Know Your Role! Keys to being a successful Dynasty Commish!
Posted on 11. Jun, 2010 by Andy Miley in Columns, Draft Strategy
Tanking, in-fighting, rule clarifications, recruiting, unfair trades, baby sitting lineups, draft speed, money collection, payouts, rule changes, leadership, and complaints.
Are you getting excited about becoming a dynasty commissioner yet?
When you agree to take on the mantle and become a dynasty league commissioner, all the above and more will become your responsibility. It can be awesome to have your own league and run it the way a great league should be run.
Being a commissioner takes a great deal of work and patience. The job comes with little acknowledgement, but can be very rewarding. Truth be told, if you aren’t a commish, most of this hasn’t even crossed your mind. Let’s look at what it takes to be a good, or dare I say great, commissioner:
Do things that benefit your league and not your team.
This sounds a lot easier than it is. Try to come up with ideas that level the playing field instead of making sure your team is dominate for years. This year I gave up Justin Forsett to a team that was abandoned to make sure the new owner had some decent RBs on his team. It weakened my very stout team, but it helped better a team that now has a chance to compete. Because I was willing to do that, another owner with a very strong team gave up Chester Taylor to that same team. I wasn’t willing to ask him to do something I wasn’t willing to do.
Use a strong set of rules and stick to them.
Commissioners make mistakes all the time. Rules lay out what needs to be done, how the league works, scoring, etc. Transparency is very important. Leagues need to be fair to everyone involved or you are going to have a hard time keeping your league full.
Have a Co-Commish or group of other owners to bounce ideas off.
Sometimes our view of the world doesn’t agree with everyone else’s view. I know at times I can react to things heavy-handedly or too personally. Getting other owners involved who can give you a different perspective is always helpful. If you don’t have another owner to bounce things off of, talk to your fellow commissioners as they could have gone through something similar and have a good idea on how to fix the problem.
Open your league to changes.
Put it in your by-laws that owners can suggest new rules and that the league will vote on it. I’ve always made fee changes require 100% agreement in the owner vote. Making other rule changes needs 80-90% of the vote. This lets the owners have a sense of ownership. Last year an owner wanted to have free agency in the summer. I had never had free agency in the summer before, only at the beginning of regular season; however the owners liked it and they voted for it. Now my league has free agency three times in the summer. I gave them a chance to create an idea and I molded how we would implement it.
Get owners who have a common bond.
Replacing owners in a dynasty league sucks! It is hard to get people together that don’t have a bond. I tried to fill a dynasty league by advertising on a big message board. It didn’t work! Find people that you know on a message board, real life, or a friend of someone who is already in the league. It is harder to leave a league where you have rivals, but very easy when you don’t know or talk to anyone in the league.
Prepare for turnover.
Some people are good at dynasty and some aren’t. I know I had a better initial draft after I had been in a couple of dynasty leagues. Most owners don’t want to keep on donating to a league prize they will never win. Set up rules when people leave. If more than one owners leaves, let the new owners redraft the teams after stripping all the players off those abandoned teams. Each team drafts a new team with all the available players including those in free agency. Have some weekly payouts; if an owner can win some money back, they are more likely to stay.
It takes hard work, but when you do it right it commissioning a league can be fun and rewarding! Take the plunge and start your own dynasty league today!
Good luck.
Andy Miley can be found on Twitter – @RealAnakin
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[...] today’s article of the day is from our friends at Rookieblitz.com and Andy Miley. The article is a great guide to being a successful commish and not letting the power go to your head like Peter did when he broke off from the US to form [...]