Lineup ruling ... revisited

[Grits and Shins]

Earlier in the week I posted a question about lineups and the early games - here.

 

MFL won't have a fix for this problem until 2005 when they will allow starting lineups to be copied forward for franchises that have not entered any lineup at the kickoff of the first game.

 

I think I made the wrong ruling in the first place. Here are our rules again:

 

• It will be the owners’ responsibility to enter his starting lineup on our myfantasyleagues.com website each week.  If an owner is having difficulty with the website or the website is unavailable he must communicate his lineup to the commissioner before the start of any relevant games.  If an owner fails to submit a lineup before the last game of the week kicks off (usually Monday night), his lineup from the previous week will be used.

 

• Owners may make lineup changes on the website up until the last game of the week (usually Monday night) has begun.  Once a player’s game has started his status as a starter or bench player is locked and can not be changed.  This means that line changes can be made on Monday if they are made before the kick off of the game and if they involve only players that will be playing in the Monday night game.

 

 

I believe the first rule would only apply when an owner does not enter ANY lineup at all ... in this case both owners entered partial lineups. This rule does NOT say anything about carrying forward partial lineups. So IMO this rule does not apply.

 

The second rule says that a player's status as a starter or bench player is locked after the kick off of his game. There is nothing in our rules that says individual players would be locked in as a starter if a lineup has not been entered before their game and then is subsequently entered before the deadline. This problem in our rules is a result of switching from locking lineups at the first kick off on Sunday to allowing lineup changes until the kickoff of the Monday game (for players that have not played). Because these owners did not enter a lineup before the early games I say they locked in their player's status as non-staters, i.e. they did not physically elect to start these players by entering a lineup ... this is what the software is currently doing.

 

We have always tailored our rules to what the software supports. Because I don't want to monitor this situation every week ... checking to make sure owners have their starting lineups in BEFORE the first game so they don't get a look ahead advantage and because I believe that you should have to decide to start a player before his game instead of defaulting to a player, I have reversed my previous ruling. Neither player will be inserted into their respective owner's lineups.

 

The final kicker was ... the Marvin Harrison owner sent me his email Thusday night at 9:00 pm AFTER the Indy game was over and the Stokley owner sent me his email SUNDAY. In addition, the second owner first attempted to enter his lineup at 11:37 ... his player Stokley had already scored a TD by that time (he scored 4 minutes into the game).

 

Now this was easy to do because these 2 owners played each other AND it made no difference to the outcome of their game. I does impact their YTD totals which may make a difference in tie-breakers and it does impact one weekly prize ... taking it from the Marvin Harrison owner and shifting it to the Willis McGahee owner (for highest points scored by a started player).

 

Did I do the right thing?

[Caveman_Nick]

Earlier in the week I posted a question about lineups and the early games - here.

 

MFL won't have a fix for this problem until 2005 when they will allow starting lineups to be copied forward for franchises that have not entered any lineup at the kickoff of the first game.

 

I think I made the wrong ruling in the first place.  Here are our rules again:

I believe the first rule would only apply when an owner does not enter ANY lineup at all ... in this case both owners entered partial lineups.  This rule does NOT say anything about carrying forward partial lineups.  So IMO this rule does not apply.

 

The second rule says that a player's status as a starter or bench player is locked after the kick off of his game.  There is nothing in our rules that says individual players would be locked in as a starter if a lineup has not been entered before their game and then is subsequently entered before the deadline.  This problem in our rules is a result of switching from locking lineups at the first kick off on Sunday to allowing lineup changes until the kickoff of the Monday game (for players that have not played).  Because these owners did not enter a lineup before the early games I say they locked in their player's status as non-staters, i.e. they did not physically elect to start these players by entering a lineup ... this is what the software is currently doing.

 

We have always tailored our rules to what the software supports.  Because I don't want to monitor this situation every week ... checking to make sure owners have their starting lineups in BEFORE the first game so they don't get a look ahead advantage and because I believe that you should have to decide to start a player before his game instead of defaulting to a player, I have reversed my previous ruling.  Neither player will be inserted into their respective owner's lineups.

 

The final kicker was ... the Marvin Harrison owner sent me his email Thusday night at 9:00 pm AFTER the Indy game was over and the Stokley owner sent me his email SUNDAY.  In addition, the second owner first attempted to enter his lineup at 11:37 ... his player Stokley had already scored a TD by that time (he scored 4 minutes into the game).

 

Now this was easy to do because these 2 owners played each other AND it made no difference to the outcome of their game.  I does impact their YTD totals which may make a difference in tie-breakers and it does impact one weekly prize ... taking it from the Marvin Harrison owner and shifting it to the Willis McGahee owner (for highest points scored by a started player).

 

Did I do the right thing?

 

583060[/snapback]

 

 

 

 

I am not sure exactly what you did, but this is exactly what I said in the last thread. If you submit a partial line-up, you have voided the carryover rule. If you leave your line-up alone you can carry over the starters. In this case the owners made changes, and therefore can not opt Stokley or Harrison in after knowing their point totals. By the rules, so nobody can cry about it

[georgemoe]

Blitz,

 

Followed the earlier topic but never posted. This may have been covered there.

 

I think by allowing the floating deadline, your rules as stated are flawed. You need to copy lineups at the start of the 1st game, not the Monday night game. Even if this is a flaw with MFL, it should not be a flaw in your rules.

 

Once a players game has started, he is locked and since neither teams had a lineup in as of Thursday kickoff, if those players were in for WK11 then they should be in for WK12.

