Judge Gene: Fantasy football rulings on commissioner trade vetoes, lopsided Travis Kelce deals and m

Read The Athletic’s fantasy football start/sit advice for Week 10.

All rise!

On second thought, I have no idea how you might be reading this. You could be in your office, on a train, in the car, the bathroom, or meeting with friends. Randomly standing at attention might cause issues you never desired.

Welcome to the debut “Judge Gene” column. I’m excited to discuss your disputes and beefs in fantasy football and rule as just and as fair as I can — while also hopefully having a little fun with it. After all, that is the point of fantasy, correct (side eyes encouraged)? But for real, with fantasy being a billion-dollar industry, these disputes are serious and in most cases have sizable financial ramifications. Because of this factor I did not want to be swayed by the opinions of commenters, so I have purposely only focused on the issues laid out and will render my decisions as such. But please feel free to opine in the comments!

Now… please be seated if you are still standing and let’s dive in. And thank you to everyone who sent in conundrums. If I didn’t get to you (and there were over 100 comments, so…), we have a few more weeks of this fun!

Joe Versus The Veto

Joe N. asks… What is your general philosophy about vetoes? I have always been of the opinion unless it’s obvious collusion, trades should go through. Using vetoes to try and keep competitive balance seems weak to me. Thoughts?

First let me say that vetoes in free leagues are silly. The only time this should be up for debate is when there is something tangible on the line — and it does not have to be money. With that said, the veto is usually held by one person, the commissioner. The problem with that arrangement is that the commissioner is usually managing a roster — and that is immediately a conflict of interest. As the great hip hop poet/philosopher Kanye West would say, “No one man should have all that power!”

I rule that vetoes should go the way of the dinosaur and I award the plaintiff a new system of checks and balances known as a league vote. Let all trades and roster moves go through the members of the league within four hours to approve/strike down the transaction by 75% vote of league members.

Benching a MNF player when you have a lead

Robert W. asks… What’s your view on dropping a defense on MNF? A team in my league has a 0.4 point lead and the Jets D, while the opponent has had everyone play. They’ve benched the D and left the spot blank so that they can’t get negative points and lose. The opponent wants me as commissioner to do something. I’ve never in 10 years changed a players lineup and don’t want to ever do it, even though it’s possible. Am I wrong to let this slightly unsporting act pass unchecked?

This is an interesting case because he’s technically done nothing wrong. It’s not like he gained an advantage; he simply eliminated the ability to lose. If a manager is mad that they lost a matchup when they only had the potential to back their way into a victory, then that is as unflattering as the move to take the defense out.

I rule that not giving your roster the chance to ruin a win is the very definition of “managing” your roster. It is crude — and if you are on the receiving end of this move, you have no other option than to appreciate it and hope that you get to pull it on someone in the future. You can also hope for a very rare stat correction on Wednesdays, as well.

Picking up players just to drop them before kickoff

James M. asks… Judge Gene, what negative morality, if any, do you ascribe to picking up players only to drop them before kickoff — is it right, wrong, or just another thing to litigate with your league’s members before the season starts?

I think this all comes down to the type of league you are in. If this is a friendly league with nothing tangible on the line, then this is a move in poor form. However, if you are playing for anything of worth — and, again, that can be something other than money — there are no holds barred. It is all fair in love and fantasy and although it’s an underhanded, shifty move… you are playing for a prize. The only people mad about these moves are people who did not think of them first because if they did, there would be crickets.

I rule that adding players to block other managers from obtaining them is not only quality managing but shrewd gamesmanship. Those who want to play, find a way.

Fixing a league with bad trade philosophies

Nick B. asks… How do you combat a league where every member thinks a trade needs to be so one-sided in their favor that it is impossible to make a normal fair trade?

The first step is to identify and discuss what is a fair trade. Actually, most platforms have a trade analyzer of some sort and can easily tell you if the trade is good or bad. On the ESPN platform, they use Watson to analyze the trade. So now it takes the human bias out of it. After a discussion about what a fair trade should look like, if nothing changes and they do not see how that is ruining the experience, then you may need to make different arrangements.

I rule that if the majority of your league’s members don’t understand trades then you should just move to ban trades completely. The only way to augment your roster would be through free agency and the waiver wire. If that doesn’t scare some of them into making deals, then you need to find another league.

Strap in. This is a very long, convoluted question, but Judge Gene wants to answer it

Mike L. asks… Gentlemen, boy do I have a doozy for you guys. This is one debate which has gone on for two years, involved nearly the entire league and took a once solid and fun, 14-team fantasy league and put it in a blender.

For context I’m going to give some general notes about the league, and then some additional context for why we are where we are.

To begin;

1) This is a 14-team, full PPR league consisting of 1QB, 2WR, 2RB, 1TE, 2FLEX, and 4 Bench spots. This makes the wire difficult to navigate at times and trades hard to come by (especially big ones)

2) How trades are adjudicated is that the commissioner appoints a secret, 3-member trade review board, which looks over every deal. If a member of the board is involved in a trade, they recuse themselves from the decision and of the remaining 2, if there is a split vote, then the commissioner casts a deciding vote. The board rotates each year.

