Options to Acquire Free Agent Players

 

We have added a waiver wire system to Fantasy Commissioner Web.  The following page will describe this new feature, as well as explain the various options for acquiring players that are now available.

 

Definitions

 

Free Agents – Any player who is not currently on a fantasy roster is considered a “Free Agent”.

 

Add/Drop Players screen – Owners will use this screen to acquire free agents using the First-Come, First-Served acquisition type or the Commissioner Approval acquisition type.

 

Waiver Request screen – Owners will use this screen to acquire free agents using the Waiver Wire acquisition type.

 

Available Player Acquisition Types

 

First-Come, First-Served: The acquisition of a free agent is based entirely on timing.  When a fantasy team requests a player, his request is approved immediately and that player will be removed from the free agent list so no other fantasy team can get him.  Request can be made during the time period specified by the commissioner.  Note that no matter what time period is specified by the commissioner, it is not possible to enter requests from Sunday 1:00pm EST to Tuesday, 7:00am EST.

 

Commissioner Approval: Any request is not approved right away, but rather the request is sent to the commissioner for approval.  The commish reviews all the pickup requests and either accepts or declines each one. This will allow you to use other rules besides the currently support types of First-Come, First Served or Waiver Wire.  You can use whatever league rules your league uses to determine who gets a free agent if more than one owner wants him.  For example, if the commish checks all the requests and sees that two owners want the same player, and your league rules say to give the free agent to the team that has the longest losing streak, the commish can then approve the pickup request for the team with the longest losing streak and disapprove the other.  Requests can be made during the time period specified by the commissioner.  Note that no matter what time period is specified by the commissioner, it is not possible to enter requests from Sunday 1:00pm EST to Tuesday, 7:00am EST.

 

Waiver Wire: In order to provide an equal opportunity for all fantasy teams to add players to their roster, a waiver wire process can be implemented.  A fantasy teams request to add free agents to their rosters are not executed immediately, but are put in a pending status.  This allows multiple teams to request the same players.  Then once a week at a day designated by the commissioner, a waiver process will be run, executing the pending requests in a waiver rank order. Requests can be made from 7am EST on Tuesday until 11pm EST of the day the commissioner has selected to have the waiver process run.

 

During a waiver process, pending transactions are automatically processed in an order determined by each team’s waiver rank.  The team with the highest waiver rank will get its first requested player.  If that teams highest pending transaction can’t be executed because another team as the requested player, the transaction gets deleted and the teams next transaction, if one exists, is then executed.  When a team gets a requested player, the team’s waiver rank is dropped to the end and every other team moves up one and the process is continued.  If a team doesn’t have any pending transactions because all players requested were taken by other teams, or the owner simply didn’t request any players, the team’s turn is skipped.  The waiver rank is based on the reverse order of the standings (the criteria for this is determined by the commissioner).  The waiver rank is reset each week based on the latest reverse order of the standings.  The commissioner can also set a custom waiver order if your league uses different criteria than Fantasy Commissioner Web supports.

 

Setting Up a Player Acquisition Type

 

First-Come, First-Served: To setup this type, on the League Rules screen, under “Pickup Price” and “Drop Price”, make sure the “Approval Required” box IS NOT selected for both.  If your league charges a fee for pickups and/or drops, enter those charges in these fields.  Also, setup the following fields:

 

Year Add/Drop Deadline - The owners will be locked out from entering pickups or drop once this yearly deadline passes.

 

Add/Drop Start - This indicates the starting day and time that owners can begin to enter pickups and drops.  Note: Tuesday at 7:00am EST is the earliest allowed start time.

 

Add/Drop Deadline - The owners will be locked out from dropping or picking up players once this weekly deadline passes.  Note: Sunday at 1:00pm EST is the latest allowed deadline.

