Ideas for Self-implementation of a Salary cap and contracts for Online Franchise

[bgdave39]

Re: Ideas for Self-implementation of a Salary cap and contracts for Online Franchise

I would LOVE an update from EA on this. Having a realistic system or our own is going to be an absolute nightmare for commishes.


Here's a link to the excel I have compiled with all teams from the ratings EA releases:

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?5jyolyj22tz

As you can see, the top teams have about 4000 overall ratings points. This is my cap i am working from and trying to develop a formula to take a bit more into account than just overall ratings.

I am basically using that, and trying to come up with a formula to take age, rating, and position into account. I will try and use rotoworld to find about 20 players from all levels, ie benchwarmer, stars, etc... to come up with a formula which will come as close to the real life dollar amounts as possible. I've got a preliminary formula already but it's hard to make it accurate for all walks of NFL players. I am working on that now though and trying to account for position as well.

Each season, the commish could just run a quick sript that adds one year to each player, and then add the rookies for each team, remove retired players, and update any other player movement, and the spreadsheet should do all the calculating for you. You can then host it online and it can be easily viewable by everyone.

[juliusjackson]

Re: Ideas for Self-implementation of a Salary cap and contracts for Online Franchise

give me some feedback on this one:


<center>In-Season Free Agent Wire</center>

Player bids can be made at any time, but are processed every 48 hours by the commissioner (same time the week is advanced)

Free Agents bids must meet the minimum requirement for their rating, but can go as high as you want.

The first 24 hours of free agency is blind. PM your offer to the commissioner or to a player movement rep (purple). Only the top 3 offers will advance to day 2. All offers will then be shown, and the highest bidder from there wins the player.

If there is a tie bid at the processing time, the team with the worse record wins the bid.

If your roster is full, you must also release a player before signing a new one.


<center>Cap Penalties</center>

A team will lose 50% of a player's cap value in the following situations:

1) when you trade/release ANY player who has not yet completed 3 seasons;
2) when you trade/release ANY player who you just acquired (same season) via trade or free agency;

A team will lose 25% of a player's cap value if a player who has completed between 3 and 9 seasons is released at any time other than the free cut period during the off-season.

Players with 10+ years experience can be cut with no penalty at any time.

The penalty for transactions during a season will count against the following season's cap. If you trade your 80 OVR rookie this season then your team loses 40 pts against the cap for the duration of next season.

The new season officially starts June 1st in the NFL, which will be signified in XML by advancing the season. If you cut/trade players BEFORE the season is officially advanced but AFTER the SB you may choose to count them against the upcoming season's cap OR the following season's. If you cut/trade them after advancement they automatically count against the following, not upcoming, season's cap. It's easier than it sounds.

<center>Off-Season Free Agency</center>

*Each off-season every team will need to go through free agency. Each player will fall into 1 of 3 categories:

1) Rookie Protected (RP) - Any player who has NOT finished 3 seasons. These players are naturally protected and will NOT use up protection slots.

2) Restricted Free Agent (RFA) - A player who has finished exactly 3 seasons. For RFAs, a team can match any offer given by another team.

3) Unrestricted Free Agent (UFA) - A player who has finished 4 or more seasons. UFAs go into the FA pool during the off-season. There is no bid matching for UFAs.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**Excluding Rookie Protected players, a team must choose which RFAs and UFAs it will protect. Every team has the following allotment of slots available each off-season to use:

Level A = 95-99 - 2 players
B = 90-94 - 2
C = 85-89 - 4
D = 80-84 - 4
E = 75-79 - 6
F = 70-74 - 6
G = 65-69 - 8
H = <65 - 8

Extreme success/failure will lessen a team's # of protection slots. This will replicate what occurs in the NFL when guys leave SB teams for paydays and leave horrible teams in hopes of winning gms:

- SB winner loses 1 slot each from levels C, D, and E.
- SB loser loses 1 slot from levels D and E.
- Conference Champ. losers lose 1 slot from level D.
- Teams with 4/5 season wins lose 1 slot from level D.
- Teams with less than 4 wins lose 1 slot from levels D and E.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

***To provide more leeway teams also have the ability to slide their slots using the following setup:

Level A = 12
B = 8
C = 6
D = 4
E = 3
F = 2
G = 1.5
H = 1

The #s on the right are the value of the protection slot. Owners may trade-in any combination of slots in either an ascending or descending fashion. Ex. an owner can trade-in 1 C level slot (6 pts) and 1 F level slot (2 pts) to obtain 1 more B level slot in the event he has one B level (90-94 ovr) player unprotected by default. An owner could also cash-in 1 B level slot (8 pts) for 2 D level slots.

