Welp. Rules Summit has come and gone. And for some of you...you know this means I'm going to roll through and chime in with my personal views on the proceedings. That said, many of you are brand new or nearly brand new. You may not be aware of who I am and what I've done (outside of being Mr. 69 of course). So for those of you who don't know (and/or some of y'all who may have forgot about Dre as it were) I'm going to do a little horn tooting here. You may feel free to skip this if you do not feel the need to double check my credentials. I am the only two time member of Head Office. I am a former GM of the Year. I run the Casino. I am the former head of Awards Committee (which I helped build), Rookie Mentor Team (which I rebuilt), and Twitter (which I helped introduce into the league). I have been writing league rules for so long that I have had to explain to members of HO what they actually mean because I was there when they were written (or wrote them). And like me or not.....I believe that pretty much everyone will tell you that I am straightforward, I play fair, and I believe in honest dealing. Forgive this short self aggrandizing and the folks who helped me (and whom I helped) along the way with many of these accomplishments. The short version is that I've got expertise and experience. And thus ends the most I've ever really self aggrandized on these shores. Now..that said..I would never suggest you only listen to what I have to say. By all means. My philosophies and priorities may not match yours. It's also entirely possible that you may be uncomfortable with assigning the same levels of intent that I do to some decisions.
Okay, now that everyone is caught up, let me run through a few of my personal biases for those who do not know or may not remember. I strongly and violently oppose selfish rules. IE, things that I see as designed to benefit the party making them at the expense of others, rather than for the good of the league. I strongly dislike and argue against unenforceable rules because they are as I called them...unenforceable. An example of a recent proposal that fit was one which said that people with access to the sim file were not allowed to start sim testing until a certain time. We simply have no way whatsoever of enforcing that rule as it was written. It was absolutely braindead from conception to requiring people to take time to vote on it. And it actually got several votes. Braindead: clearly contagious. Also...if you're new to the program...I don't mince words. I do compartmentalize well though. The person who wrote said flaming pile of garbage is one of my favorite people in the league for example. So....with as much pretext as possible to make sure people reading this know what they're getting into....let's do this. Let's get right into the rules and their results and my view on them. As a handy hint, for the regular Summit 13 votes are needed to pass.
1.No player may hold more than 2 league jobs without prior approval. Contract work such as off-season events and wiki do not count against this total.
8-10
I get what I believe to be the general idea here. Limit the amount of jobs individuals have and spread the job availability around the league. I don't necessarily think a rule is needed for that as I think it naturally happens over time. I can really only think of a few people who have more than two jobs actually at this point. Simple user existence and activity has increased to the point that we don't have people pushing themselves to do a shitload of jobs to keep the league going. Which is mostly what the source of people having a bunch of jobs was to begin with. So I don't really see the need for a rule like this. Unless it was a specific targeting of those few people who have more than two regular jobs. Which seems pretty unlikely. Possible, but unlikely. Overall I likely would have argued against making this a rule and voted against it. Let department heads work this one out on their own. In the interest of full disclosure...I just realized that I personally have hired one of those few people who have at least 3 jobs. And I hired him to two of them. Because he was the best candidate.
2. Changes to User Hall of Fame, including- 2/3 to be inducted- 3 ballots before being removed from the ballot- current nominees are grandfathered for next season. Users can be renominated.
17-1
Adding to the number of possible inductees is probably a good thing. One per season has created some interesting problems, including voters who have purposely voted against extremely qualified nominees specifically because they wanted someone else to go in. Now there are a variety of reasons that this is just messed up as hell. But unfortunately our options are limited in regards to some of those things. But the system could be improved by allowing more than one entry per season. The system created a situation where one person sat down and decided that he was going to vote no on the person who is universally one of the most enduringly popular figures in league history, helped build the league, and also literally paid our fucking bills for 2+ years. And while I have my own personal negative feelings toward the level of simple minded selfish mercenary mindset it requires to do that kind of thing so that the person you want to get in can "win"......we're here to fix the system. Not the voters. We already switched to a committee for that. Hopefully.
So....increasing the number of users who can get in during any given season will help mitigate some portion of these issues. Beyond that I'm not necessarily onboard with dropping people after three ballots because it's a pretty arbitrary culling just for the sake of doing so. It doesn't really accomplish anything. The ability to be renominated is nice though. Opens the door for players to finally have that option as well after many seasons of that possibility being argued against. I would have likely voted in favor overall as the rule does significantly more good than harm. Unlike some voters. This one still needs to be approved by the head of the committee and I'm hopeful it is.
3. Implement a formal external budget department tasked with tracking contracts. This would remove the burden of documenting signings in the current budget sheet from GMs, as well as streamlining the budget check process, allowing issues to be found early and resolved quickly. It would also streamline the assembly of the FA list.This rule would require the reworking of rules II.D.1.d to remove team punishment for the specified error
13-5
GMs vote themselves out of having to do some of their work. I'm at least 20% kidding. Bordering on 25%. Someone did their homework on this one though. The way it's written makes it feel to me like something you write to convince GMs to vote for it rather than something a GM wrote to get out of work. Coupled with that, those FA lists are a pain in the ass to write every offseason. I speak from experience. This actually should help out because a central (and unbiased) group will be keeping things more up to date than many GMs do. It's going to be interesting to see when a team messes up their finances by not being on top of them. When. Not if. I hope the 3-5 GMs who made up those no votes (likely because they believe they have the ability to run budget sheets better than their peers) take solace in knowing that this is an almost certain outcome. I am in favor of this rule primarily due to its streamlining effect and also because it takes the power of information out of the hands of people who may.....use it creatively for strategic purposes.
4.Inactive players with 57 TPE or less are not required to be in the ISFL draft. Players fitting this criteria will be auto-retired upon end of the DSFL season.
