So, Here's The Story...

OK, everyone, here's the bottom line. I created a test league (with a 16 game season) and ran several seasons testing different financial scenarios.

What I discovered was this: changes in media contracts (as well as other financials) take effect the day after the playoffs end. Furthermore, the cash does not become available to teams to use for free agent signings until the *following* year.

To illustrate, here's the scenario I had with my test league.

The test league has a 16 game season that starts on July 1 and ends about July 22, followed by a five game playoff series. The league has a $10m cash cap.

On 7/1/2025, the Brooklyn team had the following financial info:
Cash: $10m
Media contract: $40m
$ avail for free agents: $55m

At that point, I simmed to August 2025 -- at which point the playoffs were over and the new fiscal year kicked in. That was when I removed the cash cap and changed the media contract for
Brooklyn to $800m (I chose a ridiculous amount so that I can see the change). However, since the fiscal year was over, no change actually occured. At this point, the totals don't even show up in the "Current Financial Overview" section.

I then proceeded to the end of the 2026 season. At that point, the huge amounts showed up in the "Current Financial Overview" section. However, the huge amount of money was not yet available for free agents. It did not show up there until I simmed to the end of the 2027 playoffs.

So, what does this mean for us? Well, since I did not change the media contracts until after the 2014 playoffs were over, that means that the changes will not show up in the available cash until after the 2016 season. Obviously, we don't want to wait that long.

The good news is that direct changes to cash totals take effect immediately. So, I think the obvious solution would be to take the amounts that I added to the media contracts and add them to the cash values of the teams.

At this point, I've spent a few hours going through this and learning how this works. It's now 2AM here in New York -- I'm going to sleep in a few minutes. Barring any objections, I will make those changes tomorrow and upload them.

We will discuss what (if anything) is to be done about the Lutz signing tomorrow.

If I may, I would like to conclude this with one parting thought:

Even though I am the commissioner of the league, I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of the game and its mechanics. Therefore, there are times that I may make mistakes in implementing a policy which may result in some adverse change in the game.

In addition, I try to accomodate owners on special requests whenever possible. For example, if an owner is away from their computer, I have always made myself available to making changes, offers, etc. manually. When owners ask to make sure that certain players start on certain games, I try to accomodate them as well. In short, I try to accomodate any reasonable request that an owner might have. Matt's not wanting to have to wait a sim before making an offer to Lutz (during which he might sign with another team) was, in my humble opinion, a reasonable request; and so I made the offer manually - as I would have for anyone else who had asked for any other free agent. I was not aware that doing so would provide an "exception" to the rules (and, frankly, I'm still not sure how that happened). Indeed, when the offer went through, I took that as a sign that the financial changes too place. However, considering that no one else knew that, I can understand why some people might have thought there were some shady dealings going on - but I can tell you that all that happened was that I tried to accomodate a reasonable request from an owner -- as I have done for the last seven years. I will apologize for my ignorance in not knowing the effect that this would cause.

Nonetheless, I would like to make the following request: If you suspect that an individual owner or commissioner (whether myself or Michael) have done things that are questionable vis-a-vis the league -- please bring it to our attention *privately* before lobbing statements such as "calling BS" or stating that "something smells rotten." If, after commenting the person involved you still feel that something improper has happened, then, by all means, bring a complaint up on the blog.

If you feel that I have done something wrong, please bring it to me *privately* first. If you don't feel comfortable bringing it to me privately, then bring it to Michael and he will discuss with me without revealing your identity.

Overall, I've had a ton of fun running this league -- and I look forward to many more years of doing the same. Yes, I have made mistakes as commissioner over the years -- there's no question about that -- but I believe that I have always tried my utmost to maintain fairness in the league to the best of my ability. All I ask, is that if you have a problem with something I (or Michael) do, at least give us the courtesy of asking us privately what happened and allowing us to explain before writing comments that can be taken as being suggestive of impropriety (whether the comments were meant that way or not).

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to ask. But it's 2:20 now. I'm going to bed and I'll pick this up tomorrow.

Zev