CBS changes

[no driver]

Keith, there is an easier way to edit contracts as fyi. Go to "My Team" on the banner and scroll down until you start to see your roster. On the header, "Contract" has a red "C" next to it and if you click on it a pop-up box appears and you can edit the wildcard values for the team you are on. It's actually a bit easier I think then the way it used to be.

That wasn't there this morning, but I'm glad they put a link to make those changes back to the team roster pages.

On the topic of things that used to be straightforward but now require digging through pages of links, it is now significantly harder to do an add/drop for someone else's team.

[the heat]

The phrase "conform to the way CBS is set up" illustrates why my league (and I presume others) are so down on CBS despite all their bells and whistles. For a product that's supposed to be a "service" they are horribly and stubbornly deaf to user requests for features that should be standard for any company in the business. Instead, leagues are forced to change their style of game play, and in some cases their Constitution, in order to conform to CBS.

TopChuckie, we had to jump through similar hoops in order to run FAAB the way we wanted to with CBS as our provider. We had someone outside the league set up an free e-mail address (for example, cfcl-faab@gmail...) and set a password only they knew. We all e-mailed our bids and corresponding waivers to that address and after the FAAB deadline passed, the outsider would provide the password so I could log in and process everything. The next day, after the results had been announced, the outsider logged into the gmail account and changed the password for the following week. What a pain.

I'm no longer participating in the league, but they're in the process of moving to OnRoto because aside from the usual headaches we actually noticed some statistical discrepancies last year and also had problems with roster moves taking effect for only one day and then reversing themselves. The league was no longer confident in the results that were being reported.

I've used RotoWire for several years & I'm not certain if their website will do the transaction automatically as we've never attempted to use it that way.
The way we use it is:
You free form type in your transactions & bids & 'submit' to site.
No one can see others bids until weekly deadline has passed.
After deadline has passed, all entries are visible to everyone in league.
1 of our 2 commish's figures out the bids & transactions & makes the roster moves manually.

[mgwiz22]

I am aware of the scenarios in which you would want to make a player with a lower bid a higher priority and in fact have had bidding problems because of them in the past but everyone else in the league has the same problems. It is a system fair to all. I wish they would change this aspect but I can live with the problem.

I have considered the question of what to do should some teams bids cause an illegal lineup but I don't think that the correct resolution is to allow the commissioner to see the bids submitted either before or after the bids are processed. I think that each league should have an internal rule. Possible rules I have come up with either nullifiy the free agent pickup and reverses the move (no other team would pick up the player), but perhaps penalizes the offending team in some fashion so as to prevent someone from doing this intentionally, or forcing the offending team to drop another player to make the move and return the dropped player to them, or giving them zero stats for the week (this seems like too harsh a penalty for a mistake).

[Jefe]

I am aware of the scenarios in which you would want to make a player with a lower bid a higher priority and in fact have had bidding problems because of them in the past but everyone else in the league has the same problems. It is a system fair to all. I wish they would change this aspect but I can live with the problem.

I have considered the question of what to do should some teams bids cause an illegal lineup but I don't think that the correct resolution is to allow the commissioner to see the bids submitted either before or after the bids are processed. I think that each league should have an internal rule. Possible rules I have come up with either nullifiy the free agent pickup and reverses the move (no other team would pick up the player), but perhaps penalizes the offending team in some fashion so as to prevent someone from doing this intentionally, or forcing the offending team to drop another player to make the move and return the dropped player to them, or giving them zero stats for the week (this seems like too harsh a penalty for a mistake).

I disagree, and I also don't see how any penalty makes it fair for the next-highest bidder who SHOULD have won. Not when there's no way to fix it. It's so freakin' simple. Make the old bids available for everyone to see. Done.

[Big Tymer]

That wasn't there this morning, but I'm glad they put a link to make those changes back to the team roster pages.

On the topic of things that used to be straightforward but now require digging through pages of links, it is now significantly harder to do an add/drop for someone else's team.

