[IBL] idea for a new protest process

[Russell Peltz]

I would welcome any ideas to improving the review process, and I like Sean's ideas.
We used to have terrible arguments all the time about teams tanking games for draft position, and we implemented a good system that solved the problem.  I think we could do the same thing with the trade protest system.
Also, there isn't anything in the Constitution about what threshold of imbalance a deal needs to meet to be overturned.  We could add some guidelines.

-Rusty


On Tuesday, May 2, 2017, 1:52:55 PM PDT, Matt Sivertson <mattsivertson at gmail.com> wrote:I think something like this would be useful as well, and I like the idea of the collateral going down when more owners are involved. One other thing I'd like to see is more formalized guidance to the review board about how to evaluate these trades and what should constitute a trade worthy of being overturned.  I might be mistaken but I don't think we have any formal criteria for that and it's pretty much just if the board wants to overturn it they do, and if they don't then they don't.
On Tue, May 2, 2017 at 1:25 PM, Sean Sweda <sweda at ibl.org> wrote:

Every time we have one of these I think to myself -- "we really need a better system".  I'm a firm believer that a league like this must have a mechanism to overturn significantly imbalanced trades, given that the consequences of these deals are magnified enormously due to perpetual ownership of players.  I understand that some will disagree, but let's table that for now and posit that if a protest mechanism is a necessary evil how could it work better?

The primary area of concern I see is the means by which a protest is registered:

1) Any protest system relies on a filtering mechanism by which the owners of the league look at a deal and make a determination about the level of imbalance.  Additionally, some may decide that even though a trade is imbalanced that the parts that are moving are inconsequential enough that it does not merit a protest.  We only require one team to register a protest, which means whoever has the lowest threshold is making the determination.

2) Another problem is that there's no downside to being the protesting team, so long as you don't particularly care if you're irritating the two owners who made the deal.  The protesting team doesn't pay any price if their filter for imbalanced trades is lower than the consensus.

3) Finally, once one team triggers a protest the other teams that also believed the trade to be imbalanced tend to tune out.  Therefore it is never clear to either the trading teams or the Review Board whether there's a widespread consensus that the trade is imbalanced.


Idea for an improvement, addressing the above:

Require teams to post collateral in order to protest.  Lower the amount of collateral required per-team as more teams join the protest.  If the protest is upheld the protesting team(s) get back their collateral, if the trade is upheld they lose the collateral.

example:
if 1 team protests a deal they must put up a 2nd round pick
if 2 teams protest a deal they must each put up a 3rd round pick
if 3 teams protest a deal they must each put up a 4rd round pick
if 4 teams protest a deal they must each put up a 5rd round pick
etc.

If a team does not have the required round pick they can post a pick one round earlier in the following draft (e.g. if I don't have MCM#2 2018 I can substitute MCM#1 2019)


What does this do?  It puts the burden on the owner with the lowest threshold to find other people who are in agreement.  It should also establish a significance level for trade protests, as nobody is going to want to risk losing picks of higher value than the players/picks actually involved in the trade.  Finally, this system encourages consensus and I believe the resolution process would be much less painful if both the trading teams and the Review Board knew that a large number of people were in agreement.


I'm sure there are other issues with the protest system that could be improved, this just jumped out at me as a re-alignment of incentives that would be a big improvement.

Sean





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