Commish Thoughts, Part Deux.

[Ben E Lou]

OK. The poll resulted in an overwhelming desire to run the league from within. I'll defer to those of you who have done this before. How do we pick one? Volunteers? Nominations? Co-commishes?

All I know is that I'm ready to turn over leadership to someone else. I think I'm fairly good at doing the stuff that needed to be done up to now, but it's time for someone else to lead. I would be interested in being a part of whatever league administration there is, but not as the head guy.

Thoughts?

[wade moore]

I'm going to make a vague statement that will imply something obvious.

I foresee a setup where the commish is a seperate role from the webmaster. I don't know the technical piece behind it, but I know there are those talented in making the website very good but may not want to/be able to do the commitment of running regular sims along with the web design.

That being said - if we were on the playground doing commish picks regardless of outside factors, I'd always say VPI. However, I know that he's already involved in commishing 2 or 3 other leagues. So, I worry that commishing another league would just be too much.

[fantastic flying froggies]

I 'd ask if anybody wants to volunteer for the job first.

I don't think being a commish can be forced on someone unwilling to do it.

[gstelmack]

Originally Posted by fantastic flying froggies

I 'd ask if anybody wants to volunteer for the job first.

I don't think being a commish can be forced on someone unwilling to do it.

Agreed.

[Ben E Lou]

So, does anybody want to volunteer for the job?

[Celeval]

I'm willing to help out with website stuff and the like, but I'm not so hot as a commish-type.

[gstelmack]

I am willing to run sims.

[CraigSca]

Are the commish and the simmer two separate entities?

[Flasch186]

what are the thoughts on sim schedules?

[Northwood_DK]

Originally Posted by Flasch186

what are the thoughts on sim schedules?

I will hope that we go for 2 sims pr week. 3 sims pr week makes it very difficult for writers/vultures to keep up.

What days the sim is run must be mostly up to the commish but maybe try to stay away from the days most used by the other leagues if that is possible.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by CraigSca

Are the commish and the simmer two separate entities?

I assume that the commish is the person simming. Has anyone seen it done differently?

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Northwood_DK

I will hope that we go for 2 sims pr week. 3 sims pr week makes it very difficult for writers/vultures to keep up.

What days the sim is run must be mostly up to the commish but maybe try to stay away from the days most used by the other leagues if that is possible.

Yeah. I'd be in favor of 2 sims per week regular season, 3 in the playoffs, but I could live with 3 sims per week throughout.

[Narcizo]

I think 2 sims a week is probably optimum.

[RedKingGold]

Yep, I assuming that by two sims per week y'all mean two games per week.

We would still be able to have optional mid-week sims the day before each game, correct?

If so, I agree that two sims per week is optimal

[Icy]

This is how we have it setup in the WAFL:

- The commish is who sims, in this case gstelmack would the commish.
- The co-commish is who runs the website and can sim in case the commish is unable for any reason, in this case would be Celeval.

Then we have also two assistant commishes, one per conference. They help the commishes to deal with decissions, take a look at trades fairness for their conference, attend their conference owners demands etc.

With that you have 4 persons that i guess are enought to take league decissions and watch out the rules.

I would volunteer for the website stuff but i'm already the co-commish and webamster for the WAFL and two leagues would be too much. Of course i can help from time to time if needed.

[CraigSca]

Originally Posted by RedKingGold

Yep, I assuming that by two sims per week y'all mean two games per week.

We would still be able to have optional mid-week sims the day before each game, correct?

If so, I agree that two sims per week is optimal

What he said.

[CraigSca]

It would be really nice if we could standardize game weeks. Meaning, we keep the same schedule throughout the season, with the only changes being for the other stages of the game.

Maybe something like Tuesday is the first midweek port, Wednesday is game day #1, Saturday is mid-week #2, Sunday is gameday #2?

[Narcizo]

Definitely, although I would favour two fixed weekday gamesims.

[Dutch]

I would like to see it standardized throughout the work week as well.

Perhaps,

Monday - Game
Tuesday - Mid-week
Wednesday - Game
Thursday - Mid-week
Friday - Make up day if neccessary due to unforseen delays.

[3ric]

A Wednesday game day would be great.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

I am willing to run sims.

It appears that we have a volunteer. Any others?

[gstelmack]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

It appears that we have a volunteer. Any others?

Just remember, the more time I spend simming, the less time I have to spend on utilities

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

Just remember, the more time I spend simming, the less time I have to spend on utilities

MORE VOLUNTEERS, PLEASE!!!!!!!

[CraigSca]

I wouldn't mind helping out either, but I held off since Greg already volunteered.

[gstelmack]

Originally Posted by CraigSca

I wouldn't mind helping out either, but I held off since Greg already volunteered.

I figured we'd get some volunteers, then everyone would vote on who they preferred or somesuch. I'm willing to do it, but I'm also willing not to do it.

[CraigSca]

Kind of in the same boat.

[RedKingGold]

Its difficult to determine those who are interested in potentially commishing the league but are afraid that they may come off from being too "eager" from those who would like to but are simply too busy to offer. Obviously, all of us were invited into this league because it was felt that we would be committed owners that would make the league fun and would be able to "co-exist" with each other without any major g-mac-ing problems. As such, I'm sure there is some trepidation by interested people about coming in and being too strong headed.

So, to break the ice a little bit, here is what I picture the overall power structure at the top of our league to represent.

Conference President #1 = Responsible for maintenance and updating of the website.

Conference President #2 = Helps coordinate vultures and other media.

Commishoner = Runs sims and breaks ties between Conference Presidents.

This is what I picture the league power structure to be. When any obvious problems come up, I would expect that the issue would be open to league-wide private vote made to our conference presidents.

The conference president represents the majority opinion of each conference and should both conference presidents be in conflict with each other, the commish has the final tiebreaking vote.

So, who would I have in mind to represent these positions? In all honesty, thus far, I only know about 1/3 of the owners in this league from the GEFL. Therefore, I am a bit biased. Also, I am assuming we have come to the conclusion of finding a commishoner/conference presidents from within. I do believe that is the best solution considering the leadership we already have on board.

I (and I'm sure pretty much all of the owners involved) would love to see VPI involved in some way. Many of us have had experience with him through both the GEFL and IHOF and I was extremely thrilled to see he has joined our league. However, I am also pretty sure that he has had much on his plate over the past few weeks/months and probably had his hands full running two leagues, let alone a potential third. Yet, I hold out hope that he would be involved in our website, both in creation and updates. So, perhaps a conference president position could be in order.

Also, while this league belongs to us the owners, in my eyes it was an is Skydog's baby. While I know he has said that he has little interest in being the commish, I still feel that he should have an important hand in the development of this league. I believe he would be a nice fit as the other conference commishoner.

Finally, the big question. Who do we see as our commishoner? Both Greg and Craig (CraigSca, I'm assuming that Craig is his first name) have expressed interest in potentially being our commishner. I honestly know very little about each but would trust anyone in this league with being the commishner. So, I'm at a deadlock in this one. Perhaps we can have a sealed vote sent to an unbiased party to decide who would be who. Maybe we can do what is done in the WAFL and have both be co-commishners.

In either case, the whole point in this message is that I'm hoping to stir some movement towards picking league ownership. Once we can solve this, I get the feeling that everything else (i.e. league structure, website, start date, etc.) would quickly fall into place. On the other hand, I would like to do this right the first time.

My hands are tired, so I'm going to stop typing now.

[cartman]

I'll throw my name out there, but it might get confusing with two Gregs. So just think of me as cartman.

I'm not sure of the time commitment needed for an FOF commish. I'm currently the commish of the league in my signature, and that takes about an hour of my time for each sim, so 3 to 4 hours per week.

[SackAttack]

Thank god my name isn't Scott Tenorman.

[Narcizo]

I don't think anyone would argue against VPI in any position he would be happy to take, but my impression is that he probably has enough on his plate commishing 2 leagues already. I trust anyone to commish the league (either because I know them, or by proxy) and I trust them to be able to judge whether they have the time to commit to commishing it. So whoever wants the job most gets my vote.

[Ben E Lou]

THOUGHTS...

1. There's no one in the league that I don't trust to run the sims and make commish decisions with the best interests of the entire league at hand.

2. Given what I just said above, my #1 desire in a commish is consistent availability to run sims. One of the many, many great things about Todd (The Gold Standard Of Commishes) is that you can count on the sim being run at the same time nearly every single day. The more the person can control their schedule, the better off we are.

3. Some have hem-hawed around it, but let's call a spade a spade: there's a hope out there that Todd can do an IHOF/GEFL level web site. Todd expressed quite clearly in IHOF, though, that he's got a lot to do in the FOF world right now (not to mention his real life). Earlier this month, he listed several things that (as far as I can tell) still need to be completed or even started on.

