*The League As I See It-Part 3: The Economy

[Rusfan]

The Economy:

I’m sure this will be a completely uncontroversial segment in which everyone agrees and there are no arguments whatsoever and everyone comes together and sings kumbaya. Knowing that that is the only and most likely outcome I will continue this section with my identifying of the problems and my preferred solutions.
So, what are the issues with the league economy? Unlike quite a few of people around the league, I have no problems with people having tons and tons of money. For a start it’s actually not that many people that are in that position. I don’t think the economy is broken because Infinite makes 100000000000 graphics and media pieces a season and holds about 10 league jobs. The top 0.1% are known as such because they are, as the percentage implies, in the very very small minority. As such, my solutions to whatever problems I talk about will not be including the ultra-rich in the equation because there’s no such way to balance everything to everyone’s bank accounts.
First issue I have is this: the effort required for each way of earning is not equally represented in how much each way pays. For 1 Hour of podcasting you get $5M capped at that much a week. You write 1000 words and you get $1.6M with no weekly cap, you make a couple decent sigs or other art, and you can get $5+M a week with no cap. I unfortunately got the short stick of wanting to make written media and podcasts, the worst way to make money. If you want to make real money get into making sigs and league art. Make that stuff often enough and you’ll make enough money for 10 seasons worth of equipment.
I’m of course not saying that graphics don’t take effort, I’ve been around enough people who make sigs and such to know that a really good sig can take a while to make, but I feel that purely comparing the time and effort these 3 forms of media take to make, either graphics need to be nerfed or podcasts and media need a boost. At least remove the podcast cap. I understand why you want to cap it to an hour a week, they take longer to grade and can be easy to make if you make them badly, but I at least personally would take a harsher grading system and longer payment time in return for greater payment in the end.
Obviously you can’t take money away from people, what’s done is done and the crazy amount of money some have gotten will remain in their accounts. As I’ve said before any attempt to balance things out for every user will inevitably make life slightly harder for those at the top, and absolutely crush everyone else.
The next issue I see with the economy is the contract system and team salary structure. It’s well known as an issue with many facets. They are as follows:

Even with taking all minimums, many teams are still up against the cap
Very few players leave their teams in FA
There a very few reasons to take more than the minimum

I’ll take the first point as a member of the Colorado Yeti. The Yeti’s cap situation is really tight even though as far as I know every single member of the Yeti has a contract that is either at or close to the minimum for their TPE totals at time of signing. Yet the Yeti are still extremely tight against the cap, making any potential requests for greater payment impossible. My solution to this is simple: raise the cap. Now some people might say that this would just enable teams that are especially prolific in FA, like the Yeti, to bolster their roster with more low-cost signings and build a super team. But my solution to that is this: Currently the minimum of a contract is based solely off of the amount of TPE a player has, for example if you’re over 800 TPE at time of signing your minimum amount you can sign for is $4M a year. This is a great idea and one I want to expand on, with a second set of minimums based around the position the player plays.
For example let’s take the most important position on the field, the QB. Let’s say you’ve got an 800 TPE QB coming up on a contract extension. In the current system he would likely take the $4M a year minimum for 3 or 4 seasons and the team wouldn’t need to seriously consider whether that QB was worth re-signing. My idea would make this QB’s minimum at least something around the $10M range. This would of course be the highest minimum contract out of every position. This might sound like a drastic change but remember this comes hand-in-hand with a raised cap, so while this idea would put a bit more pressure on teams, and force them to actually have to make tough decisions based on who is actually worth keeping on the field, it wouldn’t cripple them. And teams struggling to pick up talent through the draft would be able to give FA a reason to sign with their teams using lucrative deals. All in all this would create a much more interesting FA system in the league as well as giving people a real reason to leave teams in FA besides personal grudges. Another effect would be to a positive that I touched on before, it would create a greater source of income for players who may not be as prolific in making media or graphics as other richer users.
Really good teams would still have to play around the cap, but bad teams would have a greater chance of acquiring talent. Others have also floated the idea of the round a player is drafted in making different amounts on their rookie deals, and I like that idea. The draft as is is based more around the user behind the player than the player themselves. But if you had a really great user that was nice to have around the LR but wasn’t that great of an earner, their draft stock would fall to a more appropriate position, making rookie users have a greater chance of going high, instead of re-creates being almost guaranteed 1st round picks.