Monday Update: What'sApp

Gentlemen,

Andy has a post about this already, but I'm going to offer my rebuttal and then hopefully we can decide if we're doing this once and for all.

Since this season has begun, we've been doing an awful lot of group texting, mostly during the Sunday games. Personally, I love this. It makes me wish we had long ago (before wives and kids started messing everything up) decided to get together on Sundays to watch all the games together. I love MNF, but the reality is most fantasy match ups are determined during the Sunday games.

Our text group has become what I wanted the Gameday Threads on the blog to be. Lots of updates from each other, plenty of smack talk, discussion about the Vikings game, and laughing at others' misfortune when their players get hurt.

The Gameday Threads were kind of a thing for about 1.5 seasons, but never really took off. And it was usually only a select few of us who would actually sign on and participate. And I get it... People have other things going on, especially with young kids. Most can't sit with a laptop in front of them for 6 hours, only to chime in once-in-a-while with "Fuck you, Woodhead!" or "EAT A DICK, CRACKER".

But it's awfully easy to text that to someone. And you know they're going to see it.

And that is my own qualm with WhatsApp. I'm worried that by moving the conversation, it's going to become the Gameday Threads: less people, and less frequent...and then it just dies. I want to call Kenni "A Fucking J" and I want to make sure he sees it and laughs maniacally (cause you know he does).

Now... I realize that sometimes we can get carried away texting each other. And if it's late at night or during work, that can be an issue for some people*. And maybe we just need to be mindful of that, in combination with other using the Do Not Disturb function of their phones.

*I personally loathe my job so I welcome any and all distractions during the workday.

This is my opinion. However, my take may not be representative of the masses, so I'm open to change if everyone else is. I just want to make sure we don't move the conversation to a place where nobody will go.

So what does the group want to do?

Monday Update: Game-Time Waivers

Gentlemen,

Different format today. There's a couple outstanding topics to discuss from the past week, so I'm going to recap them all in separate posts here.

Game-Time Waivers

Ned pointed this out in an earlier blog post... Yes, last week I played within the rules dropped a couple players who had already played that were on my bench to pick up players that had not yet played.

Per Yahoo, when you click on Help > Commish Tools > Game-Time Waivers:

I was not the first person to take advantage of this rule, as Gow picked up Geno Smith by dropping Dennis Pitta on Monday, Sept 22. Pitta had already played, and I believe that was the weekend he got injured. Gow needed a QB for the next weekend and picked up Geno.

Similar to Ned, I was not aware that this was the rule. I actually looked up the page linked above to be sure that I had the settings correct, which I do. This isn't something I can specifically adjust - it's how Yahoo has it set up.

This even led me to texting Gow:

I know Ned is saying I did nothing wrong, but he's doing so with sort of a wink-and-nudge inferring the there's somehow some sort of collusion here. I do personally take offense to any sort of collusion inference. I didn't realize this was the way the rules were written until Gow made his move, but I didn't fault Gow for taking advantage. I also don't think I should be at fault because I noticed the move Gow made, when everyone else apparently didn't.

I don't think it's my responsibility to ensure everyone understands every single nook-and-cranny of every single rule. For example, did you know bye-week players go on Waivers as of the start of the the MNF game? I didn't either, but only learned of it by reading the note above. Do the research (or don't) but don't complain when others play by the rules to their advantage. I even checked with Yahoo and apparently it's always been this way. Shame on all of us for just now learning.

Regardless of me getting defensive... what do we do now? As far as I can tell, there are only two options:

1. We play out the rest of the season with the rules as they exist and are written, and now everyone is fully aware of them. Drop bench players all you want. 
2. We all agree that players who have played cannot be dropped until waivers process on Tues night. Any players that have been picked up via this rule thus far haven't been impactful, so they don't really matter.

To be honest, I don't even know what we need to achieve option #2 as we've never done a rule change mid-season. During the offseason, I try to stick to a league majority for major changes... but mid-season (to me) needs to be a higher threshold, possibly unanimous. 

Somewhat-related note: I'll work to write a League Constitution in the offseason to ensure we have our league rules all documented. That said, one of the notes will say something like "When the rule isn't specified, we will default to Yahoo rules." So even if we had one today, we'd still be in this situation. 

Without a League Constitution and no precedent for midseason changes, I'm much more in favor of Option #1. We can deal with this in the offseason if people truly would like to change this policy.

That's my 2 cents, but I'd love to hear from all of you.