Addition: Slots may be moved freely to an extent. You must leave the following # of slots at each level. You CANNOT move both level A slots down.

Level A = 1
B = 1
C = 2
D = 2
E = 3
F = 3
G = 4
H = 4

[bgdave39]

Re: Ideas for Self-implementation of a Salary cap and contracts for Online Franchise

Good god this iss complicated for 32 team leagues. This is going to be such a pain in the *** it isn't even funny. I am still working on my spreadsheet, but it is starting to dawn on me exactly how intensive this is going to be each and every day. Please. for the love of God EA, just patch your servers to allow the game to handle this stuff.

[juliusjackson]

Re: Ideas for Self-implementation of a Salary cap and contracts for Online Franchise

Good god this iss complicated for 32 team leagues. This is going to be such a pain in the *** it isn't even funny. I am still working on my spreadsheet, but it is starting to dawn on me exactly how intensive this is going to be each and every day. Please. for the love of God EA, just patch your servers to allow the game to handle this stuff.

its looks way more complicated than it is.

[thekodinator]

Re: Ideas for Self-implementation of a Salary cap and contracts for Online Franchise

Here is a system that I found online, used by a madden sim-league. I think it's really innovative and with some tweaking, would work really well. This system seems better used in a full 32-user league as it does not account for CPU teams, but it really has some potential in my opinion.

I'm basically just copy-pasting what they had on their website, so perhaps the numbers may need to be adjusted, but either way, I think the idea that they have would work wonders. Things that I added myself are in green.


Point System


Every team will be given a total of 200 POINTS for the season.

And an additional 50 points for the Draft.

All players' initial contract length is based on what their current contract length is. EXCEPT: Max contract length for all players is 5 years. No player can be signed to a contract for longer than 5 years.

Usage of Points

Free Agents

Free agent biddings are once per week. Contract value is based on two categories: 3 points each year, plus the required points depending on the overall of the player. Then the bidding will determine how much extra points you will be willing to give up.

95-99 = 30 Points
90-94 = 25 Points
85-89 = 20 Points
80-84 = 15 Points
75-79 = 10 Points
70-74 = 8 Points
65-69 = 4 Points
00-64 = 3 Points

Example-

Free Agent: Plaxico Burress 86 overall (20 points)

Team 1: 20 Points / 4 years / 15 extra (20+12+15) = 47 points
Team 2: 20 Points / 5 years / 6 extra (20+15+6) = 41 points
Team 3: 20 Points / 5 years / 14 extra (20+15+14) = 49 points

Plaxico signs with Team 3 with 49 points.

Re-Signing Players and Draft

To re-sign your players, you will need to use a certain amount of points per player(like FA), depending on how high of an Overall that players is and how many years you would like to resign them for. Remember it's an additional 3 points per year. Here is the chart once again-

95-99 = 30 Points
90-94 = 25 Points
85-89 = 20 Points
80-84 = 15 Points
75-79 = 10 Points
70-74 = 8 Points
65-69 = 4 Points
00-64 = 3 Points

Example-

Expiring Contract: Larry Fitzgerald: 99 overall (30 points)

Team: 30 Points / 5 years (30 + 15) = 45 points

*Everyone gets 200 more points the week of the first preseason game of the following season. If you have remaining points from the previous season, you will get half of what you didnt spend. This will help people with "Rebuilding"

The points spent on a player are not recurring every year. They are spent once when you sign/re-sign the player, and then the only book-keeping that is needed after that is to keep track of how many years are on that player's contract. This is easier than keeping track of a moving salary cap because you only need to keep track of each team's point total within each year, rather than across years.

In addition, a team loses 50% of the "market value" for a player that is dropped or waived.

-Example: Plaxico Burress 86 overall (20 points)

Years left on contract when dropped: 2 years
"Market Value" : (20 + 6) = 26
Team loses 13 points when dropping player.

Let me know what you think.