14-4
The counter to this argument that I heard came from a GM who noted that multiple players have been these IA players and gone on to great earning and involved players. I've also heard this is about lazy GMs. Well...as the person who usually calls bullshit on GM bullshit (and will further down) let me defend them on this one. Drafts are grueling. And long. And time pressured. They are stressful and require a crapton of work. By the time a draft reaches the people who will be affected by this rule, most teams are kinda worn the fuck out. Days have gone by. Days that often feel like weeks. It's the kind of crunch of time and effort where someone pausing for two hours to make a decisions will be remembered later as a tragedy. That's not random. That's a thing that happens every so often. I have personally been on both sides. So when teams get to the players who put in either zero or nearly zero effort before just leaving the league...it gets dicey. And to fully disclose...I am literally the reason why a rule was passed several season ago forcing teams to use each pick. I have a history of simply passing when I'm done. After the rule passed the champions of said rule pretty much directly called me lazy and selfish (technically they said it about GMs who pass but you know...not exactly a lot of subterfuge going on here). Which then turned into trading away the rest of my picks for comically minimal value. Apparently a random pick button was created after I stepped down. Because the people in question aren't actually part of the league. They said no thanks and walked away. So GMs are at the end of their hard work, not quite at 100% efficiency anyway, and now being forced to take seriously these players. So no...I do not buy into the idea that GMs are lazy for this. I support not having to draft players who aren't really there to begin with.
I do not however like the second half. At all. Forcing DSFL team to retire them is not something I'm onboard with. Also..you're not the DSFL. You really shouldn't have a say in this and you don't actually. The second half had no business being there and was passed by people who really don't and should not have the authority for it. The DSFL leadership can and should openly ignore the 2nd half of this rule and declare it void because those who passed it had absolutely zero shreds of a single solitary right to do so. And it would be wise for ISFL GMs to remember that as excited as you may be with the new rules that remove budget updates and IA drafting, and as much as these changes may give you a bit of extra free time.....you STILL don't make rules for the DSFL. I hope DSFL HO makes the correct decisions to simply ignore a completely illegal ruling as it pertains to them.
5. The free agency thread will be posted at the conclusion of the final set of regular season games. A player becomes a free agent if their contract has expired, or when they choose to exercise a contract option. A team may discuss a potential contract with a player as soon as they become a free agent, even if that player's team is still in contention, but may not sign new players until the conclusion of the Ultimus.
9-9
Hardly the first time there has been an attempt to push up free agency. It will not be the last, either. It might be the one that came closest to passing though. In real time the end of Ultimus is when free agency begins. In recent seasons, signing free agents has been pushed back some time even while you were able to talk to them as of the end of Ultimus. The behind the scenes start of the ISFL Draft is general about 36 hours from the end of the Ultimus, historically speaking. So free agency has always been hectic, confusing, silly, and disjointed. Pushing back when free agents can actually sign has made it worse. If you ARE a free agent, you basically can only start talking to teams after the Ultimus and have an extremely short window to actually check out your options before teams begin drafting. Which almost always leads to some or most of your options disappearing as teams start drafting players to your potential spot and removing themselves from the running. A proposal like this one attempts to alleviate this somewhat by pushing it back to the end of the regular season, which now takes place a week earlier than the Ultimus (and previously took place 5 days before). There has been literally months of discussion at this point about how to improve this situation which basically sucks for everyone. Dozens of attempts at finding a cure have come and gone. And the main culprit isn't one you can really fix. And in fact, most people won't really delve into what the biggest issues is and for good reason. Because the thing at fault is YOU. 100% you. The players of the ISFL simply cannot abide an offseason of any length. It gets dicey about three days into the offseason regardless of how much work needs doing. Don't believe me? Look HERE at the offseason schedule. Look at how many things are packed in tightly to a very short time period. And keep in mind that there are a shitload of unseen or glossed over tasks going on behind the scenes here. Three programs that require a full set of graphics. Including the award process that started after the regular season ended on July 17th, moved to GMs/HO for voting, by the 26th, then had to be put together for a presentation on the 28th. Plus the two drafts, which also require a ton of work. before the ever get to graphics. Scouting. Trading. Pre-drafting. Also..every department has to do its end of season work. Which mean Audits everywhere. Including entire regression groups. Offseason recruitment and introduction of new players. I'm really only scratching the surface here. Offseason should easily be 4-5 days longer and it would STILL be a crunch. God forbid any job group wants to take a few days off during the offseason. But the player base of our league simply would lose their collective shit. It's happened over and over.
So.....among many other consequences...we get a frankly anemic and ridiculous free agency. And we get rule proposals like this one, born of desperate energy to try to improve things for both teams and players. Most of whom also clamor for a better free agency setup. I salute the attempt. I argued in favor of a rule much like this one with different wording and I would do so again.
6. Remove the limit of 2 rule proposals per team or HO member
8-10
Fun story. One time a previous Commissioner heard this idea enough times that they simply got annoyed and said "this offseason everyone gets 4" just to shut everyone up. No one used all four of their allotted proposals. Even this Summit features 12 proposals out of a possible 20+. I would have voted against this one simply because it's too open ended. Or more accurately I'd have argued for putting some kind of number on it to start with. It's a pretty straightforward idea though.
7.Agents fee halved from $10M to $5M
7-11
Agents operate under a set of rules designed primarily to make sure no one chooses to be an agent or stays an agent for long. It was a popular concept for a minute and the existing HO of the time didn't want to say no even though they didn't want it to exist. So thus some rules were born. Things like requiring players to be in the room with agents and GMs (despite this being something that most players who sought out agents did NOT want), half pay on all media, an ban on being paid for Twitter (complete with condescending reminder that the agents can still do it for free), and the above $10 Million fee per season. All specifically designed to create an untenable choice. After significant backlash, some rules were amended. The Twitter pay and full media pay were restored. On the other hand hand, and bonuses for media were suddenly explicitly disallowed for agents and a new barrier of 5 year sin the league was added. This $10 Million per season fee is and always was meant to be one of several barriers of entry to stop people from making the choice to become an agent. It may seem innocent out here in the wild on its own but it is not and never was innocent. And votes like this will simply never pass while GMs making up 2/3 of the vote. Agents raise salaries. GMs are largely historically opposed to this. Thus the meager existance Agents DID have came at the hands of HO with GMs completely removed. Agent reform can really only ever come from where it's rules originated. HO deciding alone. GMs will never vote in large enough number to make it easier for players to be represented. If that seems hyperbolic keep in mind that in the response to the announcement of these rule results, GMs were complaining that they need a single HO vote to pass anything.