Originally Posted by VPI97

- Moving the site to the new servers
- Finishing up the Madden converter - it works good (notice the IHOF Bowl pics) but each team still requires manual work done...when I'm finished that will no longer be the case
- Making changes to the IHOF App to extract data from FOF 2007
- Adding a ton of stuff to the site that's been on my list for up to 12 months
- and much, much more

He's also got some more requested upgrades planned for the FOFC front page. Let's give the man a break. FOF2K7 lists a ton of stuff in-game that wasn't there in FOF2K4. I think we can make do just fine for now with the game HTML, combined with the enhanced player cards and stats tracking. If, down the road, Todd wants to step in and do his magic, then that's AWESOME. But for now, I don't think it is fair to expect him to be more than a committed owner.

4. I'd like to see a league administration of 2 Conference Presidents and the Commish. I envision these guys as the ones that drive further decision-making until we get a constitution in place. They've got a couple of decisions to make pretty quickly: how to start the league, and what injury setting to use. After that, writing up the rules in a constitutional format needs to happen. There's good input from the membership on the startup and injury setting issues, so those decisions can probably happen pretty quickly after the people are in place. Some decisions will need a polling of the league first, and others can probably be made just among the three of them.

5. I'll volunteer to be considered for a Conference President position.

6. Given the level of talent at many things in this league, I don't see why we can't have multiple positions that people volunteer for and do until they quit, or the league administration says it's time for them to step down. The two most obvious immediate positions would be Webmaster and Vulture Coordinator. Down the road, a HOF Coordinator would probably be desired. Any others needed?

7. As far as this being my "baby," it isn't any more than IHOF was/is. (For those that don't know, I took on the same role in starting IHOF as I've taken here.) In my professional life, I've always been very good at generating interest, starting things up, and then handing off to someone who can maintain well. Once we get a commish picked, it's his baby. As I said, I'll volunteer for a term as a Conference President this time, but that's about it.

8. RKG is probably right in that some people are being shy about volunteering as to not appear to eager, but the tough thing is that with nearly all of us in other leagues, and many having roles bigger than just owners in other leagues, we don't know who is being shy, and who isn't volunteering because they don't have the time. I guess what I'm saying is this: I think we all appreciate humility and not wanting to appear over-eager, but well, we need you. If you're willing to take on a role, speak now, please.

RKG, you think YOUR hands were tired???

--Ben

[wade moore]

Yeah.. the only thing I'd say is I think I'd rather not have the Vulture/Web folks be tied to the Conference President roles. I see the Conference President roles as much more decision making roles and the other two having specfiic responsibilities. The two skillsets required for each are not necessarily the same.

I think having someone do both say Web and Conference president is fine if it happens to be the same person, but I don't think they should be automatically tied together.

[gstelmack]

Originally Posted by Icy

This is how we have it setup in the WAFL:

- The commish is who sims, in this case gstelmack would the commish.
- The co-commish is who runs the website and can sim in case the commish is unable for any reason, in this case would be Celeval.

Then we have also two assistant commishes, one per conference. They help the commishes to deal with decissions, take a look at trades fairness for their conference, attend their conference owners demands etc.

With that you have 4 persons that i guess are enought to take league decissions and watch out the rules.

I'll bring this back down here to this section: I really like this proposed setup from Icy.

Also, I can help write utilities to generate data for the website. I'm not a webmaster by any means, but I can sure generate HTML pages from data.

[MIJB#19]

I'm willing to be involved as conference president.
Commish is too far fetched with my vage future schedule. Good thing we seem to have others willing to.

[RedKingGold]

Well, I'll throw my name into the hat for commish as well since everyone else seems to be doing it.

Right now, my entire life is law school. Although things are pretty busy right now with finals, it would not stop me from doing something such as running a sim that would take approximately a half hour or so. Also, I do not have a set schedule and can be consistent and flexible enough to run a sim at an exact time on any day of the week.

Also, I've been heavily involved as a vulture over at the GEFL. With our season preview/GEFL Bowl previews, I typically organized all of the articles and other writers to put together a pretty decent preview. While I do not have Wade Moore's abilities in terms of the creative things he does in such, it is within my ability to help coordinate things to make sure all Vulture activities run smoothly.

My biggest limitations are that I have *zero* experience in website development/maintenance/website programming etc. Nor do I have much experience in graphics or other technological stuff. I'm hoping to get involved with HTML education in the near future for my own personal interests, but am not at that point right now.

[wade moore]

Originally Posted by RedKingGold

Also, I've been heavily involved as a vulture over at the GEFL. With our season preview/GEFL Bowl previews, I typically organized all of the articles and other writers to put together a pretty decent preview. While I do not have Wade Moore's abilities in terms of the creative things he does in such, it is within my ability to help coordinate things to make sure all Vulture activities run smoothly.

