New ideas to freshen up FOWL?
 

For obvious reasons, maybe it's time to toss around more ideas that might either make this league better...different...more interesting...more challenging...harder...or who knows what our goals might be.

For me, I will confess that the biggest "ratio" for my interest in FOWL is that between:

% of things I do in this league that are different from my other MP leagues
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% of things I do in this league that are basically the same as my other MP leagues


While the original hook of this league was the speed... I don't think that's really what keeps me interested now. (And I am actually pretty interested in this league now) For me, it's the no-injuries that tops my list, as I have been trying out a few things in this league that may not work too well in a more conventional setting. I also have felt a little liberty in gameplanning due to the inability of anyone to do game-by-game adjustments... which has been a value added.

So, for me... things moving quickly is cool. The 3-year contract rule is great. The quick wide-open offseason is definitely different and is somewhat interesting, but a bit less so than a conventional draft, I think.

One thing that I love in this league is that the top rookies are *always* intriguing enough to make cap room a pretty big deal... so that makes every cap-related decision feel like a big deal, too. I don't get that feeling of real trade-off in any other league I play in, and I like it a lot.

Those aren't really ideas on what we could do differently... I'm not sure I have any great ideas on that front, just shaking the tree a bit here and seeing what might drop.

EVERYONE OWNS 2 TEAMS.

:)

If we all take a team each from the AC and NC and go from there, maybe we can keep 16 owners who export 32 times, and make this league really stick. Do we still have 16 owners?

If so, thats my proposal. Sounds fun as hell to me.. And would be one more thing that makes this league completely different. Its not like running 2 teams would take much more work than running one, right?

I, for one, am pressed to keep up with just one team so two would be impossible for me.

Not necessarily in support of any of the following, but here's a possible expansion on this idea: Owners may manage two cross-conference teams, and may make unlimited transactions between them if they desire.

In theory, if I want to run the Packers as my "developmental" team and the Ravens as my "play to win" team, I could be a lot more interested in the marginal players that I currently skip over in the current setup.

Would be very different than any setup I've played in...

My concern with the two team idea is that it seems the biggest hardship that the league has to keeping owners and getting new owners is the speed/pace of the league. That likely won't ever chance, and it is something I have gone through with the FOOL leagues as well. So everyone taking two teams is likely going to make that even worse as you become even less likely to get new owners and become more likely to scare current owners off.

I personally love this format, I love it in OOTP, I love it here and it seems to be right up my ally almost to where I want all of my leagues like this. I am not sure I need much change to keep it interesting from what it is. You get instant gratification every week to what is going to happen, how your plans work out, how different youngsters work out, etc.

I would pretty much echo what Alan said. I personally could handle two teams but I think it would be the death of the league, and possibly Ben :lol:

I'm glad to hear that there are still owners that love the league as much as I do, the quick pace for me is the only way to play these things, I find the PFL agonizingly slow. Although it makes the games more interesting I put minimal time into that league, and wait with eager anticipation for the new stage file for FOWL.

I think the main concern here is Ben's burnout with the league. So I'd be very interested to hear what he has to say, maybe something could be done to take some weight off his shoulders? Is there anything that a guy like myself can do to help ease the load? Is there any rules variation you (Ben) can see that might help to make the league more challenging with the reality of having less owners?

While it's not consistent with the spirit of the "fewest rules possible" that this league has thrived under, here's a new thought. We'd keep track of some sort of currency/points outside the game, and that would be used to enable your team to do certain things -- maybe most notably (or exclusively) to make an offer on a player for more than a pre-set maximum offer. My underlying thinking is that these "points" could become the currency to be used for trading, which has all but vanished from this league.

Maybe each team gets 3 points per year, each one enables your team to offer a guy an extra $10 million in total contract value to any player beyond some agreed-to maximum, and are fully tradeable and bankable year to year.

Likely too complicated, but I'd like to get trading back into this league somehow.

I agree with what Alan is saying. I personally like the way things are right now very much, adding more people is really the only need I see.

Yes, trading would be nice, I think that's probably the main casualty of having no draft is the currency which is normally draft picks. The question then is, if we introduce currency, what do we use it on? Interesting idea about the max offer but you're right it may be too complicated. Something to think about tho.

I also agree that there really dont need to be any major changes. I am somewhat surprised we dont have a full league though, considering how good this format would work in that case.

My guess is that the offseason format just isn't everyone's cup of tea, and it seems "weird" enough for that to be a barrier to new owners (even many who would probably like our system just fine given the chance).