8. If a team runs the "Spread Playbook" in two or more offensive scenarios, (Excluding 4th And Long & Last 2 Min [Behind]), that teams QB must have the mobile QB box checked.
8-10
In Laymen's terms, those who support this believe it will decrease the effectiveness of running QBs. In a practical application, this proposal is a lot like a bunch of NBA teams getting together in 1999 and saying no more dunks in order to slow down Shaq. This is the kind of rule that IF you're going to implement it, there should an actual mission statement explaining what it hopes to accomplish and loads of testing to show that it actually does this. This proposal has none of those things. Extensive testing that actually HAS been done by multiple simmers has shown that the Mobile QB box doesn't really work properly so my Spidey Sense goes off when a proposal tries to utilize a broken mechanic. Doubly so when said proposal seems entirely built around stopping a successful strategy rather than adding something to the league.
9. EXPANSION DRAFT PROTOCOL
* Each existing team may protect as many as 9 players from its roster.
> A full roster (including 1 user OL) requires 19 user players; 9 protections allows an existing team to protect just under half of its starting roster.
> Players from the most recent draft class are automatically protected and do not count against this total.
* Alternatively, a team may forego any number of its protections for an equal number of free agent passes.
> A non-expansion team may only sign as many of its own free agents as it has free agent passes available.
* Any contract option must be exercised 24 hours prior to the start of the expansion draft.
* If a protected player chooses to exercise a contract option, that protection instead becomes a free agent pass unless the team specifies otherwise.
* An expansion draft lasts 12 rounds total.
> As stated above, a full roster (including 1 user OL) requires 19 user players; 12 selections allows an expansion team to fill just under two-thirds of its starting roster, not including rookie draft(s).
* The maximum number of players that can be taken from an existing team's roster will be equal to the number of expansion teams being added to the league.
> This ensures that no existing team suffers too lopsided a loss to expansion.
> This does not include the expansion teams' GM players, who need not be taken through the expansion draft process.
11-7
To give a little background here, expansion rules have previously been set by HO. To the best of my knowledge, that has not changed. If GMs were newly invited to be part of the rulemaking process for expansion that would be a new and interesting direction and I'd love to hear HO's explanation on what made them make this kind of change. To my best knowledge however, that has not happened. Yet, we find ourselves here staring down a nearly passed rule in an area where GMs have previously lacked the authority to do so. And yes..I heard a bit about this rule as time went on. Snippets of original plans and compromises and arguments over it. So let's break this down for those who see this list and whose eyes begin to gloss over.
I'm going to use a hypothetical S25 expansion here to make it a bit easier to put into terms that you can wrap your head around (rather than having to generically say Season X or something else that makes it feel like an abstract algebra problem). So let's presume we expand to 14 teams in S25 this means that the two expansion teams (and its always two by the way). So now each existing team would be able to automatically protect 9 players per this proposal. Previously it has been 7 total protections, with a progressive ability to add a new player to protect every time a player from their team is chosen. So the existing teams start with 9 protections and since this proposal does not specify the ability to add any more as the draft goes on, I'm going to assume that teams are unable to do so. So after those 9 protections (including protection slots for free agents they wish to keep) the rest of the roster is open to be picked. Except for players who were selected the season before in the draft. In this case S24 draftees would be inelligible for an expansion team to be picked. Most of the middle you can safely ignore because its about technicalities related to free agents and contracts. It exists solely to keep a team from letting go of their players into free agency and then re-signing them once expansion draft is over. The things cited in this proposal are not really new or adding anything to the existing procedures.
The most important parts here (outside of adding 2 new protection slots) are limiting the number of players who can be taken from a team to 2. The actual proposal fancies it up by using language about how many expansion teams there are, but as I've said before, it's always two. We had an expansion based on the number of players in the league doubling and it was still two. Everyone knows its going to be two. No one in the league actually believes that a four team expansion is ever likely. Why am I harping on this point? Because the intent of adding that clause was to limit the amount of players who can be lost by any team to 2, when previously it was 3. I won't try to speculate on WHY the author went out of their way to try to disguise this, but that was clearly the intent. There is a short blurb that says it ensures no team suffers to lopsided an loss. By going from 3 potential losses to 2 guaranteed losses. Each expansion draft is 12 rounds meaning each team gets 12 players. In previous drafts, with the limit of three per team that meant that at times teams ended up losing only 1. It also meant expansion teams had choices they could make based on an available pool. No actual additional players were moved because the number of rounds remained the same. Teams also had more flexibility with the ability to add protections as they lost players. There is also one final change proposed here that is worth noting. In this version, expansion GMs would not be required to use one of their picks on themselves. Previously they had to, which then allowed the team losing a GM player (and likely a big part of their team) an extra protection by default. This proposal strips that from them by not requiring GMs to pick themselves.
So who benefits here? Well, most of all the really good teams benefit. They get more protections, which bad teams are unlikely to need as many of and they're guaranteed to not lose 3 players, which again, bad teams usually don't need to worry as much about. Beyond that, the teams who don't lose a GM player also benefit tremendously here. Before it was considered that someone who is chosen to be an expansion GM is likely a major part of a team. CoGMs, War Room members, locker room leaders, and RainDelay. Losing them is a huge blow and having that automatic pick allowed them to lose a little less. Other teams who suffered no such loss are now on the same playing field.
Who loses out here? Well, expansion teams lose choices obviously. The limit of two per team coupled with the need to build up a roster of about 20 players fast means that those choices of which 12 players to take are very important to the foundation of a new team. Removing that and forcing expansion teams to feed more heavily from bad teams really only drags down the have nots. And that's without going into rumors I have heard that the proposal at one point allowed for 10 protections and/or teams could only lose 1 player apiece.
