Looking to start a unique league

bulldog55 · 12-15-2004, 06:09 PM

and I need interested parties to help plan it.

About me: I've been a member of BBSC for three years and am easily the most active OOTP user on the forums. I am in five online leagues, commissioner of two of them and assistant commish in a third.

The two leagues I commish are very unique. One is a fictional league, peppered with MLB and Japanese crossovers, in its sixth season. The other is a league attempting (possibly in futility) to get off the ground.

The latter was an attempt to devise a new (to me at least) form of team ownership that more closely resembles real life. Each team has an owner and that owner hires a general manager and field manager (and minor league manager if he chooses) who all work together to run the team. In general the GM handles player personnel while the manager(s) send the exports and the owner does ownerly things like threatening to fire his managers and pocketing profits.

The twist is, everyone in the league amasses a personal fortune. For owners it is based on their team's financial performance; for managers it comes from the contracts they sign. Owners can buy and sell teams and managers can become owners when they compile enough money.

The goal is for managers to become wealthy enough to finance expansion teams, then hire more managers who will eventually become owners themselves, which will keep the league constantly expanding. Because of this you don't need a huge core of managers from the get-go, just enough to go around for a small (4, 6, 8 teams?) league that will hopefully quickly grow.

I'd be interested in trying something like that here if we can get enough people involved. Otherwise I'd like to try some sort of fictional league with fun twists. I'm in a current league, an 80's league, a 60's league and a 40's league along with various solo leagues so I'm burned out on reality. I'd especially like some people who have some experience running leagues who can help with the planning and setup.

I'm an out-of-the-box thinker who comes up with a lot of interesting ideas and even more stupid ones. But I want to start something, anything, because I've got an OOTP itch which isn't being scratched.

Holla.

PotatoPeeler · 12-15-2004, 06:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bulldog55

The latter was an attempt to devise a new (to me at least) form of team ownership that more closely resembles real life. Each team has an owner and that owner hires a general manager and field manager (and minor league manager if he chooses) who all work together to run the team. In general the GM handles player personnel while the manager(s) send the exports and the owner does ownerly things like threatening to fire his managers and pocketing profits.

Thats sounds very interesting and I think it would be a great league if it really got going. I'm be interested in joining a league like that.

bulldog55 · 12-15-2004, 06:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PotatoPeeler

Thats sounds very interesting and I think it would be a great league if it really got going. I'm be interested in joining a league like that.

If the BBSC league folds I'm sure some of the people who were in that would come over to an offsite league. If we got 12 people together we could have a four-team league with an owner, GM and manager for each team. We could set it up so that expansion is fairly cheap so that managers could fund a new team after a couple seasons if they can assemble a management staff.

ifspuds · 12-15-2004, 07:14 PM

That does sound really interesting, and vaguely similar to a dynasty thread I'm planning to start to begin the new year. I might be interested, depending on how much time I have, which is likely to be not very much. But I wouldn't mind hearing more about it anyway.

bulldog55 · 12-15-2004, 07:21 PM

These are some rough and basic rules I typed up for the original league:

Quote:

I. Management Structure

All teams shall consist of the following management positions: Owner, General Manager and Field Managers. Field Manager may be one person or roles (such as hitting coach, pitching coach, minors manager, etc.) can be delegated at the Owner's discretion.

II. Management Contracts

Owners are responsible for assembling their management team. This is to be accomplished through private negotiations. When an Owner and Manager have agreed to a contract, the terms shall be announced to the league.
Management contracts are deducted from the team's on-hand cash at the end of each season.

III. Personal Fortunes

Every manager will amass a Personal Fortune consisting of the sum of the money he has earned over his career.
Owners amass their Personal Fortunes through their teams. The sum total of the profits and losses of the Owner's teams (including Management Contracts) over his career shall equal the Owner's Personal Fortune.
Managers amass their Personal Fortunes via the sum total of their Management Contracts over their careers.

IV. Franchise Value

Franchise Value shall be determined by the sum total of a team's profits and losses over the life of the franchise.

V. Buying and Selling of Teams

Owners are permitted to put their teams up for sale during any offseason. In-season sales will not be permitted.
Sale price shall be based on Franchise Value, but Owners may ask any price they wish. Prospective Owners may bid against each other for the rights to the team. Several prospective Owners may join together to form an Ownership Group.
The final selling price shall be determined solely through independent negotiations.
Managers may use their Personal Fortune to purchase teams.
Expansion teams may be financed through rules yet to be determined.

Long_Long_Name · 12-15-2004, 07:29 PM

Beta Baseball, the online league I run that's entering its 8th season, tried to work with the 3-party system for many, many years. Despite me advertising here frequently, we rarely got applcations. Last year, we ditched the 3-man system for the conventional "1 team, 1 owner" format, and we don't have application problem anymore.

