*Minimum Contracts: What to do?

[bovovovo]

Seems like every other season somebody brings up something along the lines of "Hey shouldn't we do something about the way minimum contracts work?" Then people talk about it for a bit and then it dies down and nothing really happens.

The most recent time it was brought up (by my man @`BenLongshaw`), it started as a "make money mean something so people have more incentive to get non-min contracts" which quickly turned into "we should probably do something about min contracts" again.

The problem is... what should we do? The other problem is... is there actually a problem?

I'm gonna try to provide my perspective on the whole thing, especially as a GM.


THE PROBLEM

The real problem, in my opinion, is that the current minimum contract system doesn't do a good job during the process of gaining TPE.

Right now, when you sign a player to a multi-year contract, you base their minimum yearly payments based on their TPE level right now.

Keep in mind that the most active players in the league get around 160-180 TPE per season.

Here's the current structure:


- <200: $500,000
- 200 to 399: $1,000,000
- 400 to 599: $2,000,000
- 600 to 799: $3,000,000
- 800 to 999: $4,000,000
- >1000: $5,000,000


As an example of how the current structure isn't very meaningful, I'm going to point to my own player: Borkus Maximus III, who is on a 3 year minimum contract (S6: 500k, S7: 500k, S8: 500k).

When Borkus signed his three year minimum contract he was at like 190 TPE, so he got to sign every year at that minimum, which was 500k.

So right now he's at 328 TPE being paid 500k. Next season he'll start likely just short of 400 TPE and he might hit 500 TPE, and will still be paid only 500k (which his tier should be paid 2m), and two seasons from now he'll likely be around 600 and still only be paid 500k.

This is kind of an extreme example, but it shows how the current system can be abused and doesn't do a good job at making a player's cap hit equal to the player.

Obviously once teams start having lots of high TPE level players it starts getting really hard to juggle all of their contracts, even if many of them are on minimums (you can ask the Otters about that), but this is working as designed in my opinion. The cap is there so that it's hard to be able to field a team of high TPE superstars and eventually you may have to make some tough choices.

So if the minimum contracts don't really make sense... why haven't we tried to change it?


THE LAST TIME WE TRIED TO CHANGE IT

The last time something was almost done about fixing minimum contracts was when some team (I think it was the Hawks, though I may be wrong) proposed the following rule at one of the GM rule summits:

Dynamic contract scaling.

Example: If a player signs a contract for minimum at 399 tpe, when he passes 400 tpe in that season he will then automatically be moved to the 400TPE minimum contract amount for the upcoming season.

I think this rule only received 1 or maybe 2 or 3 votes. I actually voted no on this one.

I can't speak for every GM's reason behind voting "No" on this, but here's a quick list on reasons why I think GMs may have voted no.

~Adds another thing that GMs and HO have to keep track of every off season
~Involves retroactively changing contracts that were already signed/existing, don't like the idea of altering existing contracts
~It's basically the same as having TPE incentivized contracts, which aren't allowed
~One GM said they saw it as "punishing success"
~Frankly, the rule as-is is very GM friendly because we can lock up super active players for very very cheap

So basically we need to try and think of something that minimizes those concerns if it's ever going to pass a GM vote. It needs to not involve a ton of work, shouldn't involve altering existing contracts, and should be relatively GM and player friendly.


A NEW PROPOSAL

So here's an idea I came up with which is shamelessly stolen from the PBE and I think could work very well for the NSFL as well. I'm going to lay it out and then talk about how I think it addresses common concerns with changing the minimum contract rule.

Here is the PBE's rule (with some slight changes to the TPE):

In addition, for every year a player is signed beyond the first, said player must be paid as though 75 TPE higher in each successive year.

Example: a 250 TPE player signs a 3 year minimum contract. The contract would cost 4 million over those three years (250 TPE ($1m) first year, 325 ($1m) the second, 400 ($2m) the third).

Going back to the Borkus example, looking at Borkus rookie contract:

Borkus Contract with Current Rules
S6: 500k
S7: 500k
S8: 500k

Borkus Contract with New Rules
S6: 500k (190 tpe)
S7: 1m (assumed 265 tpe)
S8: 1m (assumed 340 tpe)


Player with 250 TPE with Current Rules
S6: 1m
S7: 1m
S8: 1m

Player with 250 TPE with New Rules
S6: 1m (250)
S7: 1m (assumed 325)
S8: 2m (assumed 400)


This accomplishes a few things:

1. Scaling contracts are now prospective rather than retrospective - no altering existing contracts

2. Max-active players would still "out earn" their minimum contracts, so there is still benefit and reward to having super active players to max-length minimum-pay contracts

3. There is minor risk to having a player signed to a long-term contract go inactive, though this wouldn't break the bank. It may even result in more contracts having MOs or TOs.

4. In my opinion, the change isn't so drastic so as to completely change the landscape of the NSFL but does do a better job at scaling pays so that cap hits are more reflective of the actual player.

5. Removes the "Sign a player at 399 TPE so we can keep him at 1m for three seasons instead of 2m if he were 400 TPE" thing


FINAL NOTES

1. I just came up with 75 TPE assumption, it could be 100 or whatever the "average" earnings is for an active player

2. I don't think caps would have to be expanded because of this, though they may need to be every so slightly

3. Miaybe down the line we could think about adding more tiers, so instead of 200 to 399: $1m it could be 200 to 299: $1m and 300-399: $1.5m


The biggest problem with getting this rule to pass (in my opinion) is that the current minimum rules are very GM friendly. My most loyal and active players don't need big money contracts to stay happy and buy equipment and training and everything, and I get more cap space to use on other players.