I can however speak as the league's most successful expansion GM when I say that this proposal is about 80% hot garbage. The new benefits aren't really benefits and the burden of the draft shifts very noticeably towards there being extremely weak ability to build any kind of roster and also the teams who are struggling most having to pay an increased share of the cost. I would go further and say that if you ever wanted to know why HO sets the expansion rules and GMs don't, this is a pretty good example to answer that question. the entire thing is designed to benefit only existing teams and mostly the ones that are currently strong. If public results of voting had actually passed, you would likely see this being written, championed, and voted for primarily by such teams. Granted, things like this are why that measure did not pass. This isn't really an expansion draft ruleset. It's a terms of surrender handed to two brand new teams. Thankfully wiser heads prevailed, if barely. Once the hooplah over this dies down, I'm considering referring to it as an attempted coup for fun.
10. Position switches will allow a player to change everything about the player including height and weight, but it still follows the TPE distribution guidelines.
16-2
I had to actually look this up because off the top of my head this doesn't actually do anything. Research shows that what its replacing is a rule subset that said if you were too tall or too short for your new position, you could change your height to the maximum or minimum respectively. So this is a pretty slick little replacement that just allows people to pick their height as they see fit. This is my favorite kind of rule. It's simple, it allows for freedom, and it replaces an overly thought out rule that didn't really add anything. This one is a no brainer for me. Nice to see the original writers are presumably still in a voting position though, judging by the 2 no votes.
11. Return of Weekly Predictions for each game and No More Trivia: 1. All 16 regular season weeks will have a Predictions PT worth 0.5 TPE per correct game 2. No more Trivia 3. PT's revert back to 3 TPE per PT instead of 4 TPE. This allows for Weekly Predictions to come back without changing the overall TPE a player can earn each season.
14-4
A popular suggestion from pretty much the minute that weekly predictions got axed (and before). The same amount of TPE in a more interactive scale with a bit less work. And it keeps whoever ran trivia from having to open up 300+ individual PMs once a week. Which feels like way too much work just to have to then write each response down and then grade them all. Trivia of course has its defenders but I'm obviously more on the side of the weekly predictions. The other portion of this is the weekly PT reverting to 3 TPE. I'm not sure that this will really affect anything else, though. All in all a good change that I personally like very much. Presumably the person who opened 300 DMs per week thanks the voters as well.
12. All players selected in the expansion draft cannot sign with their original team the following off season through free agency (trades acceptable).
7-11
As you can see there was quite a bit of contention here on the expansion proceedings, including this effort to ensure that a player cannot immediately return to their previous team after being picked. Which would have the effect of stopping teams from leaving someone protected with the knowledge that they would shortly return anyway. Consider this to be part of the attention being paid to attempts to circumvent expansion via contracts and options as well.
So that's the end of the regular rule summit. After seeing all of this and where things appear to be headed I predict this expansion is gonna get a bit messy between what appears to be numerous attempts to steal rule making and circumvent proceedings through contract manipulation. I do not envy HO for this. Or DSFL HO for the likelihood that they may have to kindly remind people to not write rules outside their authority. That one's likely going to be more dramatic than it should be. But....as it turns out, this wasn't everything for this season's summit. A special set of rules were voted on but a much larger grouping. 30 votes here consisted of both HOs, GMs from both leagues, the tow simmers, and the league owner. Let's check them out.
1. Get rid of MVP award and replace OPOY and DPOY with OMVP and DMVP respectively
6-23-1
A suggestion I've heard before that is based upon defensive players basically never winning MVP awards. This is one of those things that has a solid logical basis but just doesn't feel right to a lot of people. Don't be surprised if this one pops back up every few seasons while slowly increasing in popularity. Or a defensive player wins an MVP.
2. In Rules Summits, a threshold must be met to pass new rules. This threshold will be 70% of the total voting pool or one more than the Number of Teams voting, whichever is higher. (In this rule summit, both of these requirements are met in 21 to approve)
21-9
Why does this exist? Well to put it plainly, expansion. When the league expands to 14 teams, that means that there will be 20 votes in a normal ISFL summit, as opposed to the current 18. 14 votes would constitute exactly 70%, which under the old rules, would be enough to pass. However the intent was never for that to exist. Thus this rule exists to further ensure that GMs cannot force a rule through on their own. As I already mentioned earlier, some GMs were not happy the need to have at least one non-GM vote in favor of a proposal. Humorously one GM said they voted against it because HO was an internally selected group. A description that also applies to GMs. More humorously, the complaint is based upon a situation that has already existed. As far as I can recall, the voting structure has always required at least one non-GM to vote for something in order for it to pass.
3.HO does not vote on awards and pro bowl.
12-18
A proposal that was put forth by HO itself. According to a member of HO they thought of it before the Hippo award voting travesty, as well. Usually the movement we see is for GMs not to vote on awards or to remove it form the GM/HO group entirely. So this one is more amusing than anything. A good result on it I feel.
4.Department heads may propose one (1) rule change per rules summit.
25-5
Hey, this one affects me. Neat. I'm not exactly sure what I'd use it for but in general this will allow individual departments the chance to personally back things that could help their particular neck of the woods. Think of it like...what if teachers or school administrators could actually have a say in education legislation? Imagine. The people who actually know what the hell they're talking about having a voice in how it's run. An easy pass.
5. If a TE is not eligible for TEoty they're not eligible for a TE pro bowl spot and are instead eligible for a WR pro bowl spot.
22-8
This is based entirely on a player who slipped between the cracks of the rules and ended up with equal amounts of time at both positions. The general rule is that you must spend a majority of time at a position to be eligible and this person did not have a position where they spent the majority. WR/TE is just about the only position where it is likely to happen, so this is a quick little addendum that works well to fill this little crack in the structure. It's simple, logical, and benefits everyone. Naturally, it barely passed.
6. Allow players who opt to hold out from either the ISFL or DSFL to continue earning TPE.
7-23
Players who don't agree to the contracts put forth by GMs have basically no rights. GMs can simply declare them to be holding out and the result is that they can only earn extremely limited TPE. You'll note the language shifts this burden to the players "opting" to hold out but really it's the GMs who are more likely to call it that. This badly failed attempt to allow them to continue earning the same TPE as everyone else would have given more rights to rookies. Alas.
7.Change this: "In rule summits, simmers are permitted to vote on sim-specific rules." To: "In rule summits, simmers are permitted to propose and vote on sim-specific rules." Proposal will need to be voted on by both DSFL and ISFL as it affects both leagues.
