[FF]: 2017 Season Long Fantasy FIRST

[EricH]

After seeing the discussions, and pending any responses to my most recent suggestion, there are some things that I know for sure. (I know I'm a bit late here... sorry about that.) This is going to be a long post.

1) Rules change (proposed):
Conflict of Interest Drafting
It may happen that players, either individually or as a team, determine that they may have a conflict of interest when playing FF and also volunteering at a particular event, depending on their particular volunteer role, and that having knowledge of their FF teams previous to the event has the possibility of creating uncomfortable situations. If the players determine that they cannot handle this by having another team member handle the draft, they have two options:
A) Randomize their picks. This is the preferred option, and will cover the vast majority of cases.
B) Request a Conflict of Interest draft (COI) by contacting the league commissioner, the draft runner for that draft, and one other draft runner (not either of the above), with the event and volunteer position. The draft runner for that draft and either one of the other two must both approve.
Approval guidelines: The player needs to be in a position that has the capability to directly affect either FF points or event outcome, or both, a list that includes but is not limited to refs and judges. Also, there needs to be a reasonable expectation that existing countermeasures may not be enough to deflect questions should they be asked. Existing countermeasures may include non-FF-playing volunteers in higher positions, or enough non-FF-playing volunteers, or even other FF-playing volunteers from other FF teams at the event.
COI Draft Implementation: Upon approval, the draft runner will place "COI" in the player's draft slots, and the draft will skip over those slots. The player is not allowed to fill those slots by any means--no trading, no waiver picks, and no selections. During scoring of the event, those slots will be filled by random teams after all other open slots are filled, and scores will be tabulated as normal.
COI Denied: If a complete COI draft is denied, the player will be assigned random teams during the draft, unless they make a pick.

2) Draft Slot Trading
I believe that we can agree on the following:
--A Google Spreadsheet, or similar, will keep track of proposed trades. There's one set up on the schedule sheet that works.
--A group comprised of the commissioner and the 3 most prolific draft runners, no two of whom are on the same FF team, will be the approval committee for trades. Currently, that would be myself, JosephC, Mars_James, and TDav540--BrennanB would be eligible but is on JosephC's team. [Fine print: commissioner's approval is automatic approval, otherwise 2 draft runners that are not involved with the trade must agree. That's why there's 4 persons.]
--Trades must be approved 1 hour prior to the draft start time, but must be submitted no later than 3 hours prior to the draft start time.
--Any player may raise a question about a trade between submission and approval.

I think that this would be a reasonable interim solution, to become more permanent if it works.