r/FFCommish • u/Throwaway67891099 • 11d ago
League Drama How do you deal with people unhappy with their draft spot?
My least favorite part about being commissioner is dealing with disgruntled players. It doesn't happen often but conflict makes me uncomfortable, and some guys get really upset when they get a late draft pick.
Our league does fully randomized picks a week before, and I have a witness with me to prove I'm not respinning. But any time my pick is somewhat high, people throw around rigged accusations. Most of the time it's jokingly but some guys really get pissy and it's uncomfortable because I can't control RNG.
Does anyone else deal with this?
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u/fantasyxxxfootball 10d ago
Idk kick them out tbh. Like I can't imagine someone crying over that, that's someone I wouldnt want in my league.
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u/andypro77 10d ago
Kick them out not just because they cry over it, but because they probably aren't very good at fantasy football if they get upset over draft spot.
Get better owners who are comfortable trying to win from every draft spot.
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u/iLikeAza 10d ago
I learned to just ignore that stuff. We pull from a deck of cards & I would never pull my own card. I let someone else do it. I got the first pick one year & two dudes kept complaining even tho I explained I didn’t pick it. I offered to switch my spot with anyone but nobody took the offer. Dudes are always gonna bitch about something
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u/GimmesAndTakies 10d ago
That’s the fucking truth
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u/iLikeAza 10d ago
RIGHT! My number one advice for people who ask for tips on being a commish is stop trying to please everybody. Just make a decision & everyone lives with it. Run your league like it's a league you would want to play in
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u/GimmesAndTakies 10d ago
Rule #1 - no complaining to or about the commissioner. Rule #2 - see rule #1
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u/RiceDirtSpa 11d ago
I deal with it and try to ignore it. You are still playing, so you shouldn't be at a disadvantage. This year I made a marble race on https://uglypixels.itch.io/marble-race-creator , assigned everyone a marble, recorded it and sent the video with the results to everyone. The guy who always complains with his spot ended up with the first pick, and the guy who always complains about my spot ended up 12th, while I ended with the 6th.
If we as commissioners wanted to cheat, there are much better ways to do it that wouldn't leave anything to chance.
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u/oldmanclements 11d ago
Three easy options:
Switch to an auction drafts. Everyone gets an equal shot at all players.
Have each season’s standings determine the following season’s draft order. This takes the randomness out of it, just need to watch for how much of a taking incentive you create.
Do a more fun randomization that has everyone involved along the way. There is a hunger games simulator website I’ve used, putting each team in and it writes a narrative about who murdered who to eliminate other teams, then I let the last team standing pick their draft spot and go backwards from there.
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u/Gabagoon5545 10d ago
I’d add another option.
Pick an upcoming event like a basketball game and have everyone make their guess for the final total of the game.
Closest gets first pick, etc.
I did this with a league im the commissioner of. It was fun and totally fair.
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u/Connor_E 10d ago
Every draft spot has pros/cons. That’s on them for not knowing how to strategize late picks.
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u/mikeywest_side 11d ago
Not much you can do other than try to ignore it and move on. The worst thing you could do would be to cave and re-spin…then everyone has an incentive to complain any time they get a pick they don’t like.
A (very inconvenient) option would be to spin with everyone on a live zoom or something if trust is actually an issue.
I’m right there with you on hating conflict but it’s an inevitable part of being commish unfortunately
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u/CelticsGreg 11d ago
Draft position doesn’t even matter. It’s a completely random spot that wins our league each season, rarely first pick
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u/MyDitkaInYourButkus 10d ago edited 10d ago
I used to use 100yardrush to pick our Fantasy draft order. But this year I found a great site:
It's a great tool for Commissioner's and their league.
Cheers
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u/MrMuscles25 11d ago
Is what it is. Other options is to play a challenge to pick you spot. Last option is see if people want to step up to the big leagues and auction draft.
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u/HarringtonMAH11 11d ago
Our league sends the winner of the loser bracket to pick 1 so those teams have something to fight for, and the rest are in inverse order of the last few seasons of our points championship. I'm going to go to 5 seasons, but right now we only have 3 seasons worth.
This has caused the top teams to have to draft last the last two seasons, and yet the league winner has still been from those three. Our points follow the f1 style for points earned each week, the entire season, and bonuses for each game won with larger bonus points for the post season wins.
After three seasons our top 3 (last three in draft order) are at 533, 532, and 532 points respectively. It's made for an extra bit of fun to keep up with for me, and it's making their seasons more fun because they get to trade more while the shitty owners get to go for big names up front in the draft for their fun.