30-0
This one is pretty self explanatory and prevents the long awaited league takeover by simmers drunk on power. The amount with which that is a joke is somewhat smaller than you may think. It is however wonderfully amusing to me that the only thing to be unanimously agreed upon is to tell simmers to stay in their lane. An interesting ending to this year's long and winding summit. These have been my thoughts, and I'm not going to start an extra paragraph for a wrapup. That's for school essays and collegiate papers. This is just and has always been one reasonably well informed and well intended individual ranting about my personal views on rules in a beloved hobby.
Okay, now that everyone is caught up, let me run through a few of my personal biases for those who do not know or may not remember. I strongly and violently oppose selfish rules. IE, things that I see as designed to benefit the party making them at the expense of others, rather than for the good of the league. I strongly dislike and argue against unenforceable rules because they are as I called them...unenforceable. An example of a recent proposal that fit was one which said that people with access to the sim file were not allowed to start sim testing until a certain time. We simply have no way whatsoever of enforcing that rule as it was written. It was absolutely braindead from conception to requiring people to take time to vote on it. And it actually got several votes. Braindead: clearly contagious. Also...if you're new to the program...I don't mince words. I do compartmentalize well though. The person who wrote said flaming pile of garbage is one of my favorite people in the league for example. So....with as much pretext as possible to make sure people reading this know what they're getting into....let's do this. Let's get right into the rules and their results and my view on them. As a handy hint, for the regular Summit 13 votes are needed to pass.
1.No player may hold more than 2 league jobs without prior approval. Contract work such as off-season events and wiki do not count against this total.
8-10
I get what I believe to be the general idea here. Limit the amount of jobs individuals have and spread the job availability around the league. I don't necessarily think a rule is needed for that as I think it naturally happens over time. I can really only think of a few people who have more than two jobs actually at this point. Simple user existence and activity has increased to the point that we don't have people pushing themselves to do a shitload of jobs to keep the league going. Which is mostly what the source of people having a bunch of jobs was to begin with. So I don't really see the need for a rule like this. Unless it was a specific targeting of those few people who have more than two regular jobs. Which seems pretty unlikely. Possible, but unlikely. Overall I likely would have argued against making this a rule and voted against it. Let department heads work this one out on their own. In the interest of full disclosure...I just realized that I personally have hired one of those few people who have at least 3 jobs. And I hired him to two of them. Because he was the best candidate.
2. Changes to User Hall of Fame, including- 2/3 to be inducted- 3 ballots before being removed from the ballot- current nominees are grandfathered for next season. Users can be renominated.
17-1
Adding to the number of possible inductees is probably a good thing. One per season has created some interesting problems, including voters who have purposely voted against extremely qualified nominees specifically because they wanted someone else to go in. Now there are a variety of reasons that this is just messed up as hell. But unfortunately our options are limited in regards to some of those things. But the system could be improved by allowing more than one entry per season. The system created a situation where one person sat down and decided that he was going to vote no on the person who is universally one of the most enduringly popular figures in league history, helped build the league, and also literally paid our fucking bills for 2+ years. And while I have my own personal negative feelings toward the level of simple minded selfish mercenary mindset it requires to do that kind of thing so that the person you want to get in can "win"......we're here to fix the system. Not the voters. We already switched to a committee for that. Hopefully.
So....increasing the number of users who can get in during any given season will help mitigate some portion of these issues. Beyond that I'm not necessarily onboard with dropping people after three ballots because it's a pretty arbitrary culling just for the sake of doing so. It doesn't really accomplish anything. The ability to be renominated is nice though. Opens the door for players to finally have that option as well after many seasons of that possibility being argued against. I would have likely voted in favor overall as the rule does significantly more good than harm. Unlike some voters. This one still needs to be approved by the head of the committee and I'm hopeful it is.
3. Implement a formal external budget department tasked with tracking contracts. This would remove the burden of documenting signings in the current budget sheet from GMs, as well as streamlining the budget check process, allowing issues to be found early and resolved quickly. It would also streamline the assembly of the FA list.This rule would require the reworking of rules II.D.1.d to remove team punishment for the specified error
13-5
GMs vote themselves out of having to do some of their work. I'm at least 20% kidding. Bordering on 25%. Someone did their homework on this one though. The way it's written makes it feel to me like something you write to convince GMs to vote for it rather than something a GM wrote to get out of work. Coupled with that, those FA lists are a pain in the ass to write every offseason. I speak from experience. This actually should help out because a central (and unbiased) group will be keeping things more up to date than many GMs do. It's going to be interesting to see when a team messes up their finances by not being on top of them. When. Not if. I hope the 3-5 GMs who made up those no votes (likely because they believe they have the ability to run budget sheets better than their peers) take solace in knowing that this is an almost certain outcome. I am in favor of this rule primarily due to its streamlining effect and also because it takes the power of information out of the hands of people who may.....use it creatively for strategic purposes.
4.Inactive players with 57 TPE or less are not required to be in the ISFL draft. Players fitting this criteria will be auto-retired upon end of the DSFL season.
14-4
The counter to this argument that I heard came from a GM who noted that multiple players have been these IA players and gone on to great earning and involved players. I've also heard this is about lazy GMs. Well...as the person who usually calls bullshit on GM bullshit (and will further down) let me defend them on this one. Drafts are grueling. And long. And time pressured. They are stressful and require a crapton of work. By the time a draft reaches the people who will be affected by this rule, most teams are kinda worn the fuck out. Days have gone by. Days that often feel like weeks. It's the kind of crunch of time and effort where someone pausing for two hours to make a decisions will be remembered later as a tragedy. That's not random. That's a thing that happens every so often. I have personally been on both sides. So when teams get to the players who put in either zero or nearly zero effort before just leaving the league...it gets dicey. And to fully disclose...I am literally the reason why a rule was passed several season ago forcing teams to use each pick. I have a history of simply passing when I'm done. After the rule passed the champions of said rule pretty much directly called me lazy and selfish (technically they said it about GMs who pass but you know...not exactly a lot of subterfuge going on here). Which then turned into trading away the rest of my picks for comically minimal value. Apparently a random pick button was created after I stepped down. Because the people in question aren't actually part of the league. They said no thanks and walked away. So GMs are at the end of their hard work, not quite at 100% efficiency anyway, and now being forced to take seriously these players. So no...I do not buy into the idea that GMs are lazy for this. I support not having to draft players who aren't really there to begin with.
