The whole sheet
Every entry, in the order the sections run.
This is the dense list. The front page carries three things; this carries all of them.
4sections
15pieces
3ways a keeper is charged
You may keep him. Somebody has to pay for it.
- 01.01You may keep him. Here is what it costs.In a redraft league everyone starts level every September. Keep players and somebody must pay for it, or the manager who won first wins forever.Long
- 01.02Paid once: the pick he would have costSurrendering the round he was drafted in is the oldest charge, and it prices a keeper against the draft rather than against money.Long
- 01.03Paid yearly: the escalatorAn escalating salary makes a player more expensive every season he is held, until he prices himself off the roster — the charge does the work, not the manager.Long
- 01.04Paid on a date somebody has to rememberA contract with a term ends whether anyone is paying attention or not, which is why dated rules need a keeper of the sheet.Short
- 01.05The three charges, side by sideEach produces a different league: pick-cost rewards drafting, escalators reward timing, contracts reward planning.Short
An auction prices every player. A snake prices only the position.
- 02.01An auction prices every player. A snake prices only the position.That single difference is why auction leagues argue about salaries and snake leagues argue about picks.Long
- 02.02What a budget does that a draft slot cannotA finite pot forces a manager to value every player against every other player, which is a different problem from ordering them.Medium
- 02.03Rookie drafts, taxi squads, and the tanking problemDynasty formats add an incoming class and a place to stash it, and immediately recreate the incentive the NFL itself spends so much effort on.Long
- 02.04The season PPR repriced a positionA scoring change can revalue an entire position without a single roster moving, and the leagues that had already signed contracts felt it hardest.Medium
The argument, on a smaller scale
- 03.01In 1975 an arbitrator ended the reserve clauseBaseball's arbitration is the same argument at full scale: what a club may keep, for how long, and what it owes for the privilege.Long
- 03.02Why any of this is familiarFranchise tags, options and rookie-scale contracts are all charges for keeping somebody, and a keeper league reinvents each of them.Medium
Somebody has to write it down. Then somebody has to amend it.
- 04.01Somebody has to write it down. Then somebody has to amend it.A league constitution is a real document with a real amendment procedure, and the leagues that last are the ones that wrote theirs before they needed it.Long
- 04.02Somebody in every league keeps the sheet, and it is almost never the commissionerRecord-keeping is the unpaid office that decides every disputed keeper deadline.Short
- 04.03The 2011 lockout, against contracts written in monthsLeagues whose rules assumed an uninterrupted calendar discovered what their own text actually said.Long
- 04.04Priest Holmes in 2002, at a ninth-round keeper priceThe season a late pick became the most valuable contract in the league, and what it taught everybody about escalators.Medium