[thekodinator]

Re: Ideas for Self-implementation of a Salary cap and contracts for Online Franchise

Here is a system that I found online, used by a madden sim-league. I think it's really innovative and with some tweaking, would work really well. This system seems better used in a full 32-user league as it does not account for CPU teams, but it really has some potential in my opinion.

I'm basically just copy-pasting what they had on their website, so perhaps the numbers may need to be adjusted, but either way, I think the idea that they have would work wonders. Things that I added myself are in green.


Point System


Every team will be given a total of 200 POINTS for the season.

And an additional 50 points for the Draft.

All players' initial contract length is based on what their current contract length is. EXCEPT: Max contract length for all players is 5 years. No player can be signed to a contract for longer than 5 years.

Usage of Points

Free Agents

Free agent biddings are once per week. Contract value is based on two categories: 3 points each year, plus the required points depending on the overall of the player. Then the bidding will determine how much extra points you will be willing to give up.

95-99 = 30 Points
90-94 = 25 Points
85-89 = 20 Points
80-84 = 15 Points
75-79 = 10 Points
70-74 = 8 Points
65-69 = 4 Points
00-64 = 3 Points

Example-

Free Agent: Plaxico Burress 86 overall (20 points)

Team 1: 20 Points / 4 years / 15 extra (20+12+15) = 47 points
Team 2: 20 Points / 5 years / 6 extra (20+15+6) = 41 points
Team 3: 20 Points / 5 years / 14 extra (20+15+14) = 49 points

Plaxico signs with Team 3 with 49 points.

Re-Signing Players and Draft

To re-sign your players, you will need to use a certain amount of points per player(like FA), depending on how high of an Overall that players is and how many years you would like to resign them for. Remember it's an additional 3 points per year. Here is the chart once again-

95-99 = 30 Points
90-94 = 25 Points
85-89 = 20 Points
80-84 = 15 Points
75-79 = 10 Points
70-74 = 8 Points
65-69 = 4 Points
00-64 = 3 Points

Example-

Expiring Contract: Larry Fitzgerald: 99 overall (30 points)

Team: 30 Points / 5 years (30 + 15) = 45 points

*Everyone gets 200 more points the week of the first preseason game of the following season. If you have remaining points from the previous season, you will get half of what you didnt spend. This will help people with "Rebuilding"

The points spent on a player are not recurring every year. They are spent once when you sign/re-sign the player, and then the only book-keeping that is needed after that is to keep track of how many years are on that player's contract. This is easier than keeping track of a moving salary cap because you only need to keep track of each team's point total within each year, rather than across years.

In addition, a team loses 50% of the "market value" for a player that is dropped or waived.

-Example: Plaxico Burress 86 overall (20 points)

Years left on contract when dropped: 2 years
"Market Value" : (20 + 6) = 26
Team loses 13 points when dropping player.

Let me know what you think.

Bump... Can't let this thread hit the 3rd page

[thekodinator]

Re: Ideas for Self-implementation of a Salary cap and contracts for Online Franchise

no one?

[TheDMG]

Re: Ideas for Self-implementation of a Salary cap and contracts for Online Franchise

give me some feedback on this one:


<center>In-Season Free Agent Wire</center>

Player bids can be made at any time, but are processed every 48 hours by the commissioner (same time the week is advanced)

Free Agents bids must meet the minimum requirement for their rating, but can go as high as you want.

The first 24 hours of free agency is blind. PM your offer to the commissioner or to a player movement rep (purple). Only the top 3 offers will advance to day 2. All offers will then be shown, and the highest bidder from there wins the player.

If there is a tie bid at the processing time, the team with the worse record wins the bid.

If your roster is full, you must also release a player before signing a new one.


<center>Cap Penalties</center>

A team will lose 50% of a player's cap value in the following situations:

1) when you trade/release ANY player who has not yet completed 3 seasons;
2) when you trade/release ANY player who you just acquired (same season) via trade or free agency;

A team will lose 25% of a player's cap value if a player who has completed between 3 and 9 seasons is released at any time other than the free cut period during the off-season.

Players with 10+ years experience can be cut with no penalty at any time.

The penalty for transactions during a season will count against the following season's cap. If you trade your 80 OVR rookie this season then your team loses 40 pts against the cap for the duration of next season.