I do not however like the second half. At all. Forcing DSFL team to retire them is not something I'm onboard with. Also..you're not the DSFL. You really shouldn't have a say in this and you don't actually. The second half had no business being there and was passed by people who really don't and should not have the authority for it. The DSFL leadership can and should openly ignore the 2nd half of this rule and declare it void because those who passed it had absolutely zero shreds of a single solitary right to do so. And it would be wise for ISFL GMs to remember that as excited as you may be with the new rules that remove budget updates and IA drafting, and as much as these changes may give you a bit of extra free time.....you STILL don't make rules for the DSFL. I hope DSFL HO makes the correct decisions to simply ignore a completely illegal ruling as it pertains to them.
5. The free agency thread will be posted at the conclusion of the final set of regular season games. A player becomes a free agent if their contract has expired, or when they choose to exercise a contract option. A team may discuss a potential contract with a player as soon as they become a free agent, even if that player's team is still in contention, but may not sign new players until the conclusion of the Ultimus.
9-9
Hardly the first time there has been an attempt to push up free agency. It will not be the last, either. It might be the one that came closest to passing though. In real time the end of Ultimus is when free agency begins. In recent seasons, signing free agents has been pushed back some time even while you were able to talk to them as of the end of Ultimus. The behind the scenes start of the ISFL Draft is general about 36 hours from the end of the Ultimus, historically speaking. So free agency has always been hectic, confusing, silly, and disjointed. Pushing back when free agents can actually sign has made it worse. If you ARE a free agent, you basically can only start talking to teams after the Ultimus and have an extremely short window to actually check out your options before teams begin drafting. Which almost always leads to some or most of your options disappearing as teams start drafting players to your potential spot and removing themselves from the running. A proposal like this one attempts to alleviate this somewhat by pushing it back to the end of the regular season, which now takes place a week earlier than the Ultimus (and previously took place 5 days before). There has been literally months of discussion at this point about how to improve this situation which basically sucks for everyone. Dozens of attempts at finding a cure have come and gone. And the main culprit isn't one you can really fix. And in fact, most people won't really delve into what the biggest issues is and for good reason. Because the thing at fault is YOU. 100% you. The players of the ISFL simply cannot abide an offseason of any length. It gets dicey about three days into the offseason regardless of how much work needs doing. Don't believe me? Look HERE at the offseason schedule. Look at how many things are packed in tightly to a very short time period. And keep in mind that there are a shitload of unseen or glossed over tasks going on behind the scenes here. Three programs that require a full set of graphics. Including the award process that started after the regular season ended on July 17th, moved to GMs/HO for voting, by the 26th, then had to be put together for a presentation on the 28th. Plus the two drafts, which also require a ton of work. before the ever get to graphics. Scouting. Trading. Pre-drafting. Also..every department has to do its end of season work. Which mean Audits everywhere. Including entire regression groups. Offseason recruitment and introduction of new players. I'm really only scratching the surface here. Offseason should easily be 4-5 days longer and it would STILL be a crunch. God forbid any job group wants to take a few days off during the offseason. But the player base of our league simply would lose their collective shit. It's happened over and over.
So.....among many other consequences...we get a frankly anemic and ridiculous free agency. And we get rule proposals like this one, born of desperate energy to try to improve things for both teams and players. Most of whom also clamor for a better free agency setup. I salute the attempt. I argued in favor of a rule much like this one with different wording and I would do so again.
6. Remove the limit of 2 rule proposals per team or HO member
8-10
Fun story. One time a previous Commissioner heard this idea enough times that they simply got annoyed and said "this offseason everyone gets 4" just to shut everyone up. No one used all four of their allotted proposals. Even this Summit features 12 proposals out of a possible 20+. I would have voted against this one simply because it's too open ended. Or more accurately I'd have argued for putting some kind of number on it to start with. It's a pretty straightforward idea though.
7.Agents fee halved from $10M to $5M
7-11
Agents operate under a set of rules designed primarily to make sure no one chooses to be an agent or stays an agent for long. It was a popular concept for a minute and the existing HO of the time didn't want to say no even though they didn't want it to exist. So thus some rules were born. Things like requiring players to be in the room with agents and GMs (despite this being something that most players who sought out agents did NOT want), half pay on all media, an ban on being paid for Twitter (complete with condescending reminder that the agents can still do it for free), and the above $10 Million fee per season. All specifically designed to create an untenable choice. After significant backlash, some rules were amended. The Twitter pay and full media pay were restored. On the other hand hand, and bonuses for media were suddenly explicitly disallowed for agents and a new barrier of 5 year sin the league was added. This $10 Million per season fee is and always was meant to be one of several barriers of entry to stop people from making the choice to become an agent. It may seem innocent out here in the wild on its own but it is not and never was innocent. And votes like this will simply never pass while GMs making up 2/3 of the vote. Agents raise salaries. GMs are largely historically opposed to this. Thus the meager existance Agents DID have came at the hands of HO with GMs completely removed. Agent reform can really only ever come from where it's rules originated. HO deciding alone. GMs will never vote in large enough number to make it easier for players to be represented. If that seems hyperbolic keep in mind that in the response to the announcement of these rule results, GMs were complaining that they need a single HO vote to pass anything.
8. If a team runs the "Spread Playbook" in two or more offensive scenarios, (Excluding 4th And Long & Last 2 Min [Behind]), that teams QB must have the mobile QB box checked.