 

Commissioner Approval: To setup this type, on the League Rules screen, under “Pickup Price” and “Drop Price”, make sure the “Approval Required” box IS selected for both.  If your league charges a fee for pickups and/or drops, enter those charges in these fields.  Also, setup the following fields:

 

Year Add/Drop Deadline - The owners will be locked out from entering pickups or drop once this yearly deadline passes.

 

Add/Drop Start - This indicates the starting day and time that owners can begin to enter pickups and drops.  Note: Tuesday at 7:00am EST is the earliest allowed start time.

 

Add/Drop Deadline - The owners will be locked out from dropping or picking up players once this weekly deadline passes.  Note: Sunday at 1:00pm EST is the latest allowed deadline.

 

Email Owners? – Check this box if you want owners to be sent an email when the commissioner approve or declines a transaction from an owner.

 

Waiver Wire: To setup a waiver wire, first go to the Waiver Rules screen and setup the following fields:

 

Enable Waivers – Check this box.

 

Enable Free Agent Pickups/Drops After Waiver Process Runs – Only check this box if you want to allow owners to use the “Add/Drop Players” screen after the waiver process is run, in which case pickups would be first-come, first-served if you have NOT selected the "Approval Required" option under the "Pickup Price" on the League Rules screen. If selected, you will need to approve each pickup request.   This is useful, for example, if you want to use a waiver wire until Thursday night, then after the waiver process is run, have free agent pickups be first-come, first-served for the rest of the week. Owners can make free agent pickups/drops starting at 7am after the waiver process runs. You can push the 7am time until later by setting the "Add/Drop Start" date to a later time on the League Rules screen.

 

Waiver Process Runs – Choose which day you would like to have the waiver process run.  The waiver process can only be run once a week.  The process will run sometime between midnight and 6am EST.

 

Waiver Deadline – This is always set to 11pm EST of the day you selected for the waiver process to run.  So if the waiver process is selected to run on Thursday, that means owners will not be able to enter requests after Thursday at 11pm EST.

 

Waiver Period Begins – This is always set to 7am on Tuesday.  So the time period for owners to enter requests is from 7am on Tuesday until the waiver deadline.

 

Reset Waiver Order Each Week Based On – The waiver order will be reset each week according to the reverse order of standings using the criteria entering in the following field.

 

Standings 1st Sort/Standings 2nd Sort/Standings 3rd Sort – Choose the three criteria for sorting the standings: Overall Record, Total Points Scored, Division Record

 

Maximum Waiver Pickups Per Owner Each Week – This allows you to specify the maximum number of pickups you want to allow for each team during the waiver process.

 

If you want to setup a waiver order that is not supported by the criteria available on the Waiver Rules screen (i.e. based on your draft order), then go to the Waiver Order screen to enter a custom waiver order.  This custom waiver order will be in place permanently until it has been explicitly deleted by you.


During the first week of the season, when there are no standings, the waiver order will be random. If you wish to override this (for example, to use the final results of the previous year for the first week), go to the Waiver Order screen to enter a custom waiver order. Make sure to delete the custom waiver order after the first week so the following weeks will use the reverse order of standings. Note that week 1 starts the Tuesday before the first NFL game, which is September 5th, 2006.


If your league charges a fee for pickups and/or drops, enter those charges in the “Pickup Price” and “Drop Price” on the League Rules screen.

 

Owner Weekly Instructions

 

First-Come, First-Served: For an owner to pickup a player using this type, he simply goes to the Add/Drop Players screen and selects the player he wants from the free agent list.  He will get that player immediately.

 

Commissioner Approval: For an owner to pickup a player using this type, he goes to the Add/Drop Players screen and selects the player he wants from the free agent list.  His request is then sent to the commissioner for his approval.  The owner can go to the Transactions screen to see all the requests he has made.  On this screen, the owner can rescind any request that is still in the “submitted” status.  This is useful if the owners have submitted a pickup request for the wrong player.  Once the commissioner approves or declines the request, a message on the leagues home page will display the result, and an email will also be sent to the owner (if the commish has indicated when setting up the league that owners should receive an email).  Also, an owner can go to the Transaction screen to see all the approved and declined requests.

