Constitution

gstelmack · 05-06-2007, 10:28 AM

I. League Administration

A. Commissioner
1. The league commissioner is elected by vote of the majority owners of the league, and may be dismissed at any time by the vote of 21 owners.
2. The responsibilities of the Commissioner include running the sims, making sure the league progresses, resolving disputes, and making sportsmanship rulings on league happenings.

B. Conference Presidents
1. An owner in each conference shall be elected as a conference representative to assist the Commissioner in resolving disputes, setting league policies and other miscellaneous items.
2. Each President is elected by a majority vote of the owners of their conference to a four (4) season term, and may be dismissed at any time by the vote of 11 owners in their conference. Terms shall end upon the pressing of the "End Season" button each year. If a majority of owners cannot agree on a Conference President, the Commissioner shall appoint one.
3. If a Conference President cannot finish his term (due to his resignation or being voted out), his elected successor will serve only through the end of his predecessor’s term. The successor will be elected by majority vote.
4. There are no term limits for Conference Presidents. A Conference President may be re-elected for as many consecutive terms as the Conference members desire.

II. Owners

A. An owner must remain active throughout all stages of a season by means of submitting regular weekly exports and participating in league matters. Any owner who fails to maintain their participation may be removed at the administration’s discretion.
B. Any new owners shall be brought into the league by invitation only. Current owners are encouraged to suggest names, but the final decision as to an offer of membership resides with the league administration. It is their responsibility to fill any vacancy there may be in the league.
C. If an owner is unable to participate for an extended period of time, it is the owner’s responsibility to notify the league administration of their pending absence and to name an interim owner who will control the franchise in their absence. Any interim owner is subject to approval by the league administration.
D. All owners are subject to the rules of the constitution. Repeated, intentional or reckless disregard for any of these rules may results in penalties up to, and including, removal from the league.

III. Franchises

A. An existing franchise may change its location in accordance with the in-game system of relocation, provided the new location fits within the appropriate geographical boundaries of the franchise's division, as determined by the league administration.

B. In order to maintain realistic continuity, an existing franchise may only change its nickname during the offseason.

C. A new owner taking over a franchise is allowed to make an out-of-game move and nickname change after having completed one full season cycle in the league. For clarification, if a new owner takes over in the middle of the 2010 season, he may not change the team's nickname until after the 2011 season is completed. The new location must fit within the appropriate geographical boundaries of his division, as determined by the league administration.

D. All owners are expected to make a good-faith effort to compete. "Tanking" (putting forth little/no effort to win) to improve draft position is a no-no. The following actions are always considered acceptable and not in violation:

a player injured to any degree may be benched until healed

when a team has clinched a playoff berth, that team may rest its starters if it so chooses

Beyond the above, whether a team is in violation of this clause is up to the sole discretion of the League Administration, so if you're in doubt about a course of action, ask before you undertake it.

Penalties for being in violation of this clause may include loss of draft picks, being dropped down in the draft order, or any other penalty deemed fit by the League Administration, up to and including expulsion from the league.

IV. League Schedule

Unless otherwise stated, each sim will occur at roughly the same time every day. A calendar for each season's turns will be posted as soon as that season starts so everyone knows what to expect.

A. Stadium Plan/Relocation Submission
B. Staff Hiring - 3 sims
C. Ticket Pricing/Franchise Tag
D. Free Agency Period 1 - The first six stages will sim on successive days (no breaks). Stages 7-9, and then 10-12 will be run in a single sims, for a total of nine days.
E. Amateur Draft - This will begin after FA1 Stage 5 is run.
F. Free Agency Period 2 - Sims over the course of three consecutive days as follows:
DAY 1--FA2, Stage 1
DAY 2--FA2, Stage 2
DAY 3--FA2, Stages 3, 4 & 5

G. Training Camp
H. Preseason - The pre-season schedule shall consist of four or five 'game day' simulations. If all teams that play in week 1 have a bye in week 2, then those will be run at the same time, giving us four preseason sims, while if any team that plays in week 1 also plays in week 2, there will five preseason sims. There will be a midweek stage prior to the first preseason sim, and then the preseason games will be run on four or five consecutive days.
I. Regular Season - During the Regular Season, the league will run three "Game Day" simulations per calendar week.
J. Post Season - The Post Season schedule will consist of "game day" sims on consecutive weekdays.
K. Doggie Bowl - At the conclusion of the Doggie Bowl, the current season will be considered completed.