8-10
In Laymen's terms, those who support this believe it will decrease the effectiveness of running QBs. In a practical application, this proposal is a lot like a bunch of NBA teams getting together in 1999 and saying no more dunks in order to slow down Shaq. This is the kind of rule that IF you're going to implement it, there should an actual mission statement explaining what it hopes to accomplish and loads of testing to show that it actually does this. This proposal has none of those things. Extensive testing that actually HAS been done by multiple simmers has shown that the Mobile QB box doesn't really work properly so my Spidey Sense goes off when a proposal tries to utilize a broken mechanic. Doubly so when said proposal seems entirely built around stopping a successful strategy rather than adding something to the league.
9. EXPANSION DRAFT PROTOCOL
* Each existing team may protect as many as 9 players from its roster.
> A full roster (including 1 user OL) requires 19 user players; 9 protections allows an existing team to protect just under half of its starting roster.
> Players from the most recent draft class are automatically protected and do not count against this total.
* Alternatively, a team may forego any number of its protections for an equal number of free agent passes.
> A non-expansion team may only sign as many of its own free agents as it has free agent passes available.
* Any contract option must be exercised 24 hours prior to the start of the expansion draft.
* If a protected player chooses to exercise a contract option, that protection instead becomes a free agent pass unless the team specifies otherwise.
* An expansion draft lasts 12 rounds total.
> As stated above, a full roster (including 1 user OL) requires 19 user players; 12 selections allows an expansion team to fill just under two-thirds of its starting roster, not including rookie draft(s).
* The maximum number of players that can be taken from an existing team's roster will be equal to the number of expansion teams being added to the league.
> This ensures that no existing team suffers too lopsided a loss to expansion.
> This does not include the expansion teams' GM players, who need not be taken through the expansion draft process.
11-7
To give a little background here, expansion rules have previously been set by HO. To the best of my knowledge, that has not changed. If GMs were newly invited to be part of the rulemaking process for expansion that would be a new and interesting direction and I'd love to hear HO's explanation on what made them make this kind of change. To my best knowledge however, that has not happened. Yet, we find ourselves here staring down a nearly passed rule in an area where GMs have previously lacked the authority to do so. And yes..I heard a bit about this rule as time went on. Snippets of original plans and compromises and arguments over it. So let's break this down for those who see this list and whose eyes begin to gloss over.
I'm going to use a hypothetical S25 expansion here to make it a bit easier to put into terms that you can wrap your head around (rather than having to generically say Season X or something else that makes it feel like an abstract algebra problem). So let's presume we expand to 14 teams in S25 this means that the two expansion teams (and its always two by the way). So now each existing team would be able to automatically protect 9 players per this proposal. Previously it has been 7 total protections, with a progressive ability to add a new player to protect every time a player from their team is chosen. So the existing teams start with 9 protections and since this proposal does not specify the ability to add any more as the draft goes on, I'm going to assume that teams are unable to do so. So after those 9 protections (including protection slots for free agents they wish to keep) the rest of the roster is open to be picked. Except for players who were selected the season before in the draft. In this case S24 draftees would be inelligible for an expansion team to be picked. Most of the middle you can safely ignore because its about technicalities related to free agents and contracts. It exists solely to keep a team from letting go of their players into free agency and then re-signing them once expansion draft is over. The things cited in this proposal are not really new or adding anything to the existing procedures.
The most important parts here (outside of adding 2 new protection slots) are limiting the number of players who can be taken from a team to 2. The actual proposal fancies it up by using language about how many expansion teams there are, but as I've said before, it's always two. We had an expansion based on the number of players in the league doubling and it was still two. Everyone knows its going to be two. No one in the league actually believes that a four team expansion is ever likely. Why am I harping on this point? Because the intent of adding that clause was to limit the amount of players who can be lost by any team to 2, when previously it was 3. I won't try to speculate on WHY the author went out of their way to try to disguise this, but that was clearly the intent. There is a short blurb that says it ensures no team suffers to lopsided an loss. By going from 3 potential losses to 2 guaranteed losses. Each expansion draft is 12 rounds meaning each team gets 12 players. In previous drafts, with the limit of three per team that meant that at times teams ended up losing only 1. It also meant expansion teams had choices they could make based on an available pool. No actual additional players were moved because the number of rounds remained the same. Teams also had more flexibility with the ability to add protections as they lost players. There is also one final change proposed here that is worth noting. In this version, expansion GMs would not be required to use one of their picks on themselves. Previously they had to, which then allowed the team losing a GM player (and likely a big part of their team) an extra protection by default. This proposal strips that from them by not requiring GMs to pick themselves.
So who benefits here? Well, most of all the really good teams benefit. They get more protections, which bad teams are unlikely to need as many of and they're guaranteed to not lose 3 players, which again, bad teams usually don't need to worry as much about. Beyond that, the teams who don't lose a GM player also benefit tremendously here. Before it was considered that someone who is chosen to be an expansion GM is likely a major part of a team. CoGMs, War Room members, locker room leaders, and RainDelay. Losing them is a huge blow and having that automatic pick allowed them to lose a little less. Other teams who suffered no such loss are now on the same playing field.
Who loses out here? Well, expansion teams lose choices obviously. The limit of two per team coupled with the need to build up a roster of about 20 players fast means that those choices of which 12 players to take are very important to the foundation of a new team. Removing that and forcing expansion teams to feed more heavily from bad teams really only drags down the have nots. And that's without going into rumors I have heard that the proposal at one point allowed for 10 protections and/or teams could only lose 1 player apiece.
I can however speak as the league's most successful expansion GM when I say that this proposal is about 80% hot garbage. The new benefits aren't really benefits and the burden of the draft shifts very noticeably towards there being extremely weak ability to build any kind of roster and also the teams who are struggling most having to pay an increased share of the cost. I would go further and say that if you ever wanted to know why HO sets the expansion rules and GMs don't, this is a pretty good example to answer that question. the entire thing is designed to benefit only existing teams and mostly the ones that are currently strong. If public results of voting had actually passed, you would likely see this being written, championed, and voted for primarily by such teams. Granted, things like this are why that measure did not pass. This isn't really an expansion draft ruleset. It's a terms of surrender handed to two brand new teams. Thankfully wiser heads prevailed, if barely. Once the hooplah over this dies down, I'm considering referring to it as an attempted coup for fun.
10. Position switches will allow a player to change everything about the player including height and weight, but it still follows the TPE distribution guidelines.