Over in the IHOF I hold the role of "Media/Vulture Coordinator"... I think the role works well, particularly when I actually do my job ... I think that would be a good fit for you or someone else that just wants to organize it...

I personally would like to be in a position where I just contribute here. It's going to be hard enough to contribute here and the IHOF without coordinating, commishing, etc. beyond what I already am.

[Eaglesfan27]

I'm willing to take on a term at any role besides commish, website designer, or any other role that requires a significant level of technical mastery. My schedule just isn't consistent enough on Tuesday and Weds. night to guarantee that I can run the sims at a consistent time on those days. Also, I said a term because I'm taking my Child and Adolescent Boards in June and November of 07 (assuming I pass the first part in June.) Therefore, from April until June of 07 and September to November of 07, my life will be busy enough that the only thing I'm sure of is that I will be able to remain an active owner in the league. Like others have said, I trust everyone in this league with the jobs, and I'll be quite content to "just" be an owner as well.

[VPI97]

Thanks for the kind words, guys, but right now I'm content with being just an owner. I'll try to help out with things as much as I can, but can't commit to any ongoing role in the league beyond ownership.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Icy

This is how we have it setup in the WAFL:

- The commish is who sims, in this case gstelmack would the commish.
- The co-commish is who runs the website and can sim in case the commish is unable for any reason, in this case would be Celeval.

Then we have also two assistant commishes, one per conference. They help the commishes to deal with decissions, take a look at trades fairness for their conference, attend their conference owners demands etc.

With that you have 4 persons that i guess are enought to take league decissions and watch out the rules.

I would volunteer for the website stuff but i'm already the co-commish and webamster for the WAFL and two leagues would be too much. Of course i can help from time to time if needed.

Originally Posted by gstelmack

I'll bring this back down here to this section: I really like this proposed setup from Icy.

Also, I can help write utilities to generate data for the website. I'm not a webmaster by any means, but I can sure generate HTML pages from data.

My only concern (albeit a minor one) is what to do when the four have a 2-2 vote on something. I'd just as soon have the Webmaster position be its own separate entity for that reason. Thoughts?

[RedKingGold]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

My only concern (albeit a minor one) is what to do when the four have a 2-2 vote on something. I'd just as soon have the Webmaster position be its own separate entity for that reason. Thoughts?

Yeah, I'm in agreement that we should have a commish and conference presidents (3) to solve disputes and create seperate positions for webmaster and vulture coordinator.

Webmaster and vulture coordinator would not have tie-breaking votes.

[TroyF]

I'm content just to be an owner. My schedule gets goofy quite frequently. I often end up on unscheduled trips. I'm going to make it a point to be an active owner, get my lineups in time, etc. but beyond that I just can't commit to anything more. It wouldn't be fair to the league.

I'm good with any of the list of guys here to take on those roles.

[Celeval]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

2. Given what I just said above, my #1 desire in a commish is consistent availability to run sims. One of the many, many great things about Todd (The Gold Standard Of Commishes) is that you can count on the sim being run at the same time nearly every single day. The more the person can control their schedule, the better off we are.

This is the biggest reason I don't feel right volunteering to be commish; even when I am flexible, I have trouble being right on top of a sim schedule. That said, I'm not terribly flexible right now - I'm willing to help out with the website, and will put my name in to be involved as one of the non-time-speicific roles (conf commissioner, etc), but I dunno if I could be the full webmaster without eventually disappointing people.

[gstelmack]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

My only concern (albeit a minor one) is what to do when the four have a 2-2 vote on something. I'd just as soon have the Webmaster position be its own separate entity for that reason. Thoughts?

I think a case could be made that if it ended up 2-2, this'll be pretty controversial with no real good solution, and one of two things should happen:

1. Open it up to the league at large
2. Commish gets final say

I think you could also make a strong case that the commish makes decisions, period, with the others as an advisory committee to make sure the commish didn't miss some argument. And if people don't like the commish's decision, they can decide on someone else to be commish.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

I think a case could be made that if it ended up 2-2, this'll be pretty controversial with no real good solution, and one of two things should happen:

1. Open it up to the league at large
2. Commish gets final say

I think you could also make a strong case that the commish makes decisions, period, with the others as an advisory committee to make sure the commish didn't miss some argument. And if people don't like the commish's decision, they can decide on someone else to be commish.

Makes sense. I'm going to close this discussion and start a new one just for commish volunteers, with a brief "job description."