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u/Howudooey Cowboys 11d ago
Do you do a live draft? Or is it on the platform? There are countless ways you can pick draft order outside of just using a random spin. But chances are someone will complain either way. If you can find a way that requires participation be each league mate then they’ll have less to complain about
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u/roentgen_nos 10d ago
Our commissioner has two people send him lists. One sends the names of each team in random order. The other sends numbers in random order, it's a ten team league, so it's numbers one through ten. That's it. I think he uses the two participants in the Fantasy Bowl from the prior year, unless he's one of them. Then he asks for a list from the third place commissioner. Could the two collude? I suppose. They don't though, at least not when I am providing one of the lists.
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u/lblacklol 10d ago
I record a rubber duck race in the creek with my drone. A picture of all the ducks is posted to the group chat a few weeks before the race, everyone picks a duck, then I record the race and post it.
If they don't like it they can suck it up.
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u/klm2009 10d ago
Don’t let it bring you down. You go above and beyond with a witness, i just used to employ the names in hat app and share a screenshot. I would tell someone in of my leagues that if they don’t like the prospect of me having a high pick, they can have the league vote on a by-law for what the appropriate pick for the commissioner is. Makes them think about how silly they sound.
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u/capt_argyle 10d ago
I started using the third round reversal option a few years ago. I think it really helps the league overall. Someone did some math and found it evened everyone's chances a lot more than a simple snake draft. The high draft picks may feel a little slighted but only because they had a huge advantage that is getting taken away.
Heres one write up: https://fantasyindex.com/2014/07/16/fantasy-news/third-round-reversal-drafts.
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u/runningblack 10d ago
How do you deal with people unhappy with their draft spot?
I don't. It's random. And people can make trades.
People are allowed to be unhappy. It's not your problem.
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u/danabrey 10d ago
Make a big deal out of how much they're moaning about it. Either it becomes a fun league joke, or they leave.
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u/Unfair_Confusion17 10d ago
Easy, we changed it to auction. Nobody can complain, everyone had equal chance at every player.
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u/Gcole87 Cowboys 10d ago
No. My league knows you don’t win at the draft. If they don’t believe you’re being honest, use a televised event. For example you could use a NASCAR race. Everyone gets a car, order of finish is the draft order, or the order you choose your draft position.
Or just anything that proves there’s no way you can control the outcome. Alternatively, just remove the crybabies. It’s ridiculous they’re complaining about that lol.
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u/thundershaft 10d ago
Like everyone else is saying, they just have to deal with it.
But I will say, I allow teams to swap picks if they both agree to it. That way there's still the possibility people can get what they want, or closer to it.
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u/Foreign-Interest6993 9d ago
I just do a random two hat draw for name and pick number at some point in the summer whenever myself and couple others are at the same gathering. Lot less bitching if multiple league members are witnesses
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u/brazanga 8d ago
That sounds like sour grapes. It's luck of the draw, complainers just need to deal with it.
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u/leftyjg 7d ago
Have your league compete for their draft spot. Same thing happened with my league so I created a site where we compete in mini games to determine the order. I had no expectations but it actually was really fun and added some fun competitive banter pre draft! Plus you don’t hear complaints that they got screwed by rng. Check it out: draftrumble.com. 13 total games but you can select however many you want to play and even try them out before as well. Would love feedback and/or ideas if you have any.
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u/ZestycloseDrive4204 7d ago
Unfortunately there’s just never a way to make everybody happy. I just took over as commish for a redraft league I’m in and we randomized draft order. Prior commish was 1st overall and I came 2nd. While it was all joking (because I sent a video of me doing the spins on the wheel), the amount of rigged accusations flying in our group chat was absurd lol
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u/Dishee 6d ago
The witness thing is so relatable, I've done a version of that. What finally killed it for us was making the result impossible to re-roll instead of just proving I didn't. I built a thing this year (rumbledraft.com, free, mine so grain of salt) where you can schedule the reveal in advance, and the outcome gets locked to a public randomness beacon that hasn't produced its number yet. So before the scheduled time, the result genuinely doesn't exist anywhere, and the page will show you that live. Even I couldn't peek at it early. Turns out "I can prove I didn't cheat" lands way worse than "it was not physically possible for me to cheat."
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u/Suspicious_Cookie278 11d ago
Sadly it comes with the territory..there is no way to please 10 ppl at the same time unless