V. Miscellaneous

A. Training Camp -There are no restrictions, except those set by FOF, on the settings that may be used in training camp.
B. Position Switches - There are no restrictions, except those set by FOF, on the amount or timing of position switches with the exception of:
1. Changes made with the explicit intent of significantly lowering the player’s skill set/ratings.
2. Changes made with the intent of artificially developing players by exploiting a deficiency in the game.

C. Gameplans - There are no restrictions, except those set by FOF, on the settings that may be used in their game plans.
D. Contracts

1. Any contract or contract offer can be subject to review by League Administration. If a contract has been determined to have exceeded established 'sportsmanlike' limitations (the determination of 'sportsmanlike' to be made by League Administration), then the offending owner may be required to renegotiate said contract or release the player altogether. The owner could also be subject to additional penalties, up to and including expulsion from the league.
2. Teams cannot sign Free Agents from the time of their last game of the season (regular season or post season), until the Free Agent period of the following season.
3. During Early Free Agency (also known as FA1), all new contracts offered must be for at least three years in length. (This does not include offers to restricted free agents who played for your team in the previous season.)Any player offered an illegal contract under this rule will be at a minimum released by the commissioner, thereby causing the offending team to incur lost cap room penalties and the potential for "past injustices" messages. Additional cap or draft pick penalties may be issued at the discretion of the league administration.
E. Depth Charts - There are no restrictions, except those set by FOF, on the way an owner should fill out their depth chart.
F. Roster Size - At no time should a team's roster contain more than 70 players under contract. Any violation of this limit will result in league mandated cuts and a possible loss of draft pick(s).
G. Releasing Players - A team may release players at anytime before and during the season with the exception of the period between the team's last game (regular season or playoffs) and the mid-week export prior to the Doggie Bowl. If a player is found to have been released and signed by another team during the blackout period, League Administration reserves the right to reverse the signing. To accomodate cuts that will impact future seasons, players can be released the day of the Doggie Bowl.
H. Staff Hiring - There are no restrictions, except those set by FOF, on salaries offered during the staff hiring phase.
I. Salary Cap Restrictions - Each team must be under the league salary cap at the conclusion of FA1:12, and again by the time Regular Season Week 1 is simmed. Failure to do so will result in league mandated cuts and a possible loss of draft pick(s). Teams are allowed to be over the cap at other times in the offseason, preseason, and regular season.
J. General Conduct

1. Any action that can be interpreted as an attempt to exploit a loophole in the game's design is subject to review by League Administration. Such an action could be punishable by league mandated cuts, loss of draft picks and/or additional penalties, up to and including expulsion from the league.
2. Any suspected attempt to gain an advantage by such methods as hacking the game file, loading the league file as the commissioner (or another team) or any method not named can lead to immediate dismissal from the league after a review by League Administration.

K. Injury Setting - The league uses 200 as the FOF injury setting.
L. Salary Cap Reduction - In order to compensate for imbalances in FOF's player renegotiation algorithms, the league will use a utility to reduce the effective salary cap of all teams to 75% of the actual cap. This will be done be adding dead cap space in the amount of 25% of the salary cap to all teams.
M. Release and Sign Illegal - A team may not release a player and then re-sign him in the same stage.

VI. Trading

A. Players and draft picks may be traded as long as a team holds the rights to said player/pick. Future draft picks may be dealt as allowed by the game. All trades are subject to the game's limitations, most notably salary cap limitations.
B. If a trade of questionable fairness occurs, an owner has the right to challenge the trade within 48 hours of the date of the posted transaction by notifyingthe commissionervia PM. Once a challenge has been communicated to league administration, it is the administration’s duty to resolve the issue to its best conclusion.
C. Trades must be announced in the Trades section of the League Forum.
D. Conditional trades are allowed, provided they adhere to the following criteria:
1. are limited to one offseason out. (For example, from the beginning of Staff Hiring in 2011 until the trading deadline, conditional picks can be traded no later than 2012.)
2. can be expressed in one or more simple IF...THEN {AND} statements. ("I agree to trade a 2011 2nd round pick for RB Frank Lynn Noble. IF RB Noble rushes for more than 1000 yards AND gets 250 carries, THEN it becomes a 2011 #1 pick.")
3. are expressed in terms of player statistical performance, team performance, or player retirement/non-retirement. (In other words, no conditions regarding things such as "if he gets injured for more than x games" or "if he loses more than y points in training camp.")
4. an understanding is implicit between the owners involved in the trade that the league will not police players being held out of games so that a condition is not met.