I plan on submitting some rule such as this during the GM summit, maybe after some tweaking. For implementing, all current contracts can stay the same but any new ones as of say S8 or something will follow this, idk something like that.

I'm not sure if it'll pass but I do think enough people agree that something should be done about long-term minimum contracts to make them more meaningful that hopefully this at least gets the ball rolling on trying to find a solution that works for all parties involved.





Random side note: There's also this weird thing in the rule book where contracts can be any length you want after the player is above 800 TPE, which means you can sign a 900 TPE player to a 10 year 4m contract and completely disregard the fact that players above 1000 TPE have a minimum pay of 5m according to the rule book. That... doesn't make sense at all and should probably be changed lol

[iamslm22]

Love this idea

[timeconsumer]

I can't speak for every GM's reason behind voting "No" on this, but here's a quick list on reasons why I think GMs may have voted no.

~Adds another thing that GMs and HO have to keep track of every off season
~Involves retroactively changing contracts that were already signed/existing, don't like the idea of altering existing contracts
~It's basically the same as having TPE incentivized contracts, which aren't allowed
~One GM said they saw it as "punishing success"
~Frankly, the rule as-is is very GM friendly because we can lock up super active players for very very cheap

I think a big reason many voted no is that it would be far to punitive to implement it immediately. Too many teams structured their contracts with the next 2 seasons in mind, to suddenly change the rule on them would really screw them up. Had the proposal been designed to either grandfather in current contracts or at least implement some sort of soft and hard cap, or several other ways to ramp up the new rule it would have been received positively.

[sapp2013]

Going with the 75 tpe / year example, there are still ways of exploiting that. Sign someone at 449 which is $2mil, then 524 for $2mil, and 599 for $2mil and they could be well over 750 by that time. Sign an extension at at 649 or before 849 to exploit again.

Not saying this is bad, but every plan can be exploited

[bovovovo]

Going with the 75 tpe / year example, there are still ways of exploiting that. Sign someone at 449 which is $2mil, then 524 for $2mil, and 599 for $2mil and they could be well over 750 by that time. Sign an extension at at 649 or before 849 to exploit again.

Not saying this is bad, but every plan can be exploited

Yeah to me that’s fine and not a big deal. Not nearly as big of a deal as what’s currently in place. You could bump that 75 assumes up to 100 if you really wanted but 75 is supposed to be conservative so that having someone go inactive doesn’t upset the balance too much.

I think a big reason many voted no is that it would be far to punitive to implement it immediately. Too many teams structured their contracts with the next 2 seasons in mind, to suddenly change the rule on them would really screw them up. Had the proposal been designed to either grandfather in current contracts or at least implement some sort of soft and hard cap, or several other ways to ramp up the new rule it would have been received positively.

That’s a good point. Existing contracts should definitely be grandfathered in

[SwagSloth]

I like this idea and feel like it's a good compromise of the ideas previously brought forward and the old system. As others have said, there would need to be an adjustment peroid and/or grandfathering as applying this to existing contracts would screw over teams that didn't leave a lot of money on the table.

[nunccoepi]

Sounds like a good idea. My gut inclination (as a beginner and also someone who doesn't study economics) is that the least invasive (and least confusing/time consuming) solution would be to introduce more ways to spend money (higher equipment, opting out of PT tasks, special perks that only contract money can buy, etc.) and allow smaller payouts.

We've talked about the first one a little bit, at least over discord. But I haven't mentioned the second--although I assume it's been talked about. The problem with people taking small contracts is that most people have other, more significant sources of money (media, gfx, jobs). If we reduce the payout for the tasks and jobs, they will value the contract money more. The other way to go about this would be to reduce or eliminate the minimum contract. The question we need to ask is...what if the players weren't paid anything. Would anyone play for free? Maybe just the people who have jobs and/or are active on media/gfx would be my guess. But I'd be willing to bet everyone has a breaking point. A certain minimum that they wouldn't want to play for less than. I think that's where the contract minimums should be. Because then, the players will want to negotiate for more money. We could then reduce the salary caps (I also like the idea of soft and hard caps) accordingly to keep the pressure on the teams.

However, if enough players would play for free....then that's a whole different problem lol.

[timeconsumer]

The question we need to ask is...what if the players weren't paid anything. Would anyone play for free?

I would, yes.

[nunccoepi]

I would, yes.

right. And I get how minimum contracts are there to avoid this just as much to make it difficult on teams....but if there is no internal incentive to get paid by the teams because one can get paid elsewhere, then we won't ever see the players fighting for a higher salary. If that's ok with everyone, then no problem. But if we want to see dramatic salary negotiations like in the NFL, I think the only solution is cutting off [edit: or reducting] other sources of money or adding other things to buy.

[timeconsumer]

right. And I get how minimum contracts are there to avoid this just as much to make it difficult on teams....but if there is no internal incentive to get paid by the teams because one can get paid elsewhere, then we won't ever see the players fighting for a higher salary. If that's ok with everyone, then no problem. But if we want to see dramatic salary negotiations like in the NFL, I think the only solution is cutting off [edit: or reducting] other sources of money or adding other things to buy.

To be fair I also get paid a significantly higher amount of money than your average player because of my simmer's salary.

I do like your idea about skipping PTs. Maybe if we made it so that only contract money could be used to skip PTs we'd be onto something. However that makes the bankers have to track separate monies which is a whole other animal. Maybe for every $1m you make in a season you get 1 PT skip token thingy. You could just track those in your update page, there's about 12 PTs in a season so if someone gets a big contract they only have to do Ultimus week.