Market-based NFL game, based on DFS pricing
 

I want to play a game, here in the forums, for a little money.

I have some ideas on how to set it up. It will require some manual calculations here.

Let's sort out in this thread:

-how the game will work
-who is willing to play for $50 for the whole season

Seed idea:

-the DFS sites for their own purposes generate a set of dollar values for NFL players each week

-I love market-based games, still have fond memories of playing market-style games that required looking at an ad in USA Today to see the revised player pricing, and then faxing in roster changes each week (good times)

-If we are willing to do our own math, we surely could construct an interesting game based off some combination of real fantasy and market pricing, given the materials we have available to us in real life

My initial proposal:

-everyone starts with a certain amount... i'm thinking a bit more than the usual salary cap for DraftKings/FanDuel - maybe $100,000

-release the confines of roster slots and limits, you just get to have as many players as you are able to afford

-best ball scoring for each week, a necessity given the item just above

-each week, we get to sell and buy any players we like, to improve/expand our rosters

-weekly scoring tabulated here, no head to head but aggregate points count toward prizes

-can play through the entire regular season, seems to me

A weakness in this is secrecy. If all transactions are done out in the open, then there's the easy potential for a loafer like me to just watch what the sharps are doing, and follow suit.

I don't see an easy way to do this with exclusive ownership (i.e. only one person can own JaMarr Chase in our league) but if we wanted the overhead of doing a draft and a waiver wire, that would solve that problem completely.

Doing stuff through PM with a neutral commissioner, or some system to make it fair for a participating commissioner, would make the game less social but more fair I think.

So would player values change based on the sites salaries. Could I buy low and sell high on a guy who has a breakout year?

Anyway... I am enamored with the general idea of having to decide whether, say, Jonathan Taylor at $10,000 is a better value than a best ball pairing of two marginal guys at $5,000 each.

Yes, exactly.

Even a breakout week. Buy/sell all year, each week based on the revised pricing. Buy Devin Singletary now for week 1, he has a couple good weeks, then you sell him at a higher price (adjusted for his performance) and get more cash to spend on buying someone else, or a couple someone elses in his stead.

Ooh, new idea just came to me... a dispersal auction. We could run it as a free fantasy league on ESPN or something like that, with some pre-arranged way to convert auction dollars into initial spend here.

So, you get $200 to buy an initial roster... but we work with an understanding that each $1 of spend translates to a certain $ amount in our eventual game. May need some refinement, but it could be like this:

FanDuel minimum price for a RB is, say, $3,500
A $1 bid is equivalent to a $3,500 buy for any RB
Every $ over $1 becomes an extra $200 in the buy price for the RB

Liking this idea a lot, though it might need to be simplified a bit.

The Thursday night game screw with this a bit, but is there anyway to say that everyone has to PM their transactions to the Commish by, say, Saturday at noon. And then the Commish posts them all at once.

Or maybe there is even a web service that lets people submit things to it that are then revealed later?

The downside to this is the inability to make moves after our arbitrary deadline, but if we are playing best ball and unlimited rosters, that's a risk people would be able to mitigate.