Lots of action in here today. That's good to see.
Briefly:
Those guys were retired. If you look at the
Iraqi SP that Phoenix signed, you'll see that his player card indicates he'd been retired. I did that with all of them. When I loaded a file though, they were all back in-game as free agents. At that point, I just figured the hell with it and let them go where they'd been. The AI had signed those players in Compton, Phoenix signed their guy and I think LA has one of them too.
One reminder about fast-sim and bad contracts. You can release a guy in fast-sim without the deal counting against your cap. Think of fast-sim as the NFL in that way. Contracts are not guaranteed, so if you sign a guy to a long-term deal and decide he's no longer worth, you don't have to ride the deal out. This wouldn't work in some formats, but I've always believed that in fast-sim, we ought to employ the NFL model which I know some purists don't like but...if you're a purist and playing fast-sim with no injuries I dunno what to tell you.
Anyway, because of that non-punitive contract situation...you could release anyone you wanted. After a year, if a guy isn't signed the game will usually retire a player. So if you all wanted those guys to disappear naturally you could just collude not to sign any of them especially now that none of our teams are under AI control.
I just doubt they'd all go unsigned.
The exports for the playoff teams are in, so I will probably run sometime this afternoon depending on my schedule goes the rest of the day.