First, a bit about myself: I’ve been a fantasy football player and commissioner for over 15 years. My first experience with the game came when three of my college buddies and I found a brochure for fantasy football stuck inside a recently purchased case of Bud Light. We thought it would be entertaining so we gave it a try. I took the responsibility for compiling the stats and running the league. I still remember our first rules dispute when two teams wanted to acquire Miami Dolphins RB, Sammy Smith and we had no priority system for claims. The solution, draw numbers from a hat each week for claim priority if there were conflicting claims. Yes, it was a highly advanced system back then.

Since then I’ve played and run various leagues with many formats, scoring systems and rules quirks. Currently, I run a 14-team single-keeper league, I’m in my third season of a 12-team dynasty league and I’ll participate in a 12-team redraft league this season for FFToday. One of the reasons I’ve wanted to do a commissioner’s column is that so much information and advice are available to the fantasy football player, but there are fewer resources for the commissioner. I’m looking forward using this column to impart my experiences with the game to assist others. In the process I hope to learn new gaming twists and formats to keep my league interesting and challenging.

So feel free to submit your questions. If you have questions regarding your rules or scoring, it would be best to submit the exact text of the rule in question, not just your synopsis of it. For questions regarding players, please submit all players involved on each team involved. For general league setup advice, it will be helpful to know the experience level of your league’s owners and if the league is highly competitive and involves money or is more for fun. As stated before, I’ll review some questions regarding trade fairness, but I don’t want this to turn into a forum just for analyzing trades. I know you guys do enough of that on the message boards anyway.

To start the ball rolling, I’ll address a couple of questions I’ve been asked recently regarding the trade approval process and waiver priorities.

Q) My league currently uses the worst record to prioritize waiver claims and we don’t want to use a bidding system. Are there any other options?

A) I’ve never been a fan of the worst picks first for claiming players. One, it rewards mediocrity. Two, it doesn’t necessarily do what it’s supposed to do. Many key free agents are acquired early in the season. In those early weeks, teams with bad records aren’t always the worst teams. Aside from the bid system I’ve seen a system that simply assigns waiver position by inverting the draft order and then resetting that order as claims are made (i.e. you go to the back of the line after claiming a player). It’s not a perfect solution, but to me it’s no worse than the worst picks first option.

Q) I’m running a league that currently uses a league majority vote to approve/reject trades. I feel the owners misuse the veto power to prevent trades that help their competitors. I want to change this to commissioner approval, but the league members are against this. Are there any compromises?

A) As you are experiencing, there are drawbacks to both systems. League veto gives owners a chance to veto legitimate trades on the basis that it will hurt their chances to win, which isn’t a valid reason. Commissioner veto puts a lot of power in the hands of one person. Personally I prefer the commissioner veto because a good commissioner is going to do what’s best for the league, not what’s good for an individual team. However, I’ve seen leagues that do have a trade committee. This is a group of usually 3 owners who rule on trades. It gives league members the assurance that the commissioner doesn’t have absolute power but keeps most owners from getting involved in trade approvals. If you go this route the committee should be made up of experienced and respected owners. You’ll also need backups in the event that trades involve members of the committee.

This question raises another question. How should league rule changes be handled? I’ll rule on that issue next week but if your league has rules on how rules changes are handled please submit those or any questions you may have for next week’s Commissioner’s Court.