Fantasy Sports Etiquette

I've seen a lot of crap go down throughout the years while playing fantasy sports, but never have I felt so wronged as I did last night.

I got home from work last night and logged onto one of my league's site in order to prepare for the draft in which I had the second pick. I had been informed by my buddy that the commish had went and made significant changes in the scoring system. This is the first failure that happened yesterday.

I don't care what kind of league you're in and what kind of wonky scoring system you have, as a commissioner you cannot go and change it one day before the draft, especially without running this by the rest of the league. For instance, I had spent a solid hour or two adjusting my rankings to the original scoring system, which did not have points per reception and did not reward passing touchdowns very much. My buddy had spent a good few hours putting together rankings for the IDP players because the scoring system did not include tackles, which tends to be pretty standard in most leagues with IDP. The commish decided to add tackles, making my buddy's rankings useless. So, by changing the scoring system the night before the draft, the commissioner has made our previous work obsolete and pretty much useles. Furthermore, this only leaves us with 24 hours to come up with new rankings and if I had any sort of event on that night I would have been screwed.

While the changing of the scoring rules can most likely be chalked up to inexperience, mismanagement and lack of organization, the other event that occurred last night cannot be. Several weeks ago the commissioner drew names out of a hat. I was fortunate enough to get the second pick. I prepared for my draft expecting to take Steven Jackson at two (unless LaDanian Tomlinson fell to me) and had actually devised a strategy with how to address my next 5 picks.

Then, THE NIGHT BEFORE THE DRAFT, the commissioner decides to RE-DRAW the draft order. That is completely ludicrous, unjustifiable and bush league. His reasoning was that some of the other owner's questioned the "legitimacy" of the previous draft orders. Yeah.....the owners that had crappy picks questioned the legitimacy of the draft order....because these guys don't have anything to gain from changing the draft order.

I've played in a lot of leagues that had rules that I didn't necessarily like but I accepted those rules and built my teams with knowledge of the rules. However, NEVER EVER has anything as bad as this ever taken place. To post an official draft order and then renege on it and come up with a new one? That, my friends, is bush league all the way. Considering that I was to actually pay money to compete I decided to exercise my only option and threaten to quit the league if the draft order changed in any way shape or form from the original draft order. There was no league vote and nobody even consulted with me to get my opinion before this went down. When I was told that the draft order was changing I promptly withdrew my team as that was the only option I had left.

I could really care less that I left them short-handed on such short notice but if crap like that is allowed to go down in a league, its clearly a league I want no part in. It was pretty bush league.....at best.