Free Agency Order

[cmwatton]

I've been a commissioner of a 12-team league for about 10 years. We have always done a worst to first order for free agent pickups, and that starts after Week 1 action. What has happened about 75% of the time is that a really good team has gotten off to a bad start, been able to pick up one of those Week 1 diamonds that went undrafted, and stacked their team even further. I've received many complaints about our format. Does anyone have any suggestions? Wait until Week 3 or 4 to start free agency to see who are the really bad teams? Do an auction type free agency system? I'm open to some help here - thanks.

[Hags888]

Last year we switched to an auction format and it worked SO much better than the usual waiver system. I set the budget at $160 ($10 average per week to spend). Some teams ran out of money in week 12, while others barely spent any of their money by the end of the year. It added a really cool dynamic to the acquisition of free agents. My hope is that as the league gets more and more comfortable with this auction style for getting players, that we can transition to an auction draft eventually.

Anyway, we had the same problems as you, and the auction seemed to fix it.

[cmwatton]

Thanks for the feedback - I had read an article about this and liked the concept. Glad to hear it worked in reality. Thanks again.

[stomperrob]

Several of my leagues have gone to Blind Bids for FA's and it seems to work well - each team starts with a $100 budget at the start of each season, leagues are on Fleaflicker.

[cmwatton]

Thanks - I appreciate the response.

[murphysxm]

you can also have the priority reset every week so the worst team ALWAYS gets 1st priority. Sucks for the better teams, but narrows the gap. I prefer reverse draft order is the first priority order and run it from there.

[Cards24]

Go to a blind bid waiver system. IMO most fair way to do waiver wire pickups and saves you the headache