Task 6I'm going to talk about the "ben waiver abuse" drama that came about a few seasons ago and how it spun out of control wildly from what I really thought at the time was just small potatoes hostage situation to ending up as a culturally defining event for the DSFL as a whole in the past eddy of DSFL culture. I want to be clear from the onset that I don't think anyone needed to be punished for this but that the whole thing was a series of failures outside of peoples intentions piling up until something had to happen to send a message over the whole deal.
I want to roll back the clock to a season before this happened actually. When I created Alejandro Chainbreaker it was right at the trade deadline, as max earners tend to do, and being in the Minnesota Grey ducks war room obviously, I wanted to go there. However, on waivers I was taken by Dallas first and when they realized that they claimed someone who wanted to be in a different team and that they weren't losing much they were more than happy to just let me go. There has been much bad blood between Dallas and Minnesota but when the chips are down they've always acted with class and are an example for anyone else in the league. there was never talk about what Dallas was losing or how Minnesota gained from me wanting to be there.
Fast forward to ben and him being in roughly the same spot. However, he had decided to recreate much later and decided to create after the draft deadline so he would go on waivers. Being in the Lucha war room and wanting to go to there for his DSFL days he mentioned when I scouted him for after draft waiver claims that he wasn't interested in going anywhere else. I put it on the spreadsheet and because thundertitan was really more interesting to us the whole time we went with him as we were going to do anyway. However other people in the war room asked and I'm pretty sure this is where the rumor mill went into overdrive. Myrtle beach was next in the waiver priority and picked up ben despite him not wanting to be in MB and the implication was that he would hold out otherwise. This is where the play unraveled and things got messy. If any other team other than Myrtle beach was there to claim him it would have been resolved easily in my opinion. But they did and frankly, they weren't out of line for doing it. Because now we have to go back further in time to the original myrtle beach drama.
When MB came into the league they didn't just come to take part, they came to take over. They had a really great culture for success in the DSFL and it showed out with them making a super team basically and running away with the ultimini right out of the gate. That awards however they didn't get a single award for the voting, and no one was really that surprised. They made a place where people really wanted to be there and managed to get someone who was inactive but was known from another league to come back. But this person's inactive creation was on a different team and he had no interest in playing for any other team other than. Naturally, this team thought they were owed something for a player that effectively left the team and started earning and being relevant for another team despite them spending draft capital on them. I don't have nearly enough reference on the subject to say what really went down but a lot of bad blood was started, the GM's lose their pay, but went on to manage an ISFL expansion team in the Sarisota Sailfish. So forgive them for thinking now that the shoe was on the other foot MB said they wanted just compensation for their waiver claim and used the precedent of their punishment to demand an investigation.
Again I don't have the reference to say exactly what went down after this. I know for certain that I wasn't contacted about this at the very least and I know even with the old SA-TIJ rivalry it could have easily been handled behind closed doors if I didn't disqualify him from our waiver claim and tried to get something out of TIJ. The thing is that hostage situations like this are proposed everywhere in the league and they happen a dozen or more times without anyone knowing anything. Even that draft we were one or two picks away from participating in a hostage situation ourselves.
In the end the TIJ GM's lost their pay for that season and a lot of face in the leauge. Ben has lost the most in all this by making his friends lose money and could do nothing but watch the stink move from MB to TIJ in the DSFL. Really this was a case of something that happens regularly going wrong and things spinning out of control. What the team needs isn't hard rules on this sort of thing but a section on "established guidelines for sensitive situations". Beacuse hostage situations happen and will continue to happen. Most of the time they get resolved quickly and with class, even with teams that nominally don't get along. But when they get messy things get messy fast and hard, so providing at least some guidance or maybe even arbitration would help. I don't know I'm not the answers guy I'm just a sometimes idea guy.
I want to roll back the clock to a season before this happened actually. When I created Alejandro Chainbreaker it was right at the trade deadline, as max earners tend to do, and being in the Minnesota Grey ducks war room obviously, I wanted to go there. However, on waivers I was taken by Dallas first and when they realized that they claimed someone who wanted to be in a different team and that they weren't losing much they were more than happy to just let me go. There has been much bad blood between Dallas and Minnesota but when the chips are down they've always acted with class and are an example for anyone else in the league. there was never talk about what Dallas was losing or how Minnesota gained from me wanting to be there.
Fast forward to ben and him being in roughly the same spot. However, he had decided to recreate much later and decided to create after the draft deadline so he would go on waivers. Being in the Lucha war room and wanting to go to there for his DSFL days he mentioned when I scouted him for after draft waiver claims that he wasn't interested in going anywhere else. I put it on the spreadsheet and because thundertitan was really more interesting to us the whole time we went with him as we were going to do anyway. However other people in the war room asked and I'm pretty sure this is where the rumor mill went into overdrive. Myrtle beach was next in the waiver priority and picked up ben despite him not wanting to be in MB and the implication was that he would hold out otherwise. This is where the play unraveled and things got messy. If any other team other than Myrtle beach was there to claim him it would have been resolved easily in my opinion. But they did and frankly, they weren't out of line for doing it. Because now we have to go back further in time to the original myrtle beach drama.
When MB came into the league they didn't just come to take part, they came to take over. They had a really great culture for success in the DSFL and it showed out with them making a super team basically and running away with the ultimini right out of the gate. That awards however they didn't get a single award for the voting, and no one was really that surprised. They made a place where people really wanted to be there and managed to get someone who was inactive but was known from another league to come back. But this person's inactive creation was on a different team and he had no interest in playing for any other team other than. Naturally, this team thought they were owed something for a player that effectively left the team and started earning and being relevant for another team despite them spending draft capital on them. I don't have nearly enough reference on the subject to say what really went down but a lot of bad blood was started, the GM's lose their pay, but went on to manage an ISFL expansion team in the Sarisota Sailfish. So forgive them for thinking now that the shoe was on the other foot MB said they wanted just compensation for their waiver claim and used the precedent of their punishment to demand an investigation.
Again I don't have the reference to say exactly what went down after this. I know for certain that I wasn't contacted about this at the very least and I know even with the old SA-TIJ rivalry it could have easily been handled behind closed doors if I didn't disqualify him from our waiver claim and tried to get something out of TIJ. The thing is that hostage situations like this are proposed everywhere in the league and they happen a dozen or more times without anyone knowing anything. Even that draft we were one or two picks away from participating in a hostage situation ourselves.
In the end the TIJ GM's lost their pay for that season and a lot of face in the leauge. Ben has lost the most in all this by making his friends lose money and could do nothing but watch the stink move from MB to TIJ in the DSFL. Really this was a case of something that happens regularly going wrong and things spinning out of control. What the team needs isn't hard rules on this sort of thing but a section on "established guidelines for sensitive situations". Beacuse hostage situations happen and will continue to happen. Most of the time they get resolved quickly and with class, even with teams that nominally don't get along. But when they get messy things get messy fast and hard, so providing at least some guidance or maybe even arbitration would help. I don't know I'm not the answers guy I'm just a sometimes idea guy.
![[Image: alejandro_chainbreaker.jpg?width=769&height=364]](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/372602034198806530/716040994080161802/alejandro_chainbreaker.jpg?width=769&height=364)