I thought so too but I found the old functionality now under Commish Tools --> In-Season Rosters --> Add/Drop A Player. This brings you to the exact same screen as before when everything is drop down. You can also add an Unlisted Player (which we do a lot of with new minor league players) from this Add/Drop screen as before or the Commish Tools --> In-Season Rosters --> Add Unlisted Player screen.

[TopChuckie]

I disagree, and I also don't see how any penalty makes it fair for the next-highest bidder who SHOULD have won. Not when there's no way to fix it. It's so freakin' simple. Make the old bids available for everyone to see. Done.

Almost all their problems with FAAB are simple fixes, that's what makes it so frustrating. How hard is it to allow us to set the order for processing our bids or enter a priority number next to each bid so that they are processed in that order, regardless of the amount of the bid? Every fantasy football site, including CBS, I've ever used allows that when making waiver claims, since there are no bid amounts to set priority.

[TopChuckie]

Keith, there is an easier way to edit contracts as fyi. Go to "My Team" on the banner and scroll down until you start to see your roster. On the header, "Contract" has a red "C" next to it and if you click on it a pop-up box appears and you can edit the wildcard values for the team you are on. It's actually a bit easier I think then the way it used to be.

Yeah, that wasn't there early yesterday, but that is a definite improvement. I'll give them credit for that.

[mgwiz22]

I disagree, and I also don't see how any penalty makes it fair for the next-highest bidder who SHOULD have won. Not when there's no way to fix it. It's so freakin' simple. Make the old bids available for everyone to see. Done.

No penalty will make it fair to the next highest bidder but it might prevent someone from making an intentional error. This scenario will occur very rarely if at all. Correcting this rare event by allowing someone or all of the league to see the bids that were made will always give teams information that they shouldn't have. I don't wish to give anyone an incite into my thinking processes or allow them to see who I would have bid on had I not picked up someone. I would rather have the occasional problem and a random second bidder (it could be any team in the league including my own) lose something.

[Jefe]

No penalty will make it fair to the next highest bidder but it might prevent someone from making an intentional error. This scenario will occur very rarely if at all. Correcting this rare event by allowing someone or all of the league to see the bids that were made will always give teams information that they shouldn't have. I don't wish to give anyone an incite into my thinking processes or allow them to see who I would have bid on had I not picked up someone. I would rather have the occasional problem and a random second bidder (it could be any team in the league including my own) lose something.

I guess we're coming from different places on this because I don't see it as a rare event. I've actually had to deal with it 3-5 times a year ever since CBS added FAAB. Hell I've had it happen twice in one week. Right now I take a screengrab of the bids so I can manually fix things. It's a pain. I also disagree that the 2nd bidder should be punished for someone else's error. That's bull.

I also disagree that it's wrong for all owners to have that information — as the commish, *I* have the info, so it's only fair that everyone else gets to see it to.

EDIT to say that I've used CBS in baseball and football for over a decade. I really appreciate most aspects of their service. Maybe there's no such thing as a perfect service for a game with so many rules variables. But the simple changes I'm suggesting make sense, and I don't see how you can justify not doing them.

[Fielding Melish]

I don't wish to give anyone an incite into my thinking processes or allow them to see who I would have bid on had I not picked up someone. I would rather have the occasional problem and a random second bidder (it could be any team in the league including my own) lose something.

That's an interesting perspective - my league was always the exact opposite. We publish the full bidding on each free agent, plus the player each team would have dropped had their bid been successful.

In addition to makeing sure everything is above board and allowing teams to confirm that their bids were processed correctly, we found that knowing who each team was pursuing and considered expendable also opened up trade avenues that we may not have been aware of.

I can understand the attaction of playing everything close to the vest, though.

