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*The State of the Cap Space, -ish - excelsior - 02-22-2021
I don’t really know why I’m writing this article other than I have the perception that I have a lot of free time, and that I’m really quite interested in this topic. If you couldn’t already tell from the title, this article is essentially going to be going into a deep dive and analysis of the current state of the ISFL cap.
Now, I’m not writing this article for monetary incentive, as I’m set money wise to max earn for almost 3 more full seasons. After talking to some people in the rookie discord, and expansion and the cap space and budgets, and seeing Troen’s article recently, I got curious about the figures and numbers and just exactly how strapped each team is for cash, and whether the ISFL needs a change-up in the economy. Just kidding, I'm definitely writing this for money, because my GMs don't pay me enough. This is unironically a plea for help.
Introduction, sort of.
Let’s start off with the introductory statistics, and by the way, I’m terrible at formatting these articles, so it’s probably going to be all out of place and such, but I’ll try and condense everything in a digestible manner.
First off, we have the official cap space number.
85 million.
This number has stayed the same for a while now, despite the amount of active players trending upwards. No team has more than 5 million in cap space left. 3 teams have $0 in cap space left.
![[Image: 0Ubm7Ci.png]](https://i.imgur.com/0Ubm7Ci.png)
Pictures speak a thousand words though. Credit this to the budget sheet.
Moving on, as of the most recent update, there is a total of 256862 TPE in the league (according to the tracker). That’s a lot of activity checks. Too bad there’s no historical data surrounding TPE, like even if it was a screenshot of the team stats page of the tracker during every season, so we could compare how fast the league has grown in recent seasons.
Each team has 23-25 players, except for Baltimore and Chicago, which have 21 and 29 players, respectively, because they are both special. The average TPE player in the entire ISFL is 763 TPE. That’s crazy when you think about it. You’d have to max earn for around 3 seasons to even get to that point. So, how does that leave any space for us rookies, you might be saying, well, it’s very scarce. There are 34 members of the S27 class that have updated within the past 2 update cycles, and yet only 4 of them have been called up this season. For the S26 class the numbers look a lot better, but some of these players are already 600 TPE, so I’d expect them to be in the ISFL.
Now, at this point I think I’m just rambling about interesting tidbits, without any direction, so I’ll try and focus my thoughts on a topic.
Contracts
Contracts. We love them, they get us paid!
![[Image: gNUS6wB.png]](https://i.imgur.com/gNUS6wB.png)
Here’s a simple graphic from the rulebook depicting the TPE tiers. With an $85 Million cap space, you can technically roster 17 1000+ TPE guys, which sounds like a lot, but that assumes all of these players are on minimum.
There are only 6 players earning over 5 million per year. 2 of which are retiring this year. 3 out of the remaining 4 are getting paid 6 million, except Darrel Williams, who is the highest paid player at 8.5 million per year. That’s about 10% of a team’s total cap space. If we put this in NFL terms, that means the highest paid player on an NFL team would be about 20 million in real life money. Anyone who keeps up with football knows that usually the highest paid players salary is around 10-15%, depending on the team and the QB. Now, that position, the quarterback position, is quite an interesting position. The highest paid QB in the league is getting paid below their minimum, at $4 Million per year, up until S31. The best QB in the league, in theory, getting paid 5% of a team’s cap space? Unheard of. The ISFL minimum budget rules need a serious reworking, based on position and team cap space. I’d be happy to work with head office to provide a tool that calculates this.
I guess that brings me into my next talking point. Minimum contracts. Why are so many people taking minimum. I, myself, am taking minimum for my entire contract, because I don’t need the money to provide for my player. That saves Baltimore some cap space where they can go and attract a free agent. I’m sure many of my fellow players wholeheartedly share that sentiment. But is this necessarily a good thing? Not at all. Good players should be getting paid more.
But how do we do that, how do we break people out of their minimum wage shell and ask them to ask for more? Well, let’s look at the main factors.
They don’t need money. A lot of people just do not need contract money. There are a lot of rich users who can ride their current nest egg for over 7 seasons, and if you add any contract money that number grows. So then, why would someone like infinite ask for 4 million a season? The answer is he just wouldn’t. There’s the elite top 3% that would probably not ask for anything above minimum, but there’s still a boatload of users who are not rich at all but still ask for their minimum wage.
With each team rostering an average of 24 players, that leaves an average of just 3.5 million, per player. That’s honestly kinda sad. In my opinion, that number deserves to go up to 4-5 million. The fact that the top league players are only taking up 6-7% of their cap space because teams don’t have enough money to support their gigantic roster of actives is unfortunate. Top QBs are barely earning anything.
There are 82 players above 1000 TPE. 82! That’s almost 6 players per team over 1000 TPE. If they all took minimum wage, they would only take up around 34% of the league’s cap space, despite making up over 40% of the league’s TPE total. Now, that data in itself is skewered, because it shouldn’t be a strict 1:1 ratio. These statistics are tough to compare with the NFL because you have no way of accurately measuring a players talent and comparing it to their contract value.
What needs to change?
For starters, there are multiple options head office can choose to pursue. I believe the current league cap structure is poor and unsustainable for the health of the overall league. This isn’t an in-depth article at ALL, with little statistical analysis performed, but, I just wanted to start a discussion, in all honesty.
Increase the cap. - People are worried about inflation, which is a just cause, but it costs a lot to max earn, $21.5 million, according to Troen’s recent article. That’s still a ton of money to cover, even with contracts, and unless you are over $50 million in net worth, you probably want a sizeable contract, but I don’t think inflation is necessarily a problem for now.
