improvement, both Wayne and Shawn, as well as some others, posted some very good reasons why there shouldn't be one "flat" FA pool. I am not going to tell you that I have an answer to the problem. I don't. But I do know that without some way of keeping the available stats between leagues pretty close to even there is the potential for a very "sore loser." Without the same available stats in each league, then the overall standings become skewed. I'm going to let you guys decide on what the best way is. Just know that I support a change. And, if you come up with a VERY GOOD solution, I will fight with you tooth and nail to find a way to get it implemented.
Moving on, Mark pointed something out in the first thread that I don't believe a lot of people realize. The Main Event is really a game within a game. This makes it difficult to score and to keep true.
Now, what I've realized while working on my master's thesis is about the marketing end of this game. Well, Chest, you were sorta right. It's not an MBA from the business end, it is really a technical MBA that I am working on. And yes, NorCalFan, you were sorta right about something too. My professors and I have discussed what it would take to start a league like this and how to make it bigger and better. That's not my intention. I feel really confident that Greg, Tom, and F+W have this end taken care of. I'm more interested in the operator side. Don't worry, pros and operators, I'm not here to compete against you in the fantasy baseball market. I'm here because I love the game. I do plan on getting my website completed soon and I plan on offering a lot of free tools. Much like Shawn and Jesse have provided with BaseballMafia.com, I think there is a lot that we can do for the industry just by offering free stuff.
The game isn't just a game within a game. It is a game within a game, that is within a MUCH MUCH MUCH larger game. That larger game is the game of economics.
As an individual player, I look at the NFBC Championship as the creme de la creme of titles. That is the way it was set up and I have never lost my belief in that. But as an individual player my stake in this may not be as big as someone else's. Anyone that is an operator of a fantasy-touting or information service has much more than I do at stake in this.
A title for them could result in millions of dollars. Everyone needs to realize that. I don't begrudge them because they need the title to sell their website. I just don't think that they should be given what I consider an unfair advantage because they have more money to buy entries. However, I don't worry about them so much because all of our eyes will be on them and if one of them ever were caught in collusion... Well, it would be the end of their business.
To grab the bone that bjoak threw out there for me, he sees it too. Lance sees it. Others see it, but what I'm proposing might make them have to work harder at getting the title.
I'm not worried about today, or next year... It is the few years down the line that we run into the problem of collusion because the NBC partnership has brought in so many people. We can't monitor them ourselves as the NFBC Security Force. Greg and Tom can't possibly monitor them either. That is why we need to get the rules reworked before it does happen and then at the end of some season in the future we all find out that there was really collusion. What happens to the NFBC if there is EVER anyone that cries collusion and makes a public case of it outside of the messageboards?
It dies, that's what happens. We will all be out there looking for a new home because no one will trust this game anymore. It only takes 1 time for a failure to destroy everything. Greg and Tom have worked really hard to get us this far. Though I don't like the partnership, in the end I realize that it is still the best for the game itself.
Remember when the World Series of Poker was really small and everyone loved it. They kept expecting people like Helmuth and Brunson to run away with it. Well, it won't ever happen now because the game has became a matter of luck. Why did it become a matter of luck? Because it was never regulated and/or the rules were never adjusted to accommodate the huge market that it revealed. This partnership with NBC could lead us down the same path. It is sort of what Greg, NBC, and the FSTA is hoping for.
Find the guys that haven't been exposed to fantasy baseball yet and get them into the market place. It generates revenue for the much bigger game that we play in.
The more people that join, the more chances that there will be collusion in the future. If the number becomes too big we can't use the honor system that has worked so well in the past anymore.
So I ask, why can't we just amend the rule so that there is one entry/one owner(and co-owner for partnered teams)/one team? It doesn't really do anything to stop it from happening, but it does offer a legal leg for the NFBC to stand on in case it does happen. I love it that Greg started this and then let our belief in the game keep it true. But the truth is, it will eventually become so big that we won't be able to do it by ourselves.
Why wait until the milk starts pouring out to patch the hole in the jug?
[ April 30, 2008, 02:52 PM: Message edited by: Jackstraw ]