So, your idea isn't revolutionary, but if you make it work, good for you

.

rem · 12-15-2004, 07:31 PM

Yes, as LLN said: The 3 man team stragety has been tried and failed multiple times in the past.

Good luck, still.

bulldog55 · 12-15-2004, 07:31 PM

I figured someone somewhere had tried it and yes, we ran into similar problems of nonparticipation. I don't expect to make it work this time but I'd like to try.

If we can't get enough I still want to start a new league in the standard one man per team mold. But I'd like to give this one last shot before I finally give up and accept it can't work.

Long_Long_Name · 12-15-2004, 07:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by remangiii

Yes, as LLN said: The 3 man team stragety has been tried and failed multiple times in the past.

Good luck, still.

Yeah, half of these leagues folded because the commish wasn,t smart enough to realize that it couldn't work very well with a 30-team league.

bulldog55 · 12-15-2004, 07:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Long_Long_Name

Yeah, half of these leagues folded because the commish wasn,t smart enough to realize that it couldn't work very well with a 30-team league.

Heh, yes, I start a bit more realistic. Fill four teams and go from there....

sadangelclown · 12-15-2004, 08:40 PM

I've thought about that kind of thing before and think it could be really interesting; but not with only 4 teams! I think the cooperation aspect would be really fun, to have people collaborating on the same team. I'd suggest starting with GM and a field manager, or a combination of just 2 of the roles. (You could also just label it an assistant GM). Then you could possibly make a viable current, real rosters league (I think these leagues have the broadest appeal). While difficult, certainly, I don't think it's necessarily impossible to recruit 60 participants in a league-- especially when coordination and partnership reduces the burden each person carries. I would definetly be interested in joining such a league, but 4 fictional teams hold no interest for me. Everytime I read the posts for Beta Baseball, I'd check the website because it seemed like such an interesting league. The fictional teams and small size kept me from ever joining, though.

I do like the personal fortune idea though-- it'd be interesting to have GMs switching teams in the offseason, getting hired by new owners, etc and actually having incentive (option to buy a team in the future). Yeah, if I were you, I think I'd try just owners+GMs on a real rosters league; with spectacular web design and a good commish it could work. Then you could have owners choose whether or not to hire a field manager-- reduce the burden on the GM, but takes from revenue. Could be a real great league.

Long_Long_Name · 12-15-2004, 08:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sadangelclown

I do like the personal fortune idea though-- it'd be interesting to have GMs switching teams in the offseason, getting hired by new owners, etc and actually having incentive (option to buy a team in the future). Yeah, if I were you, I think I'd try just owners+GMs on a real rosters league; with spectacular web design and a good commish it could work. Then you could have owners choose whether or not to hire a field manager-- reduce the burden on the GM, but takes from revenue. Could be a real great league.

The problem with letting GMs also being the managers is that it pretty much takes away the point of having a 3-man system. As for a 30-team league... you have 90 guys to manage. That's just insane to start off.

sadangelclown · 12-15-2004, 09:21 PM

I don't think it does defeat the purpose, because the point is to have fun cooperating and coordinating with another player in running a baseball team; it's also meant to approach greater levels of realism. I think an owner-GM combination would work quite well, and I proposed the idea of having optional field managers because a) the work of a field manager would be very limited and entirely dictated by personnel decisions b) manager could reduce burden on GM/owner and allow efficiency, though, so it could be an option for the owner who wanted to increase payroll a bit.

bulldog55 · 12-15-2004, 09:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sadangelclown

Yeah, if I were you, I think I'd try just owners+GMs on a real rosters league; with spectacular web design and a good commish it could work. Then you could have owners choose whether or not to hire a field manager-- reduce the burden on the GM, but takes from revenue. Could be a real great league.

That's definitely another option and one I've thought about. It wouldn't be as interesting but would still have a nice twist on the standard league.

I don't know if any of you would like to get on board the BBSC version of this. It looks like we're getting back on track and if we can bring several new managers in it would really solidify things, maybe even let us expand from 6 to 8 teams and have a nice, rounded league. It would be based on BBSC but we have a web host specifically for BBSC leagues and some very knowledgable people will be running the league. We have our own forum on BBSC and a lot of very active owners; online leagues have basically become the focus of BBSC over the past year or so.

The league will start in 1904 with a hybrid of real and fictional players. We run two amateur drafts each year; a fictional draft in June to stock the minors and a historical draft in the offseason to bring real players into the league. We use modern totals so it won't be a deadball league.

If anyone would be interested in doing that, you can post in this thread (you'll have to register at BBSC, but if you haven't already you're missing out on a great site regardless).

