Cap Penalty Advice

[bruiser]

I just completed my 1st season at MFL and am very impressed with their platform and customization. So, I decided to form a very large startup for 2015, but I am undecided how to make cap penalties apply when cutting players with multi-year deals. Currently, the only option at MFL is to apply all of the dead money at once. While this is parallel to how the NFL applies dead money, I was wondering what others do in their salaries/contracts leagues.

[will6779]

Im in two leagues where all contracts are 50% gaurented ., if you cut a player, one half of the value of his contract gets charged to your cap for the current year ( you must have enough cap space to do this). This makes it easy to dump bad cOntracts and is probably the best way to do things in a new league where owners dont have alot of experience playing in cap leagues. I prefer the third option above. In one of my leagues, if you cit a player with three years on his contract, your penality is 25% of his salary for each year of his contract and is charged to your cap the next three seasons. Its a bit more complicated and you have to be more careful with your signings. You dont have the option to buyout the entire contract and be done with it.

[junk_monkey]

Unfortunately, I find the MFL handling of salary caps isn't good enough, too basic, so I do ours manually in Excel and upload to google docs.

We have each contract having a percentage guaranteed, dependent on the value. Cheap contracts have a smaller guarantee percentage than more expensive contracts. The guaranteed money is payable in every year of the contract after the player is cut.

We don't accelerate because that could put teams in a situation where they can't afford to cut someone they probably should. Teams tend to live quite close to the cap, and leave the little room they do for in season pick ups. That said, we've not had a really big contract ended yet.

[DonnieSmith14]

I use the third option and it's actually not that difficult to manage.

A simple google doc / form with some formulas can manage future cap hits.

Just go into MFL at the start of each season and add a "dead money" salary adjustment.

[bruiser]

This is a very large league. I have been going over this for a couple days and have also considered this: applying cap hits too many years into the future will penalize a replacement owner if taking over that team. Should replacement owners get reprieve from cap hits that were incurred before they took over a franchise?

[Tsunami]

This is a very large league. I have been going over this for a couple days and have also considered this: applying cap hits too many years into the future will penalize a replacement owner if taking over that team. Should replacement owners get reprieve from cap hits that were incurred before they took over a franchise?

No reason to make that a rule, if the best team quits you could find a replacement without negating their penalty. In an emergency situation where you can't find anyone to replace a bad team, negating the salary cap penalty could help. But you should try to avoid this IMO. Requiring a portion of next season's fee up front could also help prevent this, assuming it is a pay league. If it isn't I'll take a spot!

[bruiser]

Yes, I require the next seasons fees upfront. The league is $150 annually. I decided to make all contracts 40% guaranteed, with all future cap hits charged to next season. I'm implementing a Post-February 1st Cuts rule as a way to create incentive for owners to keep a player on his roster throughout the season and especially playoffs. When cut after February 1st, the season will be considered rolled over and cuts will be applied accordingly.

Our concern was mainly about players being cut before or during the playoffs that normally shouldn't be available. If the decision to cut a player before the season finished caused next season to be charged, then we solved the problem about keeping the playoffs free from studs dropped for salary reasons.