The new season officially starts June 1st in the NFL, which will be signified in XML by advancing the season. If you cut/trade players BEFORE the season is officially advanced but AFTER the SB you may choose to count them against the upcoming season's cap OR the following season's. If you cut/trade them after advancement they automatically count against the following, not upcoming, season's cap. It's easier than it sounds.

<center>Off-Season Free Agency</center>

*Each off-season every team will need to go through free agency. Each player will fall into 1 of 3 categories:

1) Rookie Protected (RP) - Any player who has NOT finished 3 seasons. These players are naturally protected and will NOT use up protection slots.

2) Restricted Free Agent (RFA) - A player who has finished exactly 3 seasons. For RFAs, a team can match any offer given by another team.

3) Unrestricted Free Agent (UFA) - A player who has finished 4 or more seasons. UFAs go into the FA pool during the off-season. There is no bid matching for UFAs.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**Excluding Rookie Protected players, a team must choose which RFAs and UFAs it will protect. Every team has the following allotment of slots available each off-season to use:

Level A = 95-99 - 2 players
B = 90-94 - 2
C = 85-89 - 4
D = 80-84 - 4
E = 75-79 - 6
F = 70-74 - 6
G = 65-69 - 8
H = <65 - 8

Extreme success/failure will lessen a team's # of protection slots. This will replicate what occurs in the NFL when guys leave SB teams for paydays and leave horrible teams in hopes of winning gms:

- SB winner loses 1 slot each from levels C, D, and E.
- SB loser loses 1 slot from levels D and E.
- Conference Champ. losers lose 1 slot from level D.
- Teams with 4/5 season wins lose 1 slot from level D.
- Teams with less than 4 wins lose 1 slot from levels D and E.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

***To provide more leeway teams also have the ability to slide their slots using the following setup:

Level A = 12
B = 8
C = 6
D = 4
E = 3
F = 2
G = 1.5
H = 1

The #s on the right are the value of the protection slot. Owners may trade-in any combination of slots in either an ascending or descending fashion. Ex. an owner can trade-in 1 C level slot (6 pts) and 1 F level slot (2 pts) to obtain 1 more B level slot in the event he has one B level (90-94 ovr) player unprotected by default. An owner could also cash-in 1 B level slot (8 pts) for 2 D level slots.

Addition: Slots may be moved freely to an extent. You must leave the following # of slots at each level. You CANNOT move both level A slots down.

Level A = 1
B = 1
C = 2
D = 2
E = 3
F = 3
G = 4
H = 4

This is the most interesting one I've seen so far. My question is how many points are teams allotted? The value of the protection slots adds to 130 - is the cap higher than this?

[thekodinator]

Re: Ideas for Self-implementation of a Salary cap and contracts for Online Franchise

I just found a great site (Walterfootball.com) that has lists of the years that each player's contract expires. I thought this would be a helpful resource to have if anyone out there wanted to start playing around with player contracts for their own salary cap system. I've been playing around with it a bit and it's really helpful!

http://walterfootball.com/freeagentscontracts.php

[burne]

Re: Ideas for Self-implementation of a Salary cap and contracts for Online Franchise

Hello all, there's been a lot of talk of fairly complex systems designed for 32 person leagues. I, on the other hand, am going to be doing a 4-man OF with 3 of my best friends, which has very different requirements, as you can imagine.

With only 4 people, the only way to have a reasonable FA is if each of us manages 7 CPU teams' moves. (Note: each player gets one team in each division, creating a kind of side-competition in each). Thus, rather than go for a crazy complex and faceted free agency system, it has to be simple and straightforward enough that:

1) It isn't insanely time consuming to do for 8 teams.
-and-
2) Decisions are easy enough that conflicts of interest don't cause poor ones and deep analysis isn't required to make good ones.

On the other hand, the goals are:

1) Have something fun and interesting to do that can improve/change your team.
-and-
2) Enough players move around to keep the league from being stale.

Ok, so it's fairly simple. Free agency takes place after the Super Bowl, before the Draft. There is a free agency draft of 5 rounds with the same order as the NFL Draft. Each team can take any player from any team with the following exceptions:

1) Each team gets 3 "keepers", players which are protected from being drafted.

EDIT: Forgot to mention this the first time, any player that has played less than 3 seasons in the league is automatically protected from being drafted.

