Keeping the non-contenders interested

Yesterday, I wrote about the need to make sure that non-contenders don't "mess up" the race for the money in your league. Short of collusion, there is nothing worse than a team with nothing to play for grabbing players off of the waiver wire for no apparent good reason.

On the flip side, even the best owner will most likely wind up in the unfortunate position of playing for the future at some point and time. You probably don't want the rules to be too restrictive for non-contenders; the worst thing your league can have is a cadre of disinterested owners who might leave simply because they feel like they can't even make moves in the interest of next season.

Rodger has some interesting ideas to deal with non-contenders:

Our league includes a reserve draft that rewards owners for finishing higher in the standings. Also, the team that finishes dead last is supposed to buy the beverages in the following spring's draft. Thus, we created incentives for everyone to compete through the end of the season.

Without creating a severely punitive or complicated mechanism, Rodger's league sounds like it has come up with a healthy compromise to keep teams at the bottom interested in this season.

In earlier posts, I've discussed the ideas of taking draft dollars away from the last place team and taking away freezes. This is one way to keep teams from completely doing nothing. On the other hand, this eliminates the concern of owners picking up expensive FAAB players or option-year players, since they would now be playing for something besides pride.

I have a couple of ideas I've never seen implemented that could be interesting wrinkles to keep the second half interesting for everyone.

My first idea is providing a "second-half title". A league could take a small portion of the winnings and reward the team with the best second-half. In theory, this sounds like a good idea. However, you're probably going to have a team that is already in the money taking away this prize. Plus, the team that actually wins would rightfully complain that he shouldn't be sharing his winnings with a team that was the best team over the last 81 games of the regular season.

My other idea, which I've kicked around for years, is far more ambitious. Actually, it wasn't originally my idea, but I've refined it as I've gone along and come up with the following:

A league would continue having single season titles. However, this league would also have a cumulative title for a three-year cycle. After the three-year period, the league would have a new auction in the fourth-year and start the cycle over again.

In Year One, you probably wouldn't have a lot of dumping, since a team that finished with 30 points or less would not have any kind of shot at the three-year prize. In Year Two, you might have a team pack it in that had also done poorly in year one, since that team would have no shot at the three-year title. Finally, in Year Three, there would be no dumping allowed, since everyone would be playing for that year.

There are problems with this format. The most obvious issue is the stat service. You'd have to find a service that would allow you to track cumulative points over a three-year period. Good luck with that.

The other problem, though, is finding owners who would be interested in such a format. I could see an owner who did poorly in year one either dumping anyway to ensure a win in Year Two then quitting the league before Year Three started. Then you'd have to find an owner who would be willing to take on a weakened team knowing that he would only have one shot at winning before the league auctioned again.

I'm still intrigued by this idea. However, I certainly wouldn't push too hard for it in any leagues I'm in.

The bottom line for non-contenders is that you don't want to put conditions into place that are too difficult. But you also don't want to bend over backwards to keep non-contenders interested, either. To the victor should go the spoils. To the loser should go...

Well, nothing.

A more diplomatic way of stating this point is that you want owners in your league who are in it for the long haul. You want an owner who will accept a losing season as a learning experience and who is already fired up about next year as a result. If you reward losing too much, then you're twisting the fabric of the game, and you might lose winning owners as a result.