Long_Long_Name · 12-15-2004, 09:26 PM

Actually, the managers are the MOST active persons. The owners have practicaly nothing to do.

sadangelclown · 12-15-2004, 09:27 PM

Plus, to get over the difficulty of recruitment, you could use existing leagues that aren't well-established or are struggling. A league in danger of folding could choose to submit itself to another league as a GM or manager pool to be signed in a free agent period, while the existing league could constitute the owners. Or you could simply tell an existing league that each player should choose between owner and GM, and then recruit only 30-60 people for that league.

The thing is, a league of 60-90 people is going to have far more activity than a league of 30. Activity draws people to a league. I think that with proper web design and the initial difficulty of drawing the masses (which is better done with a realistic and current roster set), it could work.

bulldog55 · 12-15-2004, 09:32 PM

If anyone wants to get on AIM and talk about this, I'm logged on as streetsignvandal.

bulldog55 · 02-04-2005, 11:38 AM

Thought I'd give everyone an update on this. Our first season ends tomorrow and we have more than enough managers to go around for a second. Some teams even have minor league managers and scouting directors. Eventually they'll dilute into new teams when we have enough for them.

The league being on BBSC helps, since unlike here the leagues actually run through the site, with dedicated forums for each league and a central website for all of the leagues. It keeps everyone connected and involved and prevents having to pull people together from all corners of the internet.

If anyone is interested in joining up for our second season, we could stand to fill out two more teams and split into two divisions. At any rate, I thought some of you might be interested in following the league's progress.

Website

12-15-2004, 06:09 PM	#1
bulldog55 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: California's Canada Warnings: 17 Posts: 2,479	Looking to start a unique league and I need interested parties to help plan it. About me: I've been a member of BBSC for three years and am easily the most active OOTP user on the forums. I am in five online leagues, commissioner of two of them and assistant commish in a third. The two leagues I commish are very unique. One is a fictional league, peppered with MLB and Japanese crossovers, in its sixth season. The other is a league attempting (possibly in futility) to get off the ground. The latter was an attempt to devise a new (to me at least) form of team ownership that more closely resembles real life. Each team has an owner and that owner hires a general manager and field manager (and minor league manager if he chooses) who all work together to run the team. In general the GM handles player personnel while the manager(s) send the exports and the owner does ownerly things like threatening to fire his managers and pocketing profits. The twist is, everyone in the league amasses a personal fortune. For owners it is based on their team's financial performance; for managers it comes from the contracts they sign. Owners can buy and sell teams and managers can become owners when they compile enough money. The goal is for managers to become wealthy enough to finance expansion teams, then hire more managers who will eventually become owners themselves, which will keep the league constantly expanding. Because of this you don't need a huge core of managers from the get-go, just enough to go around for a small (4, 6, 8 teams?) league that will hopefully quickly grow. I'd be interested in trying something like that here if we can get enough people involved. Otherwise I'd like to try some sort of fictional league with fun twists. I'm in a current league, an 80's league, a 60's league and a 40's league along with various solo leagues so I'm burned out on reality. I'd especially like some people who have some experience running leagues who can help with the planning and setup. I'm an out-of-the-box thinker who comes up with a lot of interesting ideas and even more stupid ones. But I want to start something, anything, because I've got an OOTP itch which isn't being scratched. Holla. __________________ Commissioner, Trans-Continental Base Ball Association Owner/GM, Los Angeles Electrics (TCBA), Beaverton Rangers (OTBL), Portland Mavericks (Union League), and Los Angeles Superbas (Century League) Being smart, don't always make you popular.

12-15-2004, 07:14 PM	#4
ifspuds Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Spokane WA Posts: 2,117	That does sound really interesting, and vaguely similar to a dynasty thread I'm planning to start to begin the new year. I might be interested, depending on how much time I have, which is likely to be not very much. But I wouldn't mind hearing more about it anyway. __________________ Jeff Watson Former dynasty writer and online league player, now mostly retired

12-15-2004, 07:29 PM	#6
Long_Long_Name Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Montréal Posts: 7,065	Beta Baseball, the online league I run that's entering its 8th season, tried to work with the 3-party system for many, many years. Despite me advertising here frequently, we rarely got applcations. Last year, we ditched the 3-man system for the conventional "1 team, 1 owner" format, and we don't have application problem anymore. So, your idea isn't revolutionary, but if you make it work, good for you . __________________ Beta Baseball. Join it!