E. Trading is allowed from the time that the new season file is released to the moment that Regular Season Week 6 is simmed.

VII. Drafting Procedures

A. The amateur draft takes place approximately over a 3-5 day span. It starts once FA1 Stage 5 has been simmed.
B. Picks are made on the web site via the Draft Utility.
C. Each franchise has time limits as follows from the time the previous pick has been posted to make their pick:

ROUND
MAX TIME

1st 8 hours

2nd 4 hours

3rd 4 hours

4th 3 hours

5th 2 hours

6th 1 hour

7th 1 hour

D. During the first round, upon his request, an owner may be granted up to 6 hours of additional time to make a pick in cases of emergency.
E. If an owner does not make a pick in the allotted time frame, the pick will be made automatically and the franchise's time limit for future picks will be cut in half.
F. If an owner fails to make a pick for a second time, all future picks for that franchise will be made automatically.
G. The method for an automatic pick consists of:
1. Automatic pick based on entries in the owner's Draft List.
2. If Draft List is empty, the pick will be made by the FOF Conscriptor logic.
H. The commissioner reserves the right to alter the time frame for picks in order to facilitate a draft of a reasonable length.

I. All draft interviews must be done by the official start of the draft. Anyone caught doing additional interviews after then will be subject to disciplinary action by the league administration.

J. DRAFT ETIQUETTE: The following are not hard and fast rules, but general guidelines for how we as a league feel the draft should run. Owners in continual violation of the draft etiquette section will be subject to potential disciplinary action by the league administration, up to and including dismissal from the league.
1. Use the draft utility. Even if you're planning on picking live, stuff happens. Put your guys in there--even if it's just one guy. Some feel like not using it is saying this to the league: .

2. Communicate, communicate, communicate. Unexplained delays are very, very frustrating. When other owners are just sitting around and not knowing if you'll pick in 3 minutes or 3 hours, it is a problem. Every draft will have a draft availability thread. It is expected that owners will use it.

3. The time limits are in place "just in case," and are not to be used for every pick. No one should continually hold up the draft, or use close to the amount of time allotted for them in a given round. If everyone used all of the time allowed under these rules, the draft would take 30 days.

4. After the first round or two, HEAVY use of the utility is expected. An owner should not be holding up the draft for 3 hours trying to trade away a 4th round pick, for example.

5. Be proactive with regard to draft trades. For example, if you have only two guys left in your utility that you want with that 5th round pick, and you're 12 picks away, start a trade block post saying that if your guys are gone you'd like to trade down, so you can have a trade in place. This is much preferred to waiting until your pick comes up and then trying to trade.

VIII. Voting

A. To adopt a new rule to this constitution, a majority of owners participating in the vote must vote in favor of said rule. An "abstain" vote is considered as not participating.
B. To alter an existing rule, a majority of owners participating in the vote must vote in favor of said rule.
C. All new rules and alterations to existing rules must remain in place for one full season before they may be changed.
D. Alternately, changing current rules can be done at the prerogative of the commissioner provided all changes are made public. If the rule modifications are not questioned or challenged within one week, they become permanent.
E. Forum Votes have a life of 96 hours. After that time has expired, and provided the commissioner does not wish to extend it, the vote is finalized.
F. If the vote is considered time sensitive, the commissioner can elect to shorten the length of a voting period, provided advance notice has been given to the league members.

IX. Owner Disputes - Owners must make normal disputes public as soon as possible. Any dispute can be handled by either a league vote or by the league administration’s discretion. Concerns such as in game grievances can be overturned/approved/rejected by a majority vote.

X. Overturning decisions made by the Commish - If a league owner strongly disagrees with a decision made by the Commish/league administration, that owner may challenge that decision. Such a challenge will lead to a league vote on the matter where the support of 17 owners will determine the proper course of action.