3) 8 teams make playoffs. The top 2 teams get a bye in round 1 of playoffs. There are punishments for finishing last in our league. No huge punishments, and no one has to go to a diner for 24 hours and eat pancakes to get out early. But the loser has to pay the cost of shipping the championship trophy to the winner and provide a nice ($75) bottle of booze or packs of beer to the winner as well.

Another big piece of context is also what happened in 2021, and how that rolled into last year. So in 2021, three trades happened before the deadline before week 11. Team A at the time, was 7-3 and in first place. Team B was 3-7 and out of the playoff picture. Team A and B also have the fun wrinkle of being related. So here we go;

Trade 1 (Approved)

Team A receives;
Brandon Aiyuk
Najee Harris
Amari Cooper

Team B receives;
Michael Gallup
Austin Ekeler
Chase Claypool

Trade 2 (Vetoed)

Team A receives;
Deandre Hopkins

Team B receives;
Melvin Gordon

Trade 3 (Approved)

Team A receives;
Deandre Hopkins

Team B receives;
Antonio Gibson

So yeah, a smidge sketchy to say the least. Luckily, Team A didn’t win the league, and Team B ended up missing the playoffs at 7-7. Now, this brings us into 2022. The year started with a trade that everyone had an opinion on, Jonathan Taylor and Kyle Pitts for Dawson Knox and Khalil Herbert (in week 4, right after JT injury). At the time, the commissioner said that we didn’t know how the trade would end up over the course of the season and that we should hold on any judgement. “We’ll see” was the order of the day.

Fast forward to the trade deadline last year. My team (Team A) was 5-5 and barely clinging to playoff positioning. And Team B was 2-8 and on his way to a 4-9 finish, but not last place. The deal was;

Team A receives;
Travis Kelce

Team B receives;
Tony Pollard
Cole Kmet

For context, Team B opened up the bidding a week before the deadline saying that he didn’t want to finish last and needed multiple spots addressed if he was to trade Kelce. He received 7 offers total. My offer was the best of the bunch as he said, as Pollard at the time was on his way to an RB8 finish, and Kmet at that time was having some big weeks and TE4 at the time I believe.

It turns out, the trade board did not agree. Trade vetoed. This is the part where it went nuclear. Now, there were a lot of arguments but I’ll try and boil it down as best I can. First, I argued that you can’t say “we’ll see” to justify a massive deal earlier in the season and then not use that same line of thinking just because it’s the deadline. Second, the commissioner argued that Kelce is the definition of a league winner. Now, a couple things, everyone and no one can be a league winner. It’s a stupid phrase. In 2021 Amon Ra wasn’t a ‘league winner’ until after our deadline, no one has a crystal ball when someone suddenly pops. And guess what, I would have missed playoffs regardless of whether the trade went through or not, so “we’ll see” would have actually made sense.

Another point is that you can’t tell me that the deals done at the deadline in 2021 didn’t have a worse context to them, given the first-place team was receiving Aiyuk, Najee, Amari, and Deandre at the deadline. Those trades were more or less approved. So how, a year later, was this deal not? My argument is that the board had the ability to essentially collude to prevent the chance for me to maybe make some noise in the playoffs with Kelce (I run my mouth a lot, hence this book). The commissioner’s line was that you can’t trade league winners, and especially if you are trading one from when you’re out of the playoff picture. My counter is that there are last-place punishments and every team should have the ability to make a trade they want. I also argued, that when the call by the team trading Kelce was made to the league that he was available, if the commissioner was at all worried about a deal and its validity, he could have simply said right then before any offers came, that any deal involving a non-playoff team would be either heavily scrutinized or flat out denied. That didn’t happen. Also interesting how 7 offers were received, virtually ensuring that at least one of those 7 offers came from a board member.

So, after all of that. My question is fairly simple, who is in the right here? I gets brought up constantly and has honestly eroded a lot of the fun in the league, because it’s been constant arguing about integrity, and league winners, and everything.

And as a follow up, what, if anything, would you recommend to fix it moving forward?

The point of contention by the commissioner was that you “cannot trade league winners” because the second trade involved Travis Kelce. However there is no evidence that supports one player being a league winner. In fact, many of the supposed “league winners” over the past few years haven’t even made it through the season. This is a clear case of moving the goalposts to justify what you do not want to see happen; and thus why single-person (or mystery three-man commission) veto power has no place in fantasy.

I rule with the plaintiff and recommend the immediate abolishment of veto power in this league. I also appreciate that, to help quell the dishonesty that may come with trade deadline shenanigans, there is tangible punishment for last place in this league. But I rule that the price of the booze be raised to $200 if the last-place team made a trade after Week 10. That should give managers pause before they decide to punt on the season because they have no chance to make the playoffs.

I know I have not touched all of the disputes out there but hopefully I get to address more soon. The commenters in the original post actually had some good ideas. Keep fighting the good fight and remember that there are no petty disputes in fantasy, just fantasy managers doing petty things because they have been beaten to the punch.

This court is adjourned!

(Top photo: Michael Owens/Getty Images)