Tua Rule

16 Jul 2024

Summary

Teams must pay next season’s buy-in to be allowed to trade with Draft picks.

Goal

To create a minimum level of guarantees for future team ownership.

Proposal

Teams that want to trade draft picks must prepay their dues for the next season.

This financially insures the future of their team. If the owner decides to not rejoin the following season, the new owner will have the benefit of their rebuild year already paid for.

This Proposal does not extend the buy-in to be prepaid by all Teams in the league. A Team can choose to avoid trading their Draft picks. Those teams do not need to prepay their buy-in for the following season.

Limitations

Yahoo requires that a team always carries the same total number of draft picks: a team that is “giving away” a round 3 pick will always receive a draft pick in return, even if it’s a measly round 15 pick.

This means that trades with draft picks are always bi-directional, and both teams must abide by this new policy for the trade to be allowed.

Remediation

Draft picks that are traded, but unpaid, will be reversed by the Commissioner. The team rosters will be restored as if the trade was vetoed. Both teams will be informed of the action.

There is a possibility that an unpaid draft pick is found after games have started. One of the following remediation options will be exercised:

1. The Teams involved will be asked to prepay for next season.
2. If not, the trade will be reversed after the week has concluded. This will likely see the trade reversed on a Tuesday or Wednesday.

Document History

2024-08-10	Ratified into the Constitution
2024-07-13	Initial draft

Appendix A - Background

One season, we invited a new member into the League named “Tua”. This person traded a significant amount of high draft picks. At the end of the season, “Tua” decided to not renew and dropped out of the league.

This created a very unappealing team to find a new owner for:

• Finding a replacement is a taxing process.
• The team was very poor in draft capital, and could not draft a viable team.
• The new owner had to pay the season’s dues to play a team in rebuild mode, which functionally was a donation to the league.