Need Opinions! Draft conundrum...

[saucelife90]

I'm looking for opinions on how to deal with a problem that occurred in an auction draft I was participating in over the weekend...

Owners all start with a set $ cap, have their "keeper totals" subtracted, and are left with an amount to use for bidding on players.

The issue occurred mid-way through our draft, when Owner A & Owner B were interrupted by the commissioner stating that Owner A had bid more than his sufficient available funds.

At that point Owner A brought up that he was under the assumption he had more money than what the commissioner was stating, but was re-assured that was not the case. The bid was reset to where Owner A could still afford to bid on the player and Owner B made the final bid to where Owner A could not continue and acquired the player.

The draft continued, with Owner A going off the value the commissioner stated that he had left available.

Once the draft commenced, and all players & salaries were added to their respective new teams, it was established that Owner A was correct in the fact that he should have had salary left to bid with... The obvious issue being, not only did he miss out on the chance to acquire the player he was initially bidding on, but potentially other players who he may have been able to afford to acquire later in the draft. The butterfly effect being, some owners were able to acquire players for cheaper than what they may have gone for had he been able to bid.

Obviously rounding up 16 guys all with different schedules within the next 2 days to re-draft from that point won't happen, but how would you go about trying to fix the issue?

*Note - I'm neither the commissioner or either owner involved in the bid. Owner A is threatening to leave the league if something isn't figured out. (replacing a bottom end team at this point would be tough)

If there's anything unclear, or you have a question that would help with your answer let me know!

Thanks in advance & will rep where I can.

[stevegamer]

Oh, this is bad. Solutions I see:

1. Owner who got screwed plays for free or at some discount, if it's a money league.

2. He is allowed to leave the league, and you are one team short this year. Those players are frozen, and unavailable if he does. Additionally, he is also allowed to return to that roster next year if he chooses to do so - he likely won't but he might if he's a buddy.

3. Let him draft with the rest of his budget from unowned players. This will hurt everyone else in the league, but they already got the benefit of less competition driving up bids. When he drops a player, have that original bid count against his draft dollars, so he can't just go completely crazy and get value refunded.

4. Going forward, appoint someone else to check the math in addition to the commissioner. Needs to happen before next draft. There has to be a "banker" who handles that so this doesn't happen again. I am guessing nobody was using a computer. I can tell you that we wouldn't have moved on until we got to the right answer.

[saucelife90]

Oh, this is bad. Solutions I see:

1. Owner who got screwed plays for free or at some discount, if it's a money league.

2. He is allowed to leave the league, and you are one team short this year. Those players are frozen, and unavailable if he does. Additionally, he is also allowed to return to that roster next year if he chooses to do so - he likely won't but he might if he's a buddy.

3. Let him draft with the rest of his budget from unowned players. This will hurt everyone else in the league, but they already got the benefit of less competition driving up bids. When he drops a player, have that original bid count against his draft dollars, so he can't just go completely crazy and get value refunded.

4. Going forward, appoint someone else to check the math in addition to the commissioner. Needs to happen before next draft. There has to be a "banker" who handles that so this doesn't happen again. I am guessing nobody was using a computer. I can tell you that we wouldn't have moved on until we got to the right answer.

Thanks for the reply!

We're most likely going with something similar to option 3, with him getting the additional unused amount added to his total $ for next season's draft..

Going forward we're going to have 2 separate people look after the cap $ to make sure both have the same amounts. Most people were using computers but because of the custom aspect of our league we don't have time to assign a $ value to the player while drafting (our draft was around 5 hours) so we just assign the player to the respective team that drafted them on the website, and assign the cap hit after the draft. The owner didn't want to make a big fuss during the draft, and assumed he must have miscalculated something and took the commissioners word so the draft continued on.

[mounD]

You gotta refund the guy's money, and take corrective measures like allowing him to pick up (at no / low cost) whichever players he wants. This is a disaster if you are actually charging money for this. I would honestly refund everyone. Your best bet is to redo the whole thing, but if you can only take half-measures to fix the problem, expect half-solutions.

[stevegamer]

Going forward we're going to have 2 separate people look after the cap $ to make sure both have the same amounts. Most people were using computers but because of the custom aspect of our league we don't have time to assign a $ value to the player while drafting (our draft was around 5 hours) so we just assign the player to the respective team that drafted them on the website, and assign the cap hit after the draft. The owner didn't want to make a big fuss during the draft, and assumed he must have miscalculated something and took the commissioners word so the draft continued on.

This is your problem. You make a spreadsheet that has the total salary cap at the top. Teams are in 2 columns, with player, and value. Keepers are the top, and then you have a subtotal showing auction money available.
Current available space is a dynamic formula, and every time a player gets taken, they are entered into the spreadsheet, and it updates remaining available auction dollars & max bid.

It's really simple to do.

[saucelife90]

This is your problem. You make a spreadsheet that has the total salary cap at the top. Teams are in 2 columns, with player, and value. Keepers are the top, and then you have a subtotal showing auction money available.
Current available space is a dynamic formula, and every time a player gets taken, they are entered into the spreadsheet, and it updates remaining available auction dollars & max bid.

It's really simple to do.

This was the process that the commish was taking, however he either had an extra value added somewhere or the formula was messed up... he never really said what/how it exactly happened, just that it did, it was his fault, and he apologized.

The owner ended up getting 2 players off the FA list at the lowest possible value and will have the extra $ he was shorted added to his cap $ for next season.

Everyone seemed fine with that, but I know I'll be double checking everything for everyone and cross referencing with the commish going forward so something like this doesn't happen again.