 

As a commish myself, I have gotten burned in the past with rules changes our league has made where they do not coincide with how MFL was setup. What a pain in the arse.

 

Good luck.

[Grits and Shins]

Blitz,

 

Followed the earlier topic but never posted. This may have been covered there.

 

I think by allowing the floating deadline, your rules as stated are flawed. You need to copy lineups at the start of the 1st game, not the Monday night game. Even if this is a flaw with MFL, it should not be a flaw in your rules.

 

Once a players game has started, he is locked and since neither teams had a lineup in as of Thursday kickoff, if those players were in for WK11 then they should be in for WK12.

 

As a commish myself, I have gotten burned in the past with rules changes our league has made where they do not coincide with how MFL was setup. What a pain in the arse. 

 

Good luck.

 

583079[/snapback]

 

 

 

 

To avoid further complications I will manually carry forward everybody's lineup Tuesday morning.

[pzarvell]

Right or wrong you made your decision. Personally I would have locked the players into their lineups from the previous week, but we have two things going for us that you don't yet:

1) That rule is in our bylaws

2) Our software supports manual overrides.

 

It just seems to me that this rule: "The second rule says that a player's status as a starter or bench player is locked after the kick off of his game." makes that clear and it doesn't matter what they try to do after the kickoff of the game.

 

The Commissioner's job doesn't pay well enough for this kind of headache.

[Pope Flick]

Our rules are simple: you can bench/start player for early games up until kickoff, but 955am Sunday all rosters lock.

 

- if no lineup has been received, the previous week's lineup is used. (This cover partial submissions as well: ie only calling in a QB change means everything else stands pat)

 

- players on bye weeks can get starts to fill starter's spots. (This voids the 'I would have benched him is I could have gotten to a phone argument')

[Rovers]

Since they both submitted partial lineups, they made the mistake, and in each case, I think niether player should be allowed to change his lineup after kick-off, period. If you got the email BEFORE kick-off, fine, but any allowance of an after the fact line up change sets a dangerous precident, IMO. It isnt clear to me how you did end up ruling on this....

[Big Country]

Blitz -

 

Onething to consider - the lineups would have carried forward at the issuing of the fial Thursday stats on Thursday ngiht. At that point, hadthese teams not entered lineups on Thursday, the Thursday players WOULD have been locked in as starters/bench players based on their week 11 designation.

 

In this case, by entering a lineup prior to to the conclusion of the Thursday games, nothing had been copied over by the system per its current design however, had they not entered anything into the system until Friday, then they would have had these players locked into their lineup.

 

I think based on your rule #2 posted, the correct decision is to have these players in the starting lineup, as what you are proposing would punish these teams for trying to get a lineup in as early as possible after realizing they did not submit one early, while a team that did nothing until Sunday morning would have the reward of these players being locked into their lineups.

[loaf]

actually, the game was NOT into it's fourth minute by 12:37. It was supposed to be but it didn't actually start well after 12:30. I know because I was worried about my Huddle Challenge III entry...

 

This link shows the start time as 12:38

meaning that the touchdown wasn't scored until at least 12:42 meaning he was 5 minutes before Stokely scored

Edited November 30, 2004 by loaf

[Grits and Shins]

Blitz -

 

Onething to consider - the lineups would have carried forward at the issuing of the fial Thursday stats on Thursday ngiht. At that point, hadthese teams not entered lineups on Thursday, the Thursday players WOULD have been locked in as starters/bench players based on their week 11 designation.

 

In this case, by entering a lineup prior to to the conclusion of the Thursday games, nothing had been copied over by the system per its current design however, had they not entered anything into the system until Friday, then they would have had these players locked into their lineup.

 

I think based on your rule #2 posted, the correct decision is to have these players in the starting lineup, as what you are proposing would punish these teams for trying to get a lineup in as early as possible after realizing they did not submit one early, while a team that did nothing until Sunday morning would have the reward of these players being locked into their lineups.

 

583456[/snapback]

 

 

 

 

BC ... you are incorrect ... our software was set to copy lineups forward at the conclusion of Monday's game ... so "a team that did nothing until Sunday morning" could still have submitted a lineup without any of the early players.

[Big Country]

Ahh.. my mistake... I thought I remembered you mentioninghaving the copy at prelim stats checked..... then you are correct, no matter when they went in, once the scheduled time ofthe kickoff passe, those players would have been unavailable to be selected at any point.

 

I guess it is a matter of what overrides: the rule saying players previous week status is locked at their gametime or the tailoring to the software.

 

So, did each of these owners make changes from their week 11 lineup other than the obvious Indy WR change?

[Grits and Shins]

Ahh.. my mistake... I thought I remembered you mentioninghaving the copy at prelim stats checked.....  then you are correct, no matter when they went in, once the scheduled time ofthe kickoff passe, those players would have been unavailable to be selected at any point.

 

I guess it is a matter of what overrides: the rule saying players previous week status is locked at their gametime or the tailoring to the software.

 

So, did each of these owners make changes from their week 11 lineup other than the obvious Indy WR change?

 

583486[/snapback]

 

 

 

 

The Marvin owner changed out one of his WRs from week 11 to week 12.

 

The Stokley owner first entered a lineup without Stokley with Taylor in his place (Thursday at 11:37) ... then on Sunday entered a new lineup without Stokley and without Taylor and sent me his email.

Edited November 30, 2004 by Grits and Shins

[Grits and Shins]

And BTW ... what you probably read is that I have now changed the settings to that it is set to copy the lineups after any preliminary games.