Voting for GM/Exec Award in FOF leagues

[QuikSand]

Just an idle thought here...

I play in a few MP FOF leagues, and in some of them we have a year-end process for owners to vote on awards for players, etc. Among them, at least in my BenELou-run leagues, is an award for GM of the year.

I confess that I am not a deep research type of guy on these things, so I tend to skip quickly through the awards, I give some thought based on the info right in front of me, but I don't really look deeply.

So... we basically award "GM of the year" to the team who made the biggest leap forward in record. It's an obvious place to start. But I don't think it captures things that well.

Frex, what about a team that deals up in 2020 to get a stud rookie QB? Guy goes out and has his usual young QB struggles, but by about 2022 he is fully developed, gets over the big cohesion liability, and starts getting pretty decent. It's certain possible that team wins something like 5 games in 2020, 6 games in 2021, and then 11 games in 2022, right? But we would be tempted to give that GM an award for the "big jump" year in 2022... but the real GM decision was the wheeling and dealing needed to get up to pick 1.1 to draft that stud QB, and that happened in 2020.

So... open question. Is there any way to have a more nuanced discussion of "who did the best job this year?" in this situation? For players, it's fairly easy to pull stats from a database (or at least Ben does it I suppose, I don't know that it's easy) -- but except for hand-written essays, I don't see an easy way to make this vote/debate anything more than a formula. If we just sorted by BestGM = (3 x this year's wins) - (2 x last year's wins) I suspect we'd end up with a very solid prediction tool for this award, more or less mirroring the mental shortcut that most of us probably use.

Anything we could do better here?

[Ben E Lou]

I mentioned this a while back, when I won the award in WOOF, I think. I don't remember all the details, but it was similar to what you describe above: I had made some really good moves a few seasons back that led to a great year, going from something like 9-7 to 13-3. The year I actually won, the team was pretty much on auto-pilot the entire season, though: did next to nothing in FA, had no draftees play a part (iirc, I may not have had any draft picks that particular year.) Basically, I kept the same game plan from the year before, same starters, etc.

For my part, I suppose I could stop including the record of the previous season on the ballot. I did it, though, because several people asked for it. And that's really the crux of the matter: a fair number of people view the award as being like the "Coach Of The Year" in the NFL who went from 5-11 to 11-5. I'm with you, Quik; I'd like to see it actually be "GM Of The Year"--given to the guy who made the best moves this season. But then I wonder if that's just plain too much attention to detail for most of the voters.

[gstelmack]

Part of that may be owners stumping for themselves. Before I left WOOF, I vaguely recall stumping for myself after a series of trades involving several other teams got me several first-round picks, for example.

Another option here might be to include several years records, and maybe the Dogbytes roster ratings? Maybe a version of the Dogbytes roster ratings based solely on future, so you can see what the cur rating for the team was for the last several seasons, what the fut rating for the team was for the last several seasons, and what the team's record was for each?

[Firefly]

In the vnfl we have a 5-guy committee that hands out awards each season, including GM of the year. It gives us the opportunity to discuss things in more detail. Last year, for example, GM of the year went to ukpatfan, whose team didn't have the biggest improvement in wins (only 2), but who battled through a tremendous rash of injuries to a 13-3 record.

[Hammer]

Also a 5 man HOF board in the vNFL. That works very well. Everything is done on a private forum. In both the awards and HOF, the board members then write up a presentation for the rest of the league.

[Firefly]

That's funny. I though we only did that in the vnfl :D

[bighouserulez]

hmm must be a few HOF and award commitees then :)

[MIJB#19]

Interesting, QS. The way I have tended to look at this is roughly looking at the best team in a wins this year + wins this year - wins last year table. It will reward improved teams, but also rewards teams that kept winning.

Additionally, sometimes the 'best' move can be a non-move, so I'm not sure going for the GM that made the most moves and managed to win 3 games more is what we're looking for.

[MIJB#19]

fwiw, lately I've been voting for GMs of teams that didn't make a big leap, but that managed to remain as winners despite retirements and other moves that hurt that team.

[BreizhManu]

Same as MIJB