Preventing Tanking in Keeper Leagues

[LARS929]

The problem I've found with penalizing the last place team in a keeper league, is that it only sets them back further in the future. If you give them a worse pick, they're going to struggle again the following year. If you take away a keeper, they will be in last again the following year. The owners who stop playing are generally not the ones who will try to fight back against the odds, they are the ones who sort of care, but not a lot.

I really think there is no way to solve the problem other than threatening to kick them out of the league. I have kicked out friends in my leagues because they just weren't active, they were always understanding knowing they weren't helping the league or having fun themselves.

I don't play in money leagues so that's no an option for me.

[Whack]

an idea I am going to try this season is to customize the schedule...

We have a 22 week regular season and 18 teams...

the first 17 weeks of the season each team will play each other once... no real change there...

However, for the last 5 weeks of the season I play to revise the schedule to have match-ups where the dead teams... or teams just too far down in the standings eliminated from playing the teams that are competing...

right now I am looking at each team playing the two teams above and below in the standings... the the rub here is that the top 1 and 2 place teams end up playing the lowest teams, but maybe this is their carrot for having a good season... the real impact here is the middle teams, they end up playing each other for those last play-offs slots.

I have set it up so the match-ups are already mapped out, so there are is no funny business with match-ups.

Then there is the last week of the season, which will match-up those last teams still in the race... the teams that have already clinched play-off spots and lastly the bottom teams play each other.

It is a bit of work for me, but I believe it will make for some good fair competition...