 

Waiver Wire: For an owner to pickup a player using this type, he goes to the Waiver Request screen and selects the player he wants to pickup, along with the player he would like to drop if he gets the selected player.  This screen also indicates where in the waiver order the owners pick will be.  The owner can enter as may requests as he wishes, and can set the priority order for the picks by using the “Move Pick Up” and “Move Pick Down” links that appear next to each player request that has been entered.  He can also remove a player request by using the “Delete Pick” link.  After the waiver process runs, an owner can see which players he received via the League News section on the league home page, as well as via the Transactions page.

 

Commissioner Weekly Instructions

 

First-Come, First-Served: There is no intervention needed from the commissioner for this type.

 

Commissioner Approval: Anytime after the “Add/Drop Deadline”, the commissioner goes to the Transactions screen on the League Office menu to approve or decline all the transactions that have been submitted to the commissioner.  Each owner will be sent an email indicating the result of their transaction (only if the “Email Owners?” option has been selected on the League Rules screen).  The owners will also be notified via the League News section on the league home page, as well as the Transaction screen on the Manage Team menu.  An approval of a player will cause any other requests for that same player by other owners to be automatically declined.  The commissioner can use whatever method he wants to determine which requests are approved or declined.

 

Waiver Wire: There is no intervention needed from the commissioner for this type.  However, the commissioner can see all the requests for the current week that each owner has submitted by going to the Pending Waivers screen.  On this screen the commissioner can also see the log of the last waiver process which will be helpful to answer any questions from owners about why they did not receive a certain player.

 

Owner Examples

 

First-Come, First-Served: Let’s say you want player A, and another owner also wants that player.  A few minutes after the “Add/Drop Start” date (defined on the League Rules screen), you go to the Add/Drop Players screen and choose player A from the free agent list.  That player will then be on your team.  When the other owner goes to the Add/Drop Players screen, player A will no longer be on the free agent list, and that owner will not be able to pickup that player.

 

Commissioner Approval: Let’s say you want player A, and another owner also wants that player.  You go to the Add/Drop Players screen and choose player A from the free agent list.  Your request is sent to the commissioner.  The other owner also chooses player A on the Add/Drop Players screen, so now the commish has two requests for the same player.  Your league rules state that if two owners want the same player, the one who had the worst record last season gets him.  Since your record was 10-6 last season and the other owner was 6-10, the commish declines your request for player A and approves the other owner’s request.

 

Waiver Wire: If you want to drop a player and pick up a player using the waiver wire, follow these steps:

 

Let’s say you have a player that you want to drop (player A) and several players that you would like to add (players B and C), depending on their availability when your turn comes up.  If player B is not available you would like to pick up player C.  In order to accomplish this you would submit two Add/Drop requests:

 

Drop player A, Add player B, and

Drop player A, Add player C.

 

Let’s say your turn comes up and player B has already been picked up during the waiver process by another team.  A request cannot be executed if either the add or drop player is not available.  Requests will be skipped until the first valid roster move is found.  In this case, your second request would be executed and you would get player C (provided he is not also already picked up by another team during the waiver process).

 

The same is true in the reverse.  If you dropped player A and added player B, then during your next round of waiver selections it will skip over the second waiver request involving player A and go down your list to see if you have any other waiver requests.

 

Combination of Waiver Wire and First-Come, First-Served: Let’s say you wanted to pickup a QB for this week, so you selected three different QB’s on the Waiver Request screen.  Unfortunately, after the waiver process is run, you find out all three of the QB’s you requested were selected before your turn came up.  But since your league allows free agent pickups on a first-come, first-served bases after the waiver process runs, you simply go to the Add/Drop Players screen and select a QB from the remaining free agents.