But over time, the rulebook has taken (in my view) an outsized place in how we navigate transactions and roster management. And this, even though we largely ignore it to do what seems sensible anyway (I am referring to a few years ago, when the plain language of the rules stated that if a player is on your roster and his team's game starts, that player is "locked in" to your roster for the week. The league voted, essentially, "Nah, that shouldn't apply to trades" despite that plain language. And I get it: people voted to interpret based on the intent of the rule, which was to prevent a manager gaining an unfair advantage, to determine it shouldn't apply to two willing trade partners).
I think we could largely do without the rulebook at this point. We know the draft procedure, and could manage any alterations on that combination of consensus, voting, and honor (we should probably keep the document with the specifics of the envelope rule around). We also know how cross country standings work and how the five titles we have can be won. We can vote on Yahoo settings and then largely just go with that.
Still, some controversies might still arise. Most leagues have a commissioner to decide on and handle any manual or retroactive roster/lineup actions. Would we simply outlaw any such actions? Or would we bring any issues following "mistakes" to the league for consensus/voting? In that case, I would worry about consistency (two similar but not identical issues could be handled differently) and perceived fairness (we have a lot of personalities, history, and vested interest in competition that could play a role). We'd have to rely a lot on precedent, but without a formal document outlining precedent (the rulebook really is, after all, a repository of precedents).
Options going forward seem to include:
A. Keeping on keeping on with our rulebook, deleting and adding to clarify when necessary (perhaps it needs a bit more work in one of those directions this offseason).
B. Lighting the entire rulebook on fire.
C. Maintaining a document that outlines draft procedure (with the absentee rules), playoff cup procedure, and championship criteria. It's worth noting that while we know the criteria for winning, did you know, for example, that the 2nd tie-breaker for the HZW trophy is head-to-head record between the top teams? And this may as well be considered the first tie-breaker since weekly ties are unlikely.
D. Maintaining a significantly streamlined rulebook to maintain settings (just to keep a document specifying roster sizes, lineup requirements, scoring settings, free agency settings, etc.) but largely deferring to the Yahoo settings we vote on and to transaction rules as Yahoo allows.
E. Electing a commissioner (Ha! Just kidding).
And then we would need to decide on retroactive and manual roster/lineup changes, with options that include:
A. Not allowing them
B. Allowing them with alerts to the league and voting/consensus.
(I strongly believe we should keep allowing all managers access to commissioner tools to manage anything necessary, including FAAB $ trades).
If we basically abolish the rulebook, we'd be done with team kickers, and if/then lists (maybe in extenuating circumstances a manager could bring it to the league--I'm guessing we'd find that acceptable), Yahoo allows you to drop a Thursday player that was on your bench in order to pick up another player to start on Sunday, so we'd have to live with that. We'd have to have some vote/consensus on preseason free agency (the source of so much Hazel-controversy!).
Well, friendos? Flame on?
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