Computer Issues with Waiver Requests

Q:  Help me!  I’m the commissioner of our ESPN fantasy league.

One of the players in our league (who happens to be my best friend) called me the day before our waiver deadline and asked me how to add and drop a player.  We switched from CBS to ESPN and everyone is having some sort of question on how to put people on the bench, draft players etc.  He did have some problems on draft night and I was with him  on the phone right up to the draft talking him through what to do.  We don’t exactly have  a computer savvy league here!  Anyway, I just had a voice mail message from him asking him to manually give him Eddie Royal (which he told me before the deadline he was going to pick up).  Apparently, he claims, his computer isn’t showing him the option of adding or dropping someone on his team.  He called his brother to help him and his brother (who is also in the league) and he determined that the problems was indeed his computer.  Now, I believe him, but someone else has picked up Royal (as every fantasy owner tried to do this week!).  This other player in our league did have a lower waiver wire ranking than my friend so my friend, had he been able to get his computer working, would have indeed been assigned Royal by the computers.  He’s not asking for special favors, but he did ask me as the commissioner to assign him Royal from this other player since he did call me beforehand declaring his intention.  However, everyone knows he is my good friend and I don’t want anyone to think there is favoritism happening here as well as I’m afraid that this might open up the floodgates for the 21st century version of the “dog ate my homework” excuse (the power was out at my house, my hard drive crashed, I forgot to pay my cable bill, my ISP was down).  What should I do:

A)     Tell him he’s hosed don’t want to open the floodgates for excuses.
B)      Assign him Royal and even see if the guy who originally  claimed him off waivers notices.  Friendship is thicker than even fantasy football.
C)      Have him contact the other player who has Royal and if he agrees then reassign Royal
D)     Pretend my computer has crashed and tell him I can’t do it but I really want to help him.

Love to hear from the experts as this is my first year as the commissioner!

 A:  Hi Rich.  Your concerns about “opening the floodgates” are definitely warranted and you don’t want to set that kind of ‘he said, she said” precedent in your league – especially in week 1.

The safest solution is to chalk up the computer issues to bad luck, as adding Royal to your friends team is really not fair for the owner who already picked him up.  Hey, its not like luck doesn’t play an integral role in fantasy football anyway.  Career-ending injuries, blown coverages, and unfortunate weekly match-ups are all luck related occurrences that have a significant impact on your fantasy record.

That said, the more diplomatic approach is to realize that while your league needs to adhere to a set of rules, it is a league among friends.  This makes your dilemma an issue of trust, and so the final decision should be worked out between to the two owners most affected – your friend and the owner who picked up Royal.  If that owner trusts that your friend did in fact try to pick up Royal – and was prevented only by computer issues beyond his control – then he may decide to allow you to make the switch.   It really needs to be up to the owner who picked up Royal though.

Going forward, to prevent such issues in the future, you should set a standard that no more exceptions will be made regarding free agent pickups.  If a given owner is having computer issues, then it is his or her responsibility to get to another computer and enter their waiver requests.  That isn’t too much to ask considering most leagues clear waivers twice a week, giving each owner 3-4 day to ensure their free agent requests are entered successfully.

As a side note, Royal looked great, but it was only one game.   With the return of Brandon Marshall in week 2, there is a good chance that we’ve already seen Royal’s best performance of the season, so it is recommended that you position this as not a life or death situation.