[no driver]

I thought so too but I found the old functionality now under Commish Tools --> In-Season Rosters --> Add/Drop A Player. This brings you to the exact same screen as before when everything is drop down. You can also add an Unlisted Player (which we do a lot of with new minor league players) from this Add/Drop screen as before or the Commish Tools --> In-Season Rosters --> Add Unlisted Player screen.

Yeah, but I used to be able to click on a player, click add, and then select which team he was going to. I wanted to swap out an unlisted player from last year's minor league draft with his real counterpart yesterday and had to dig around to find the right screens.

[no driver]

Something else that didn't work this morning (and this is why I went to the site) was customizing a stat report to download. I was trying to get a dump of games by position from 2010 so I could look at position eligibility, and when I clicked on the Stats link it would let me select the player pool, year, etc, but it had the stats themselves grayed out and if I clicked the spreadsheet link it would only dump the default stat report, not the one I had requested. They still have the old stats interface on the Custom Reports link, and that worked fine.

Apparently Adblock Plus on Firefox was causing the issue with the stats page. When I disabled it for the one item it was blocking the sortable stats started working and ads were still blocked.

[TopChuckie]

That's an interesting perspective - my league was always the exact opposite. We publish the full bidding on each free agent, plus the player each team would have dropped had their bid been successful.

In addition to makeing sure everything is above board and allowing teams to confirm that their bids were processed correctly, we found that knowing who each team was pursuing and considered expendable also opened up trade avenues that we may not have been aware of.

I can understand the attaction of playing everything close to the vest, though.

In my league we share all the info on bids because I as commish have to see it to process it and it's only fair if everyone sees it, but I would much prefer all that info to be kept secret from everyone, and if CBS got their act together on FAAB, it could be that way.

Knowing who someone was willing to waive CAN open up a trade discussion, but it can also kill one. When I see an owner was willing to waive a guy I thought about trying to acquire via trade, if I'm still willing to make a trade offer it just went down in value, but usually now I wouldn't even make the offer because I see that player may be available on waivers as soon as that owner wins a free agent bid.

But the worst part of making all the info known is that it brings attention to all the free agents you were interested in but maybe didn't acquire because you acquired higher priority players that particular week. Now that everyone knows you were also looking to grab Joe Prospect, next week you're going to have to bid higher to get him. Maybe your competitor wasn't even aware of Joe Prospect, but now that he saw his name on your FAAB list, he looked him up, and is now in love with him and winds up out bidding you the following week.

[mgwiz22]

In my league we share all the info on bids because I as commish have to see it to process it and it's only fair if everyone sees it, but I would much prefer all that info to be kept secret from everyone, and if CBS got their act together on FAAB, it could be that way.

Knowing who someone was willing to waive CAN open up a trade discussion, but it can also kill one. When I see an owner was willing to waive a guy I thought about trying to acquire via trade, if I'm still willing to make a trade offer it just went down in value, but usually now I wouldn't even make the offer because I see that player may be available on waivers as soon as that owner wins a free agent bid.

But the worst part of making all the info known is that it brings attention to all the free agents you were interested in but maybe didn't acquire because you acquired higher priority players that particular week. Now that everyone knows you were also looking to grab Joe Prospect, next week you're going to have to bid higher to get him. Maybe your competitor wasn't even aware of Joe Prospect, but now that he saw his name on your FAAB list, he looked him up, and is now in love with him and winds up out bidding you the following week.

This is exactly why I don't want the bid information disclosed. Last year was the first that our league used the FAAB system and nobody made a drop that would have made their roster illegal. In the nearly twenty years prior to last we used a system involving calls to an answering machine.In nearly 20 years of use of that system there were only two or three incidents in which someone attempted to make (or made) a transaction which would have made their lineups illegal. Those mistakes were caused by people being mistaken about a players position eligibility but generally people have checked. In all of these cases the teams were forced to change their drops. I am amazed that there are leagues out there where this is a common problem which can occur more than once in a week. It is a major advantage for only one team to know all of the bids.

[Jefe]

I guess my league owners are kinda dumb.