Jack's Flash - Lost Part Deux

[Jackstraw]

Yesterday, I outlined the mechanism for collusion. The conversation didn’t turn to what my primary goal was, but it did turn to my secondary goal.



Some know, some don’t… I am currently working on my master’s degree and the NFBC is my thesis. I have been collecting data from the NFBC and doing analysis as part of my project. One of the things that I have noticed is the effect that point distribution has on the overall competition. Another problem is with leagues that have a high standard deviation in points. As part of my project I was trying to find a way that you could rate all of the individual Main Event leagues against each other. I’ve always had some concerns about the way it is calculated on the NFBC homepage.



For those of you that have taken Probability and Statistics 101 (which I will write eventually for the laymen on these boards), the NFBC results are extremely non-normal. This shows that there is a lot of variation between the leagues, and it makes it very difficult to do a side-by-side comparison. Even though it is comparing apples to apples, the variation causes it to become so complicated that it might as well be comparing apples to oranges.



As an engineer, part of the job is to assign causes to variation. Knowing the causes allows us to make improvements that reduce variation. By reducing the amount of variation in something, we make it truer to its purpose.



Isn’t the purpose of the NFBC to provide a fair playing field for anyone to come and play at a competitive level?



The first problem I noticed was with the variation in the overall standings. The shape that the graph takes now is the same as it always takes. There are extreme outliers every season, both at the top and the bottom. In general, there are as many over-performing teams as well as under-performing.



Why do they exist? They shouldn’t, at least not to the extreme that they do. Every season there are about 30 or so teams that fall into the extreme. If you check these teams, typically for every bad team in a particular league there is a good team from that league. Seems like a no-brainer doesn’t it? Because of the point distribution from the scoring method, there is a balance. If we were using roto-points, it would be even more non-normal.



My primary goal was to get an eligibility rule change. No one should be allowed to have multiple team ownership. And let’s face it, a stake in multiple teams is the same as having ownership in multiple teams. It’s just word-smithing to try and make them different. The simple reason why is because the events of the individual leagues make up the events for the overall league. If you can’t have multiple teams in one league (which I am assuming is true) because of the opportunity for influence, then you shouldn’t be able to have multiple teams in the overall event for the same reason. In my opinion it is even more important to focus on maintaining the integrity of the overall event because there is a lot more at stake. There is significantly more prize money and for all of the pros there is the name-brand recognition, and that could be worth significantly more than the prize money itself.



I realize that this would be difficult for Greg to pull off. His sponsors rely on his success, and his success depends on his sponsors. As a part of the independent group, I find the odds stacked against me if I am up against 4 or 5 of JoeBlow’sFantasySports guys. JoeBlow’sFantasySports has more money to buy lottery tickets than I do. Under the current rules, JoeBlow’sFantasySports or anyone else could buy multiple lottery tickets and plug in as many of their ponies as they see fit. Today it is perfectly legal for them to do it. Me and many others don’t have the financial resources that they do, but the NFBC Championship title is just as important to me and my goals as it is to any pro. It is an unfair advantage that they get because of their status. I truly believe that we need to revisit those rules before we open the door next season to a potentially much larger base of players. Maybe the best path is to develop rules regarding team sponsorship to go along with the eligibility rules.



My secondary focus was to revisit the rule regarding Greg or Tom having the ability to remove a free agent from the pool if he was dropped and deemed too valuable. In the satellite leagues, I believe that the league should have the right to vote on this issue rather than Greg or Tom just pulling them. In the Main Event though they have to put the player back into the FA pool regardless to maintain a consistent number of available points among all of the leagues. Or if deemed to valuable for that league, then the drop has to be reversed.



Eventually there will be a story about someone being cheated out of the NFBC title because he didn’t have the same players available to him in his league that someone else did. Or, it will be that somebody got dropped in a league, removed from the FA list, and one of the teams in that league got an advantage because they didn’t have to compete against those points the same as owners in other leagues did. It doesn’t matter if that player would have just been sitting on that team’s bench. The fact is that when he got pulled from the league, the total possible points in that league were altered.



Now that Gekko and UFS have brought it up to make the FA pool consistent across all of the Main Event’s individual leagues, then I think that we as a group need to find a way to make that happen. We shouldn’t have to scream. This is common sense.



a) What happens in an individual league affects the overall event.

b) The overall league needs to be treated the same as the individual leagues (single team ownership).

c) The playing field needs to be the same across all leagues. The first way we can accommodate this is by looking seriously at what UFS proposed. The second way is to try and educate the lesser experienced players.



All of this creates a much flatter playing field for all of us that are competing for the big money. And I think it is good for the NFBC as a whole. By trying to keep the competition closer, people are more apt to return in the future. If owners are pummeled for a couple of years, then we as the fantasy sports market could lose them because they can’t afford to keep competing.



[ April 29, 2008, 11:04 AM: Message edited by: Jackstraw ]