Fix the International Free Agency

[DaveB]

Subject says it all. It's ridiculous that Nashville spent 33 million on the internation free agency and they're getting a 66 million dollar bill because of it. The 66 million dollars is more than 5 teams in the league.

Either make it to where going over the international tax is actually harmful to teams, implement an international draft, or ditch it because this nonsense that happens every few seasons is utterly dumb and isn't helping the league balance between the haves and have nots in the least bit. Please don't give me the international guys don't develop. If he has 2 of the guys he signed it's like he's getting a top 5 draft pick which is beyond dumb.

[handaspencer]

i have no issue with what Nashville did. They are free to spend money how they choose. Winning creates good budgets, time will tell if it’s a good investment or not. Personally i think paying double is a pretty big penalty.

[BaseClogger]

I want to see the new cap and media revenues take effect for a couple years first. Then I’ll potentially be open to some moderate reform.

[Knucklehead254]

I think at least this time he had the budget for it?

[DaveB]

Don’t get me wrong I don’t have an issue with Nashville signing the players and it’s very admirable how he built his budget to be able to spend 60 million.

The issue I have is you’ve got a team coming off pure domination being awarded essentially 4-5 top 5 draft picks. When you have teams that don’t even have a payroll at the 60+ million they spent it’s not something good for the league.

I’d like to see a more harsh penalty for going over IFA cap.

[Dington]

The truth is I should have been doing this every year. I haven’t touched bonus funds since the ‘40s I think. At least now it will take more time to replenish my bonus funds with lower media revenues.

[RonCo]

We do actually need to do something.

[RT60]

My continued opinion is that we get rid of IFAs altogether. It seems like there will be always be issues. Nashville has abused it multiple times now (and yes, I consider using your market power to corner the IFA market an abuse even if allowed by the rules). Not sure where the line between cornering and not cornering exactly is, but I think it was crossed here. IFAs disproportionately help stronger teams in any event. We might as well reverse the regular amateur draft order and let the better teams draft first.

[RonCo]

As strange as this may sound, this is not really an IFA problem this time. The GB is talking about it now. Give us a little time here and we will get it sorted out.

[recte44]

We can put a hard cap on, have an IFA draft, or other.

[RonCo]

I'm reluctant to do anything like that because this is not an IFA thing. Under the hood this is a financial system thing.

[BaseClogger]

A draft sounds like a lot of work and there’s not enough players for it to make much sense.

A hard cap could work but then it maxes out any individual players’ earnings.

An increase to the penalty is the easiest and quickest little solution.

[JimSlade]

I'm in another league where IFAs are randomly assigned to teams throughout the course of a season. Most of them are going nowhere; occasionally a future trade chip or even a cornerstone player shows up in your system. This takes away the "fun" of bidding on a possibly overrated 16 year old, but it also avoids the "fun" of getting outbid by another GM and complaining about it.

[recte44]

There's a fix here and we'll figure it out. Some of it is internal money moving and the different ways that OOTP labels the financial fields. That's an easy fix.

[recte44]

I’d like to see a more harsh penalty for going over IFA cap.

Editing the penalty in-game is not an OOTP option.

[ae37jr]

Let's go with a quick fix and contract Nashville.

[handaspencer]

what I am struggling with is if my math is correct there is still 77.3 million dollars left on the table that teams have left behind in the cap so far. maybe that gets spent down over the coming sims maybe it don't. But if more dollars had been thrown out across the league initially Nashville might not have got all the guys and went so far above the cap due to more competition. If the majority of the teams wiped out their cap but then Nashville had funds well beyond the other teams to get these guys that would be different. I just view it as Nashville was aggressive and many other teams was not aggressive including myself. One could argue with that amount of money still available Nashville might have been over aggressive and might have spent more than they actually needed to for the guys.

[RonCo]

As an aside, regardless of the little issue we're looking at now, this is part of what I mean by "behemoths are different from you."

When you run a behemoth you quickly realize you have money coming out your ears and are constantly trying to spend it before the bonus cash monster throws it into the drink (because you're already at the $40M bonus cash cap). So every other year you throw $40M at teen-agers and hope one of them pans out. In the years of the past, when there was often only one or two real IFA's that meant one player got all the monies. Now, with many IFA players worth throwing cash at, that game theory still holds, but most everyone can play a little. But NSH, being the true behemoth of the league, is different from you guys. Their revenue stream will always refill the money bin.

This isn't about Chad. Or even just Nashville. Nashville is just the current example. When you deal with a true behemoth (and right now, really NSH is the only team that truly qualifies), you need to realize they really can afford give you probably twice whatever you got in return, even if they won't actually do that deal because they want things to be "fair."

[Dington]

what I am struggling with is if my math is correct there is still 77.3 million dollars left on the table that teams have left behind in the cap so far. maybe that gets spent down over the coming sims maybe it don't. But if more dollars had been thrown out across the league initially Nashville might not have got all the guys and went so far above the cap due to more competition. If the majority of the teams wiped out their cap but then Nashville had funds well beyond the other teams to get these guys that would be different. I just view it as Nashville was aggressive and many other teams was not aggressive including myself. One could argue with that amount of money still available Nashville might have been over aggressive and might have spent more than they actually needed to for the guys.

Spot on.

[RonCo]

The main penalty NSH pays for being this aggressive in IFA is that they cannot bid more than the min ($395K) for anyone next year. So they are out on big-ticket items in 2061. Of course, if we shut down IFA, then they really don't pay much of a penalty, then, do they?

I note that they've also mostly drained their ability to spend much the rest of the year, which really they probably don't care much about. If they can sign their #1 pick--who will not be terribly pricey at the end of the round--they are probably happy.

That's not to say all is doom and gloom. IFA expenditures is a symptom not a cause. There are better tools to dealing with financial imbalance in OOTP worlds than than removing products from the shelf.