[RMiller]

As for issues:
1) There needs to be a better method for when people are dropped from the league than who can hit enter fastest. In a sports fantasy league there are "undroppable" players to prevent people from having first round draft picks all over. It is also quite unfair when there are multiple tiers and one ends up with 10 people and the other ends up with 5. I know, I benefited from this multiple times.
I don't think the waiver line quite addresses this, particularly when there are an unbalanced number of people in each.

A proposed solution: Break people into actual tiers (maybe 6-8 people each) that you always draft against. For instance, perhaps Barry and Kevin would always be tier 1 and Eric and I are always tier 2 (for this year). Base it on previous years' (note plural) initially. After that, have promotions/relegation at the end of the year like soccer in Europe. Maybe the bottom two drop a tier and top two go up a tier. That way a lot of the issues are solved. Folks in tier 1 and probably 2 at the least will not have people dropping, missing lots of drafts, etc.
Even if someone drops from a tier, you are not going to have a major advantage (see below for a couple of ideas on what to do with the teams).

Potential issue: is only tier one in competition for "awards"? (you probably can't use overall point total, particularly if the number of people in each tier is unbalanced)
Maybe have this for the "regular season" and then for the "postseason" (MSC, Championships) have a mass event.


2) "New teams" - I like the waiver wire approach here, but I think that the team needs to be announced in the draft that it has been added once it is noticed with 24 hours or so after the announcing to claim the team.
Issue: two people claim a team... who gets it.
The issue I have with the proposed waiver line is thus: 1) I was first in line, but yesterday 1816 showed up as an option for Wisconsin. Knowing it would be an upgrade, I grabbed them. Today, 67 showed up as an option for Kettering. I have no chance of getting them now. 2) I just grabbed 1816 for Wisconsin. Now I can lay a claim to any team I want with no repercussions to my waiver line position until someone actually grabs a team.

Also, who is going to keep track of the waiver line order and how will it be done? With random tiers, two people grab 67, who gets put last on the waiver line?

Proposed solution(s): I like the idea of different levels of claims. For instance in case 1, I am willing to grab 1816 at a level three, but 67 at a level one. If someone wants 1816 at a level two, they have a higher priority, but if I am first in line at level one, I get 67 even if I just got 1816. The issue is this is even harder to keep track of.
Maybe you have to give up a team in the that draft and the person with the highest offer (in terms of draft position) gets the new team, but drops the old team. The newly dropped team then has the same procedure. Only issue is that changes close to the add/drop deadline are very difficult. This might not be a big issue though.
I think overall, I like the second method better. It can also be used when someone quits the league or is kicked out.

3) Random picks. I am fine how things went this season for the random picks. Yes, it sucks when the random pick before is what you want, but it is very rare.
If it is a major sticking point, perhaps for the first round only, leave the space blank until the end of the round and then fill with a random. I would want to leave an exception there for someone who specifically says random, whether via PM or in the draft thread. It might be because they have looked and are okay with what they see.

Just some ideas.