Introducing: Toilet Bowl and the Free Agent Auction

Toilet Bowl

Instead of just handing the first picks of the draft to the teams that perennially suck, we have decided to hold a Toilet Bowl for the four non-playoff qualifiers. This means that every team will get a chance to keep fighting deep into the post-season. How the Toilet Bowl will work is below:

• The four teams not in the playoffs are routed to the consolidation tourney, aka The Toilet Bowl.
• Matchups are not conference exclusive, so reseeded #7 plays #10 and #8 plays #9. Use the same playoff matchup seeding rules to determine seeds.
• The Toilet Bowl winner and runner up get the #1 and #2 overall picks for the following year’s draft, but only in the first round. Then the draft reverts to reverse order of standings.

Free Agent Auction

In addition, we have fielded some complaints over the years about how the waiver wire and free agent system works. Currently if you are lower in overall standing than everyone else, you get the pick of the free agent litter on Wednesdays (or whenever the waiver wire was run). This year we will try out an automated blind bidding auction process. As it's run by CBS and this is our first time using it, there might be some kinks to work out. However, this is how I believe it works:

• The yearly budge for all acquisitions is set at $100 total
• The minimum bid for a free agent is $0
• Waiver wire runs daily Tuesday through Saturday (we may have to see how this works and change it)
• Free Agent Auction Tiebreaker resets each week to inverse order of standings
• Dropped players will not be auctioned for at least 1 (one) day

Currently the system is automated but there is an option for the commissioners to manually approve add/drops. The advantage of this -- from what I've read -- is that the automated option doesn't allow you to rank which players you want to bid on first. We'll see how this plays out.

We feel like this new way of acquiring free agents will add some drama and intrigue to the waiver wire. "Should I bid $20 on this hot new wide receiver in WK2 or save my money?" Notice that the minimum bid is $0 so you could likely continue to pick up free agents after your budget has run out, as long as nobody bids at least $1. I anticipate some fun strategy and angry words from utilizing this system.

Update [9.09.10]
The free agent auction system is gone and is now a waivers system, with a reset each week in reverse order of standings.