2) There are level caps for the players which can be taken in each round as follows:

1st - <100 | 2nd - <90 | 3rd - <85 | 4th - <80 | 5th - <75

3) There are per-round limits of how many players a team can lose as follows:

1st - 1 | 2nd - 2 | 3rd - 2 | 4th - 3 | 5th - 3

This means that once a team has lost 1 player in the first round, other teams must look elsewhere.

And that's it. Everything else is pretty easy to deal with in a small OF. Trades are simply put through a "is this a reasonable trade that would happen in real life?" test. Free agency the rest of the year is done through a simple waiver system. Players are responsible for their CPU teams year-round, and it's a matter of pride if your teams do better than the other players' haha, so slacking is not an option.

The benefits that I see are as follows:

• Players move, including big name players
• You only have a limited ability to affect who leaves, which is nice because IRL GMs can't always keep the players they want
• The limits keep good teams from being picked apart and essentially being punished for being good
• HOWEVER, better teams are still exposed to losing more than worse teams. If you are good and have depth, you could lose 5 80+ players while the least a team could lose is 1 80+ player, a huge difference.
• The decisions of who to keep and who to take for CPU teams are fast and straightforward: What are the needs and what's available? BOOM, done.

What do you think? Again, the way I see it, there a couple of basic things you want out of free agency, and no real need to go crazy and do huge spreadsheets and enter data when you really just want a chance to fill needs and have teams get better/worse.

[thekodinator]

Re: Ideas for Self-implementation of a Salary cap and contracts for Online Franchise

Hello all, there's been a lot of talk of fairly complex systems designed for 32 person leagues. I, on the other hand, am going to be doing a 4-man OF with 3 of my best friends, which has very different requirements, as you can imagine.

With only 4 people, the only way to have a reasonable FA is if each of us manages 7 CPU teams' moves. (Note: each player gets one team in each division, creating a kind of side-competition in each). Thus, rather than go for a crazy complex and faceted free agency system, it has to be simple and straightforward enough that:

1) It isn't insanely time consuming to do for 8 teams.
-and-
2) Decisions are easy enough that conflicts of interest don't cause poor ones and deep analysis isn't required to make good ones.

On the other hand, the goals are:

1) Have something fun and interesting to do that can improve/change your team.
-and-
2) Enough players move around to keep the league from being stale.

Ok, so it's fairly simple. Free agency takes place after the Super Bowl, before the Draft. There is a free agency draft of 5 rounds with the same order as the NFL Draft. Each team can take any player from any team with the following exceptions:

1) Each team gets 3 "keepers", players which are protected from being drafted.

2) There are level caps for the players which can be taken in each round as follows:

1st - <100 | 2nd - <90 | 3rd - <85 | 4th - <80 | 5th - <75

3) There are per-round limits of how many players a team can lose as follows:

1st - 1 | 2nd - 2 | 3rd - 2 | 4th - 3 | 5th - 3

This means that once a team has lost 1 player in the first round, other teams must look elsewhere.

And that's it. Everything else is pretty easy to deal with in a small OF. Trades are simply put through a "is this a reasonable trade that would happen in real life?" test. Free agency the rest of the year is done through a simple waiver system. Players are responsible for their CPU teams year-round, and it's a matter of pride if your teams do better than the other players' haha, so slacking is not an option.

The benefits that I see are as follows:

• Players move, including big name players
• You only have a limited ability to affect who leaves, which is nice because IRL GMs can't always keep the players they want
• The limits keep good teams from being picked apart and essentially being punished for being good
• HOWEVER, better teams are still exposed to losing more than worse teams. If you are good and have depth, you could lose 5 80+ players while the least a team could lose is 1 80+ player, a huge difference.
• The decisions of who to keep and who to take for CPU teams are fast and straightforward: What are the needs and what's available? BOOM, done.

What do you think? Again, the way I see it, there a couple of basic things you want out of free agency, and no real need to go crazy and do huge spreadsheets and enter data when you really just want a chance to fill needs and have teams get better/worse.

Dude, I am SO happy you posted on here... My online franchise will only be me and 3 of my friends, so naturally free agency has been a huge concern of mine. Most of the suggestions that I've made so far have been for other people in full 32-person leagues, and not for a smaller one like yours or mine.

I really like your idea, with just a couple concerns...

