INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE
Keeper Deadline Date: Thursday, August 22, 2019
Live Draft Date: Saturday, Aug 24, 2019 1:00pm EDT / 6:00pm BST
(Snake style draft)
Bold & Boxed text always means new for this season (to aide returning GM’s to quickly find internal rule changes or new rules).
Rules
In the International League each GM manages their real country. Your team name in the league must be your country spelt in (English and in) CAPITAL LETTERS (to bring some uniformity to the league). Also your team logo/picture must be your countries current official flag as used by said countries national sports teams. Also no fake names please or 1 letter initial - first name must be used - failure to comply will see you replaced. This is to make the league owners list have some uniformity.
Qualification
I wish for serious players that won’t quit during the season as it’s national pride at stake. I am ENGLAND and going nowhere so pointless going on the list for. All other current countries in the league can be seen below. If you qualify and are interested to go on the reserve/waiting list post here telling me which country or countries you qualify for (and wish to manage). To qualify you must be born in or have at least one parent from that country.
You will then go on the waiting list. As and when people are removed from the league due to the *strikes rule (*see later) or opt to leave then the next person that meets the criteria on the waiting list will be invited to take over that place/team. It can and may be renamed to a completely new country depending on the new incoming owner.
Keepers
Each team is able to keep 1 player from their previous seasons finishing team. If a keeper is kept he will fill his draft round spot from the preceding season. If he was an undrafted player then he will fill the last round spot on your roster (Round 15). You do not have to keep a player in which case you will draft as normal each round in your designated position.
Further more, a keeper will count against your original pick in the applicable round (should you have more picks due to draft pick trading). If you no longer have your original pick for the round your keeper is due to be allocated to then he will take your next highest pick going upwards - so could be the same round (if you have traded for more draft picks in that round) or the next round(s) going upwards. If you don’t have any higher draft picks then you can not keep that particular player and I will override your keeper choice to ‘no keeper selected’ after the keeper lock deadline before the live draft takes place. Long term keepers (that being a player or team defense that is kept by the same owner for multiple seasons consecutively) will increase their drafted round by 1 round each season until they reach round 1. This rule only applies to a keeper being kept by the same owner/team in successive seasons. Otherwise all other keepers just count as your rounds pick for the round they were drafted or kept in the previous season.
Please be aware to facilitate having to manually adjust the draft board (i.e. entering in the keepers at the correct positions before we live draft) their will be a deadline to choose your keeper by - you can change your keeper choice as often as you wish up until the deadline but once the deadline is reached it will lock and then you will be stuck with your choice or if you have not selected a player you will not have a keeper for the forthcoming season. It is each owners responsibility to find out when the keeper deadline locks and once it is reached no more changes can be made.
Draft
For those teams that make the playoffs proper (teams finishing 1st-8th) draft order will be a reverse of the previous years finishing positions as decided by NFL.com - so the previous years champion will draft last in round 1 (*20th) and the team finishing 8th (*13th). [*excluding draft pick trading]
However if you’re not in the running for the title (i.e. in the playoffs proper), there used to be nothing to play for except next years draft position - and the way it was the worse you did in the dead games, the better your draft pick position the next year. This encouraged GM’s who were out of the playoffs not to try and win, actually often hoping to lose by starting their worst players (just to avoid falling foul of the strike rule, as there’s nothing else riding on those results).
So to address this some seasons ago I amended the internal rules to make the dead games worth winning because from then on wards this part of the draft order involving the 12 non-championship contending playoff teams is inverted - to reward post season wins, however pointless they may seem at the time. The 8 proper playoff teams will still keep their draft positions (20th - 13th).
However the rest will now go like this…
The team finishing 9th (i.e. best of the non-qualifiers) will have pick #1
The team finishing 10th (2nd best non-qualifier) will have pick #2
And so on, down to the team finishing 20th (worst non-qualifier) will have pick #12
I think this has proved good for the league as now tanking for a better draft spot will not fly as the dead rubber games have something riding on them. This has also helped with the also ran GM’s trading away their better players with late round draft picks to the playoff bound GM’s who are willing to sell their next seasons chances on winning this year by agreeing to trades involving their bad players but with higher round draft picks from the following season - which was skewing the integrity of the league imho.
Default Rule Changes
I have changed the default scoring from 4 points for a thrown TD to 3 points - half what the scorer of a TD (6pts) gets.
All other current league settings including Scoring Settings can be viewed here: IL Settings
LC RULINGS & ADDITIONAL INTERNAL LEAGUE RULES
Sometimes as we go along things come up and I as the LC (League Commissioner) have to make a ruling. So this is where I clarify and make the rulings on things that crop up over time so people can look up the answers going forward at any time just by coming here to see if its already happened before and what the ruling is. It is also a reference point for me to see what I did previously so as to be consistent in actions I do.
1) The LC has the right to reorganise the Divisions each season prior to the draft. This is only done when new teams / nations have joined the IL. I do this trying to make divisions firstly regional as best I can and secondly put natural rivals in the same Divisions.
2) Draft pick trading - draft pick trades can only be swapped for the very next draft (not multiple seasons in advance). I know the real life teams can but I have made this ruling for two reasons. One it will be very hard for me to keep track off and two a GM could pile up trouble for years down the line and then just leave and I’d find it almost impossible to get a replacement as they would have no chance due to so many early picks being traded away for possibly seasons to come. Also by making this ruling it means most of the season the system does it all and records it for me to find the following year - the only time it doesn’t is now prior to our leagues draft when I allow it and do it via the leagues wall and by using a poll when a vote is necessary.
As I need to manually adjust the draft board to reflect swapped draft picks before our draft room goes live (and this takes time) out of season (pre-draft) draft pick trades must be agreed before the keeper deadline.
3) If during a season a GM trades away his same draft pick to 2 different teams whether by accident or deliberate planning then instead I will take away their next highest pick instead to cover the trade. If we are talking about a round 1 double deal where there is no higher pick I can take away to cover the trade I will then swap there next 2 picks going down to whoever they traded with for a further round down pick from the cheated party. Basically being detrimental to the owner who made this error as punishment so be careful (as yes the system does stupidly allow this as I discovered in the past when someone did it).
Example: Team A trades his next years Round 1 pick with 2 different teams - only one team can get it so the other team has been screwed. In this case I will take team A’s 2nd and 3rd Round picks and give them to the cheated team in return team A will still get whatever pick(s) was part of the trade plus the cheated teams 4th round pick. What ever happens the cheated team will be compensated at the expense of the guilty team regardless of the offending teams mistake being genuine error or deliberate malpractice.
4) In season 5 (2014) I ran the following poll and had all 20 GM’s vote:
Should we add in a Reserve (RES) spot from next season (2015) onwards?
So this meant from the 2015 season onwards each team would have 1 RES spot added to their rosters. Furthermore during the 2017 season I ran a poll to ask if we should keep the RES spot. The poll was left open for the whole of the regular season and the following screenshot is the poll result which now applies from the 2018 season forever more:
