Michiana Fantasy Football League

For your future reference, this is how the Elias Sports Bureau, the official statisticians for the NFL handles "freak" plays.

Laterals
When a receiver laterals to a teammate the receiving yardage continues to accumulate. The quarterback can still be awarded a touchdown after the lateral.

Example: Peyton Manning throws a 29 yard pass to Reggie Wayne, who laterals to Dallas Clark. Clark then runs the final 10 yards for a touchdown.

The scoring for the play would be:
Manning, 39 yards passing, touchdown pass
Wayne, 1 catch, 29 yards receiving
Clark, no catch, 10 yards receiving, receiving touchdown

Fumbles
If a receiver fumbles after a catch all passing a receiving yardage ends unless he recovers his own fumble downfield.

Batted Passes
If a quarterback throws a pass which is batted back to him by a defender he will be credited with both a pass completion and a pass reception. Any yards accumulated on the play are considered passing yards and receiving yards, and if he manages to score he would be credited with both a passing and receiving touchdown.

These are our two open voting issues.

The Rules Council has made modifications M.R.2. These modifications are for clarity only, but if you wish to change your vote you may do so.

M.R.1

Section 4. ARTICLE 1.d. Draft picks may be traded for a period of three (3) years into the future. Any teams trading future draft picks must pay the entry fee for each future year in which a pick is being traded. This advance payment is non-refundable, and will be added to the prize pool if the owner does not return for the season in question. Agreeing to such a trade constitutes a binding contract to make said payment. In the event the entry fee for any given year changes, the owner must pay any difference prior to or on the day of the draft. [1]

[1] Changes in italics.

M.R.2

Section 6. Rules and Rules Council
Revision of Rules
ARTICLE 1. a. Anyone can write a proposal for changing or adding rules, however a call for votes on rule changes may only be issued by the office of the commissioner via email, blog post or telephone notification.

b. This call for votes may contain more than one proposal. Each proposal will be tagged with a resolution number (i.e. M.R.3).

c. Proposals may be linked, so that a vote for one only takes effect if the other passes or fails.

d. Proposals for changing rules must be submitted to the MFFL Rules Council for vetting against current league rules prior to being opened up to a vote. This vetting process is intended to eliminate any conflicts between the new rule and current rules. It is not intended as a judgement on the new proposal.

e. When a rule change is formally proposed by the commissioner a voting deadline of not less than one (1) week will be attached to the notice. At the expiration of the deadline, or when votes from every owner are received, votes will be tallied and the measure will pass or fail based on those results.

f. During the off-season, once a call for votes is issued a resolution is adopted by reaching a majority of the owner votes received. A resolution that fails to reach a majority of the votes is not adopted.

g. Tied votes will be broken by the league commissioner.

h. Rules may be changed during the season only by unanimous vote of all the franchise owners.

i. For the purposes of modification of rules the season is designated to begin on the day of the MFFL Draft.

j. Rules may only be changed retroactively by a unanimous vote of all franchise owners, and then under only the most extraordinary circumstances.

g. When a rule change is formally proposed by the commissioner a voting deadline of not less than one (1) week will be attached to the notice. At the expiration of the deadline, or when votes from every owner are received, votes will be tallied and the measure will pass or fail based on those results.

Rules Council
ARTICLE 2. a. The Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner will sit on the Rules Council each season, as will one additional league officer, chosen from anyone who volunteers for the duty.

b. The owner who serves on the Rules Council in a given year is ineligible to serve the following year.

Rules Council Duties
ARTICLE 3. a. The primary duties of the Rules Council are to interpret the MFFL Rules and to protect the best interests of the league. [1]

b. In the event of a situation that is not explicitly covered by these rules the MFFL Rules Council will take action as it sees fit to preserve the best interests of the league.

[1] The rule as presented here is a total reorganization of Section 6.

The vote deadline for M.R.1 is Wednesday August 6, midnight
The vote deadline for M.R.2 is Thursday August 7, midnight

Please get your votes in as soon as possible if you have not already done so.

Ok, so I didn't want to do this, despite some urging to. But here we go:

M.R.3
SECTION 2. Ethics
Player Conduct
ARTICLE 4. a. There is no whining allowed in the MFFL. Owners who whine excessively may be penalized by being opened up for intense public mockery on the league web site.

Votes due by midnight Saturday August 9.

I've just finished updating the back end software on the web site. Most of the changes won't be that visible to the end user, but many of them make administration of the site easier.

I'll be rolling out some changes soon that will be more useful to all of you, but I wanted to make a note of the update here in case anyone runs into a problem in the next few days. If you do please let me know.

M.R.1 and M.R.2 have reached a majority and will pass.

I will have the draft lottery information for you tonight so you can start selecting your draft slots.

And finally, I need to do my annual reminder to everyone that the league web site won't work properly in Internet Explorer versions prior to 7. Safari, Firefox or Opera are the league's recommended browsers.

1. Sherry
2. Jay
3. Todd
4. Jack
5. Adam
6. Kevin
7. Mike
8. Josh
9. Kent
10. Jeremy
11. Chris
12. Justin

As a reminder, the draft lottery results are the order in which owners choose available draft positions. I'll contact each of you as it is your turn to choose. Please respond as soon as possible with your selection.

Sherry, you are first to choose your slot.

(Wow, that sounded way dirtier than I intended.)

Edited to add: So as to avoid any possible appearance of improprieties I always do the draft lottery with at least one other MFFL owner present.

Please welcome Jeremy Smith back to the league.

Jeremy played one year previously, finishing 7-7-0 in 2003.

Those of you wishing to change your team name for the upcoming season should try to get that submitted in the next few days if possible.

You can change your team name yourself by going to the profile page of the My Team section.

I've squashed a few bugs tonight, including one that dates from last year (though only administrators would have ever seen it).

I know the search function is broken, that's next on my agenda.

After that I hope to implement the History page, where you'll be able to browse and search all previous MFFL drafts, and a lot of other historical data. If there's anything special you'd like to see in this section please let me know.

I added some new products to the league store.

You can customize any of the logos available, changing shirt colors or styles, putting them on any product Zazzle makes, or moving the designs. Go nuts.

If there's any image you would like to see online let me know and I'll get the logo uploaded.

I get a small percentage of each sale from the store. If I ever managed to sell anything I would be able to reduce the $30 expense withholding, thus putting more money in the prize pool.

The draft or is set:

1. Cougarlicious/Sherry
2. I Drink Your Milkshake/Todd
3. Blues Breakers/Jack
4. Nannysaurus Rex/Adam
5. TBA/Kevin
6. Baddogs/Mike
7. Quicksilver/Chris
8. TBA/Kent
9. Scrantonicity/Justin
10. Thirteen Road Beers/Jeremy
11. Pushmi-Pullu Love/Josh
12. Myopic Moose/Jay

I've been working on a few nagging issues on the site. I tweaked the display of the Teams section in Statistics, increasing the size of the logo, and reworking the contact info to display better.

The history section is not online yet, and I've run into a few snags in getting it working. I still hope to have at least part of it online before the draft.

Search is still broken. I don't know what's up with that.

I'm doing some testing, so if you login and something seems out of the ordinary it's likely because of that.

At various times during this testing process players will be populated onto your rosters. You don't get to keep them. Sorry.

Edit: Tinkering is pretty much complete. I was able to finish work on the live draft module. Thanks to Justin for the help with remote testing. Any of you who will be using a laptop at the draft who want to get a look at the draft module before then just let me know and I'll set it up for you to play with.

I've opened up a new feature for everyone that previously was an admin only feature.

You can now send an email to any other league owner from the My Team section of the web site. Choose Correspondence from the sub-menu.

I hope some of you find this useful.

M.R.4: No real changes here, just formalizing policy that was not explicit in the rules:

Addition:

Section 1. ARTICLE 3. g. Positions are defined based on player data on the NFL.com website.

Added/Edited:

Scoring Irregularities
Section 3. ARTICLE 3. a. Offensive Scoring includes all offensive positions (e.g., a Kicker can be credited for a passing TD and yardage from a fake field goal).

b. Yardage from any Offensive player lateral during a rushing play is considered rushing yardage. Yardage from any Offensive player lateral during a passing play is considered reception yardage. Yardage gained after recovery of a fumble is considered rushing yardage.

c. Scoring by an Offensive player as a result of recovery of a ball in the end zone is considered a rushing TD.

d. A player can complete a pass to himself, and gets credit for both passing and receiving stats as a result.

e. Special Teams play is not counted as Offensive Scoring for any individual player.

f. If a kick actually takes place (including a blocked kick) it is a special teams play. Otherwise the team that snaps the ball is the offense for the entire play, and the team that did not snap the ball is the defense for the entire play. Aborted or fake field goal and punt attempts are not special teams plays since no kick actually occurred.

g. In the event of any scoring scenarios not accounted for in the rules defined below, the league agrees to abide by the statistical decisions made by the NFL reflected in the boxscores on NFL.com.

Edited for clarity:

Scoring Adjustments
ARTICLE 4. a. On occasion the NFL will make scoring corrections at some point after the end of a week's games. Scoring may be corrected if all of the following criteria are met:
1. The NFL officially changes the statistics
2. The issue is brought to the commissioner's attention prior the kickoff of the week following the correction.

b. In the event of a dispute scores at NFL.com are considered the definitive league source.

I don't think any of this really requires a vote, but the league rules say I have to ask for one. So, consider this a call for votes. Deadline Saturday at midnight (shortened due to approaching draft).

Do you ever have an idea pop into your head, an easy way to approach something that previously seemed either difficult or impossible?

I just had that moment of inspiration, and coded a change to the site.

The improvement shows the page title for all the PHP sub-sections of the site. So, if you go to Draft, and then to page the page title switches to MFFL: Draft. Previously, all the subsections of Statistics would display the title MFFL: Statistics. Normally this would be easy, but because of the nature of how the PHP sections load it became difficult to change the display. Until my moment of clarity. At 4:30AM. 32 hours before the draft.

League owners: Click here for the draft module.

Guests, sorry, but I ran out of time for making the draft module visible for you.

I've fixed all the problems we had with players not being available - I've changed the draft and the rosters to reflect the actual players chosen, not the hastily renamed ones I had standing in for the guys who weren't listed.

Everything should be right, but review your rosters to be sure.

The league's maximum roster size is 17 players, with position minimums of 2 QBs, 4 RBs, 4 WRs, 2 TEs, 2 Ks, and 2 DEF.

The web site is configured to allow teams to exceed these numbers temporarily to facilitate trades. All rosters must be brought into compliance with the league requirements before the commencement of each week's action.

I've created a tour of the web site, both for the new owners and those of you who want a refresher.

Roll over the highlighted areas for more information.

Just a heads up: The waiver wire is open, and we've had our first transactions of the year.