1) I don't know any other way to work around this, but for some reason the idea of controlling other teams' roster moves seems weird to me, and would take away from my experience of building my team through the years it seems...

and 2) I would be afraid that your system of free agency would cause teams to have too much turnover, resulting in more of a fantasy football effect, as opposed to franchise...

are either of these valid points? I'd have to test it out more to see, perhaps I'm just not catching the vision of it yet...

[burne]

Re: Ideas for Self-implementation of a Salary cap and contracts for Online Franchise

* Which isn't to put down the schemes that everyone else has come up with that are more complicated. It's just that anything with a lot of points/contracts/math I imagine will run into a whole ton of balancing/tweaking issues that are going to be a bitch to get a league to agree on fixes for. The more complex a machine, the easier it is to break and the harder it is to fix, you know?

Also, as an addendum:
I'm considering now whether or not a team can pick one of their own players in the FA draft as if it was another teams... it has some very interesting implications.

For example, a middle of the pack team that believes it is on the rise can gamble and spend all three keepers on <90 players and then (as long as all the teams before it picked players from other teams) pick one of its own <90 players in the first round, which protects them from losing any players in the first round, any 90+ players, and their four best <90 players. It's kind of like an isolationist strategy and would represent real teams that didn't do great last season but are on the rise and keep most of their core because players don't want to leave and they don't need to add anybody.

On the other hand, the worst teams won't do this because they're not really at risk for having their talent stolen and they can pick up better players from the best teams than keep the ones on their team.

Also, the best teams can't try to hold on to their players using this strategy because most of the league gets to pick before them and thus has a chance at their top talent anyway.

[Solojr]

Re: Ideas for Self-implementation of a Salary cap and contracts for Online Franchise

wow, this is really informative.

[thekodinator]

Re: Ideas for Self-implementation of a Salary cap and contracts for Online Franchise

I totally agree with your philosophy... the easier the better (I wish EA would just patch this crap for us).

Although I've been looking at rosters and I think I'm afraid that there will be too much player movement with the system you were describing for my liking... I really like the general idea of it though! It's totally "tweakable", so I'll try to tune it a bit for my purposes.

[burne]

Re: Ideas for Self-implementation of a Salary cap and contracts for Online Franchise

Yeah I figured there were a whole lot of us out there who are NOT delving into 32-human OF's and we weren't getting any love in this thread lol... as for the concerns:

1) I don't know any other way to work around this, but for some reason the idea of controlling other teams' roster moves seems weird to me, and would take away from my experience of building my team through the years it seems...

I fully agree it's kind of weird. But I don't think it'll be so bad. With each of us managing one team in each division, there'll be that element of I WANT to do the best possible moves for all my teams because my CPU teams winning their divisions is, you know, bragging rights for me.

Also, that's why I wanted to make sure that it was simple enough where the best move for a CPU team isn't incredibly subjective. You look at the team's biggest needs and you look at the best players available at those positions and you take them. The only real issue I can come up with is say one of your CPU teams needs a WR, and its the first round and both you and your friend have available receivers that are rated 93 or something... you obviously will take theirs instead of yours. But it won't be so bad because first, their team can't lose any more 90+ players and if they didn't keep the guy, they're willing to lose him, and second, someone else will take one of your star players, nothing you can do to stop it.

I don't know if that was coherent, but basically I'm saying that the decisions are simple enough to make for CPU teams that you can spend a couple minutes on each of their picks and it'll work out fine. Just make sure you and your friends agree to act in the best interest of the CPU teams, for the sake of keeping the league fun and competitive, and I think it'll be fine.

and 2) I would be afraid that your system of free agency would cause teams to have too much turnover, resulting in more of a fantasy football effect, as opposed to franchise...

I think in the NFL, teams change more than 5 players per year, so I don't think the number of rounds is an issue. You may be right that too many high level players will change hands though, and those are the ones that really define a team.

The beauty of the simplicity of this system is that it's easy to tweak. So you could change it so that round 2 is OVR<85, and round 3 is OVR<75, etc., so that basically one big name will change and the rest aren't a huge deal.

Keep in mind that with fewer >90 players due to stretched out ratings, and with the 3 keepers, it is entirely possible that no 90+ ever hits the free agent pool... heh to be honest, I'm actually more concerned that no big players ever change hands than I am that too many do.

Overall, my response to this concern is that if there's too much/too little turnover, the system is reaaaal easy to adjust.