16-2
I had to actually look this up because off the top of my head this doesn't actually do anything. Research shows that what its replacing is a rule subset that said if you were too tall or too short for your new position, you could change your height to the maximum or minimum respectively. So this is a pretty slick little replacement that just allows people to pick their height as they see fit. This is my favorite kind of rule. It's simple, it allows for freedom, and it replaces an overly thought out rule that didn't really add anything. This one is a no brainer for me. Nice to see the original writers are presumably still in a voting position though, judging by the 2 no votes.
11. Return of Weekly Predictions for each game and No More Trivia: 1. All 16 regular season weeks will have a Predictions PT worth 0.5 TPE per correct game 2. No more Trivia 3. PT's revert back to 3 TPE per PT instead of 4 TPE. This allows for Weekly Predictions to come back without changing the overall TPE a player can earn each season.
14-4
A popular suggestion from pretty much the minute that weekly predictions got axed (and before). The same amount of TPE in a more interactive scale with a bit less work. And it keeps whoever ran trivia from having to open up 300+ individual PMs once a week. Which feels like way too much work just to have to then write each response down and then grade them all. Trivia of course has its defenders but I'm obviously more on the side of the weekly predictions. The other portion of this is the weekly PT reverting to 3 TPE. I'm not sure that this will really affect anything else, though. All in all a good change that I personally like very much. Presumably the person who opened 300 DMs per week thanks the voters as well.
12. All players selected in the expansion draft cannot sign with their original team the following off season through free agency (trades acceptable).
7-11
As you can see there was quite a bit of contention here on the expansion proceedings, including this effort to ensure that a player cannot immediately return to their previous team after being picked. Which would have the effect of stopping teams from leaving someone protected with the knowledge that they would shortly return anyway. Consider this to be part of the attention being paid to attempts to circumvent expansion via contracts and options as well.
So that's the end of the regular rule summit. After seeing all of this and where things appear to be headed I predict this expansion is gonna get a bit messy between what appears to be numerous attempts to steal rule making and circumvent proceedings through contract manipulation. I do not envy HO for this. Or DSFL HO for the likelihood that they may have to kindly remind people to not write rules outside their authority. That one's likely going to be more dramatic than it should be. But....as it turns out, this wasn't everything for this season's summit. A special set of rules were voted on but a much larger grouping. 30 votes here consisted of both HOs, GMs from both leagues, the tow simmers, and the league owner. Let's check them out.
1. Get rid of MVP award and replace OPOY and DPOY with OMVP and DMVP respectively
6-23-1
A suggestion I've heard before that is based upon defensive players basically never winning MVP awards. This is one of those things that has a solid logical basis but just doesn't feel right to a lot of people. Don't be surprised if this one pops back up every few seasons while slowly increasing in popularity. Or a defensive player wins an MVP.
2. In Rules Summits, a threshold must be met to pass new rules. This threshold will be 70% of the total voting pool or one more than the Number of Teams voting, whichever is higher. (In this rule summit, both of these requirements are met in 21 to approve)
21-9
Why does this exist? Well to put it plainly, expansion. When the league expands to 14 teams, that means that there will be 20 votes in a normal ISFL summit, as opposed to the current 18. 14 votes would constitute exactly 70%, which under the old rules, would be enough to pass. However the intent was never for that to exist. Thus this rule exists to further ensure that GMs cannot force a rule through on their own. As I already mentioned earlier, some GMs were not happy the need to have at least one non-GM vote in favor of a proposal. Humorously one GM said they voted against it because HO was an internally selected group. A description that also applies to GMs. More humorously, the complaint is based upon a situation that has already existed. As far as I can recall, the voting structure has always required at least one non-GM to vote for something in order for it to pass.
3.HO does not vote on awards and pro bowl.
12-18
A proposal that was put forth by HO itself. According to a member of HO they thought of it before the Hippo award voting travesty, as well. Usually the movement we see is for GMs not to vote on awards or to remove it form the GM/HO group entirely. So this one is more amusing than anything. A good result on it I feel.
4.Department heads may propose one (1) rule change per rules summit.
25-5
Hey, this one affects me. Neat. I'm not exactly sure what I'd use it for but in general this will allow individual departments the chance to personally back things that could help their particular neck of the woods. Think of it like...what if teachers or school administrators could actually have a say in education legislation? Imagine. The people who actually know what the hell they're talking about having a voice in how it's run. An easy pass.
5. If a TE is not eligible for TEoty they're not eligible for a TE pro bowl spot and are instead eligible for a WR pro bowl spot.
22-8
This is based entirely on a player who slipped between the cracks of the rules and ended up with equal amounts of time at both positions. The general rule is that you must spend a majority of time at a position to be eligible and this person did not have a position where they spent the majority. WR/TE is just about the only position where it is likely to happen, so this is a quick little addendum that works well to fill this little crack in the structure. It's simple, logical, and benefits everyone. Naturally, it barely passed.
6. Allow players who opt to hold out from either the ISFL or DSFL to continue earning TPE.
7-23
Players who don't agree to the contracts put forth by GMs have basically no rights. GMs can simply declare them to be holding out and the result is that they can only earn extremely limited TPE. You'll note the language shifts this burden to the players "opting" to hold out but really it's the GMs who are more likely to call it that. This badly failed attempt to allow them to continue earning the same TPE as everyone else would have given more rights to rookies. Alas.
7.Change this: "In rule summits, simmers are permitted to vote on sim-specific rules." To: "In rule summits, simmers are permitted to propose and vote on sim-specific rules." Proposal will need to be voted on by both DSFL and ISFL as it affects both leagues.
30-0
This one is pretty self explanatory and prevents the long awaited league takeover by simmers drunk on power. The amount with which that is a joke is somewhat smaller than you may think. It is however wonderfully amusing to me that the only thing to be unanimously agreed upon is to tell simmers to stay in their lane. An interesting ending to this year's long and winding summit. These have been my thoughts, and I'm not going to start an extra paragraph for a wrapup. That's for school essays and collegiate papers. This is just and has always been one reasonably well informed and well intended individual ranting about my personal views on rules in a beloved hobby.
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