Dynasty League Football Forum

I'm thinking of starting a salary cap league but I have a few questions for commissioner's who ran these leagues in the past.

1.) Did you start the league with an auction draft? If yes was it e-mail or live auction?

2.) Did owners have to use money from their salary cap during the auction draft?

3.) If I'm using MFL to run the league what is the best salary cap number for league members? (Considered doing a 24 team league)

Thanks in advance for any advice. I'm fully open to having somebody come alongside and help me run this league. If you're interested feel free to PM me.

I started one last year.

1. Yes we did an auction draft
2. Yes we used our cap for the season for the draft
3. We did 10 Team 24 man rosters for $250 cap hits. Not really an exact science for why we chose that. ESPN's default settings are $200 for 16 players ($12.5 per player) so we loosely calculated our cap based on that.


We use MFL for this league though, it has plenty of options for Cap. 24 teams is a lot so I can't even speculate how you would want to set your cap if its one player universe

I am doing same thing. I pushing my guys to choose auction for startup. Probably a slow auction on MFL due to our 33 man rosters. I really don't like the pre-existing salary snake draft thing. Or maybe you could take the auction values from a good site and apply them to players before the snake draft. Would add more strategy to the snake draft.

You have to do an auction startup IMO. Other attempts I've seen, I wasn't a fan of at all. Also, use your actual cap for the auction.

You may consider at least looking at Reality Sports Online as your host - unless you are already committed. They use the standard NFL salary cap - escalating each March to mirror the NFL. You can choose - I believe it is 1-5 round rookie only draft, the balance of your desired roster is filled via auction. The rookie salaries - much like the NFL - are slotted based on draft position. The free agent auction bids are automated, the algorithm "agent" negotiates by presenting the next acceptable contract offer for deal 1-4 years in length.

Definitely do an auction. We did our startup last year with an email auction & everyone loved it. We're going to go the same route for our free agent auction this summer.

Good luck!

1. We did a live auction. We have a 10 team league, and started with 25 man rosters (escalated to 28 in year 2 and 30 in year 3). Our league has a rookie draft, but for year one since we didn't have a previous year record to go off of we simply allowed rookies to be signed for 5 years (regular FA were 3 years, while players picked in rookie draft can be kept for 5 years). The downside: the auction took about 6 hours. But I think you have to do an auction.
2. Yes, use real salary cap. We escalated the salary cap along with the roster size ($250-->$280-->$300).
3. We scaled our salary cap off of a $200 salary cap for 15 player teams. We did this so that "standard" auction ranking sheets at the time would be somewhat relevant.

One change I would make now is to still have a rookie draft, with people being able to put rookie picks for that year up for auction.

Hi guys,

I am thinking of starting a salary cap league without contracts. Startup auction, followed by separate rookie and free agent auctions each year. Actual cap dollars are used in each auction, and rookies will not be 'signed' until the mandatory preseason cut date. I have some wrinkles to work out so I hope I can get some feedback here.

1. I see some leagues increase all player contracts by a set dollar amount each year. Is this the right approach in non-contract leagues? Does it add any tangible value to the league? I only see it as adding artificial inflation and that it could become unsustainable unless cap space increases each year as well.

2. I want the league to be a pure auction league with no drafts at all. This means that I have to create an auction value table for each pick in the draft. The owners of the picks get those funds added to their budgets prior to the rookie auction. The pick slots are tradeable, but only prior to the auction. Auction funds not used are not transferable and are lost once the auction ends. Idea here is that only the 'rights' to sign those players is what is won, and the 'rights' can then be traded prior to the rookie signing date; which will be a few days before the final free agent draft. Owners also must be within the cap by this date. Any unsigned rookies are then available to be picked up in the free agent auction.

3. Free agent auction is a week before the season starts and only owners available funds are allowed to be used during the auction. I am not entirely sure how this will work though. Can the auction settings be linked to the teams cap? Will it update the available dollars if an owner drops or trades a player during the auction?

4. Waivers: do you only use blind bidding for salary cap leagues? Or do you also use FCFS and assign a minimum cap hit for players picked up that way? Do you still assign BB dollars? Or are owners limited to what is left in their cap space?

5. Hard cap versus soft cap? I can see a soft cap during the season creating more trading activity, but forcing owners to stay within their cap can also be challenging. Any preferences here?

I know that's a lot, but I want to make it a fun and challenging league.

Thanks to anyone who responds.

Cheers
Raul

I'll take a stab.

12 team, hard cap league.

1. We increase the cap 5% each year while player salaries increase 20%. I like that it gives an extra reward for finding guys cheap while also generating more turnover each year so the free agent auction isn't completely barren.

2. I don't have any insight for this scenario. We have a 5 round rookie draft with salaries slotted for each pick in the first round & by round for 2-5.

3. We use MFL & any money under the cap is shown to be available for the free agent auction as well as blind bid waivers throughout the year.

4. As I mentioned in the last answer, we use blind bidding, with the amount for each franchise depending on how much money they have leftover from the free agent auction. It's just another level of strategy for each team. Do I spend all my money in the auction or leave some space for waivers & as an option for other teams to trade away "bad" contracts?

5. I like the hard cap, as it forces owners to be smart. I have found that our hard cap leads to trading since there were a lot of teams that were forced to trade to free up cap space. Your mileage may vary, but that's been my experience.

Good luck! It's only our second year doing it but so far, it seems to be working out.

Thanks StormSurge.

I see why increasing salaries can help churn rosters and force owners to make moves, so thank you.
So, are you saying that if I put zero in an owners auction budget field, but they are $30 under their cap, that it will pick up their cap room as available for the auction? That'll work great! I'm guessing it's similar for blind bidding then.

Thanks for responding

Here's how I have it set up so the money ties together (MFL).

- Under "Blind Bid Waiver Setup", select "Yes" for "Are Salary Cap Dollars & Blind Bidding Dollars Treated As One & The Same"
- Under "General Auction Setup"; "Starting Auction Funds Available", I have manually inputted franchise's amount.

That last step could be redundant, but it makes me feel better that the numbers are accurate.

I use a Google Sheet to track salaries & update them on MFL once the new season (20% increase) begins.

Hopefully that answered your question.