12-15-2004, 07:31 PM	#7
rem Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: College Park, Md. Posts: 5,024	Yes, as LLN said: The 3 man team stragety has been tried and failed multiple times in the past. Good luck, still. __________________ OTBA: Washington Filibusters CLBR: Minnesota Twins 2005 Winner of LL's Pick the Loser Contest! - 15-0

12-15-2004, 07:31 PM	#8
bulldog55 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: California's Canada Warnings: 17 Posts: 2,479	I figured someone somewhere had tried it and yes, we ran into similar problems of nonparticipation. I don't expect to make it work this time but I'd like to try. If we can't get enough I still want to start a new league in the standard one man per team mold. But I'd like to give this one last shot before I finally give up and accept it can't work. __________________ Commissioner, Trans-Continental Base Ball Association Owner/GM, Los Angeles Electrics (TCBA), Beaverton Rangers (OTBL), Portland Mavericks (Union League), and Los Angeles Superbas (Century League) Being smart, don't always make you popular.

12-15-2004, 08:40 PM	#11
sadangelclown Minors (Double A) Join Date: Mar 2004 Posts: 127	I've thought about that kind of thing before and think it could be really interesting; but not with only 4 teams! I think the cooperation aspect would be really fun, to have people collaborating on the same team. I'd suggest starting with GM and a field manager, or a combination of just 2 of the roles. (You could also just label it an assistant GM). Then you could possibly make a viable current, real rosters league (I think these leagues have the broadest appeal). While difficult, certainly, I don't think it's necessarily impossible to recruit 60 participants in a league-- especially when coordination and partnership reduces the burden each person carries. I would definetly be interested in joining such a league, but 4 fictional teams hold no interest for me. Everytime I read the posts for Beta Baseball, I'd check the website because it seemed like such an interesting league. The fictional teams and small size kept me from ever joining, though. I do like the personal fortune idea though-- it'd be interesting to have GMs switching teams in the offseason, getting hired by new owners, etc and actually having incentive (option to buy a team in the future). Yeah, if I were you, I think I'd try just owners+GMs on a real rosters league; with spectacular web design and a good commish it could work. Then you could have owners choose whether or not to hire a field manager-- reduce the burden on the GM, but takes from revenue. Could be a real great league.

12-15-2004, 09:21 PM	#13
sadangelclown Minors (Double A) Join Date: Mar 2004 Posts: 127	I don't think it does defeat the purpose, because the point is to have fun cooperating and coordinating with another player in running a baseball team; it's also meant to approach greater levels of realism. I think an owner-GM combination would work quite well, and I proposed the idea of having optional field managers because a) the work of a field manager would be very limited and entirely dictated by personnel decisions b) manager could reduce burden on GM/owner and allow efficiency, though, so it could be an option for the owner who wanted to increase payroll a bit.

12-15-2004, 09:26 PM	#15
Long_Long_Name Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Montréal Posts: 7,065	Actually, the managers are the MOST active persons. The owners have practicaly nothing to do. __________________ Beta Baseball. Join it!

12-15-2004, 09:27 PM	#16
sadangelclown Minors (Double A) Join Date: Mar 2004 Posts: 127	Plus, to get over the difficulty of recruitment, you could use existing leagues that aren't well-established or are struggling. A league in danger of folding could choose to submit itself to another league as a GM or manager pool to be signed in a free agent period, while the existing league could constitute the owners. Or you could simply tell an existing league that each player should choose between owner and GM, and then recruit only 30-60 people for that league. The thing is, a league of 60-90 people is going to have far more activity than a league of 30. Activity draws people to a league. I think that with proper web design and the initial difficulty of drawing the masses (which is better done with a realistic and current roster set), it could work.

12-15-2004, 09:32 PM	#17
bulldog55 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: California's Canada Warnings: 17 Posts: 2,479	If anyone wants to get on AIM and talk about this, I'm logged on as streetsignvandal. __________________ Commissioner, Trans-Continental Base Ball Association Owner/GM, Los Angeles Electrics (TCBA), Beaverton Rangers (OTBL), Portland Mavericks (Union League), and Los Angeles Superbas (Century League) Being smart, don't always make you popular.

02-04-2005, 11:38 AM	#18
bulldog55 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: California's Canada Warnings: 17 Posts: 2,479	Thought I'd give everyone an update on this. Our first season ends tomorrow and we have more than enough managers to go around for a second. Some teams even have minor league managers and scouting directors. Eventually they'll dilute into new teams when we have enough for them. The league being on BBSC helps, since unlike here the leagues actually run through the site, with dedicated forums for each league and a central website for all of the leagues. It keeps everyone connected and involved and prevents having to pull people together from all corners of the internet. If anyone is interested in joining up for our second season, we could stand to fill out two more teams and split into two divisions. At any rate, I thought some of you might be interested in following the league's progress. Website __________________ Commissioner, Trans-Continental Base Ball Association Owner/GM, Los Angeles Electrics (TCBA), Beaverton Rangers (OTBL), Portland Mavericks (Union League), and Los Angeles Superbas (Century League) Being smart, don't always make you popular.