Restructure minimum contracts. - This option would probably not be effective unless option 1 was integrated successfully. I do think a plain old, flat, value of money, attached to each TPE tier, is very insufficient, and doesn’t regard for a lot of factors like, the cap space, the position, the amount of TPE earnt, and the amount of TPE they’ll earn in the future, and draft position. The fact that players go up a tier every single season but you can still sign a 3 year contract, meaning you can have a 1000 TPE player for 3 million on your ISFL team, thanks to the current league rules. QBs cost the same as kickers. First rounders can be paid the same as the last overall pick.
Change the league perception towards minimum contracts - This one is definitely more intangible and would follow easily in the footsteps of options 1&2, but if we can convince rookies to start asking for more, and before you come at my head, I had around $60 million when I signed my minimum wage contract, so I wasn’t exactly cash-strapped. Hey first round rookies, it’s okay to ask your teams for $4 million a year.
I’m really onboard with option 2, and I’m eager to see some change in that department, even if it requires a restructure of the cap to, to let’s say 90 or even 100 million. With all the active players peaking or soon to be peaking, I don’t think there’s a more appropriate time to change the cap space with the new sim. Restructuring minimum contracts would probably mean that there would be a necessary cap space adjustment, and I think, in all honesty, the cap space should be going up every year. I don’t understand why it remains stagnant, it should be fluid, just like the NFL. Even if that’s a 500k-1 million dollar increase, Head office should deem what they seem fit to increase the cap dependent on the past few classes and how well the retention rate turned out.
Half-assed conclusion
The current state of the ISFL budget needs a toss-up. With more actives in the league than ever, something needs to happen, and it needs to happen quick. By S30 the league will be saturated beyond belief with TPE. There either needs to be an expansion or some major change in the way contracts and cap space work.
A half-assed conclusion for a rushed, half-assed article. Initially I had a big dream to conduct some big statistical analysis on the topic, but after reviewing it, I realized I’m much too lazy, and all I really want to do is start a discussion on the topic and hear your thoughts. Do you think the cap space is fine as it is? Do you think we need to restructure it, or maybe minimum contracts need to change?
Remember to comment, like, and smash subcribe.
P.S. Is this eligible for the double media?
RE: The State of the Cap Space, -ish - infinitempg - 02-22-2021
(02-22-2021, 04:02 PM)excelsior Wrote: With each team rostering an average of 24 players, that leaves an average of just 3.5 million, per player. That’s honestly kinda sad. In my opinion, that number deserves to go up to 4-5 million. The fact that the top league players are only taking up 6-7% of their cap space because teams don’t have enough money to support their gigantic roster of actives is unfortunate.
This is the first article I've seen to mildly convince me that the cap should be raised. With jobs being fairly full at this point, I'm sure the casual player would want a good way to earn some money that doesn't involve media/graphics/Twitter. Not that we shouldn't somewhat force players to write media and stuff to make money, but lower earning players shouldn't have their contracts hampered by the roster sizes of their team.
There definitely needs to be a balance between raising the cap dramatically so that players can get a little greedy and preventing a possible super team. Whether it's by adjusting minimums or forcing players over 1000 TPE to switch over to a 5M minimum, there does need to be some sort of preventative mechanism to keep all the high TPE players from going to one team on all minimum contracts thanks to the raised cap.
RE: The State of the Cap Space, -ish - siddhus - 02-22-2021
Honestly, contracts should recalculate to your new minimum every season, or if you sign "min + 1 mil" then recalculate to new min + 1 mil
RE: The State of the Cap Space, -ish - excelsior - 02-22-2021
(02-22-2021, 04:17 PM)infinitempg Wrote:Every day this league strays further from a casual user experience to a sim league vet experience, with stacked teams meaning you won’t get a full ISFL career experience unless you have an extensive time commitment, but doing smaller things like increasing cap space, resurrecting minimums, expanding the league, thus increasing retention rates. The appeal kinda dies for some folks once you tell them it’ll take 3 seasons to see significant playing time and some prospects don’t want to wait that long, which is understandable. I articulated my thoughts about this earlier in the rookie server, but essentially we need to bring the excitement of contracts to the ISFL, something that it’s lacking compared to the NFL experience. Most rookies will only earn 1-2 million per season for their first few seasons, but we should be trying at getting that to 3-5 million, depending on draft placement, and taking some workload off of those new users.(02-22-2021, 04:02 PM)excelsior Wrote: With each team rostering an average of 24 players, that leaves an average of just 3.5 million, per player. That’s honestly kinda sad. In my opinion, that number deserves to go up to 4-5 million. The fact that the top league players are only taking up 6-7% of their cap space because teams don’t have enough money to support their gigantic roster of actives is unfortunate.
This is the first article I've seen to mildly convince me that the cap should be raised. With jobs being fairly full at this point, I'm sure the casual player would want a good way to earn some money that doesn't involve media/graphics/Twitter. Not that we shouldn't somewhat force players to write media and stuff to make money, but lower earning players shouldn't have their contracts hampered by the roster sizes of their team.
There definitely needs to be a balance between raising the cap dramatically so that players can get a little greedy and preventing a possible super team. Whether it's by adjusting minimums or forcing players over 1000 TPE to switch over to a 5M minimum, there does need to be some sort of preventative mechanism to keep all the high TPE players from going to one team on all minimum contracts thanks to the raised cap.
RE: The State of the Cap Space, -ish - infinitempg - 02-22-2021
(02-22-2021, 05:39 PM)excelsior Wrote: Every day this league strays further from a casual user experience to a sim league vet experience, with stacked teams meaning you won’t get a full ISFL career experience unless you have an extensive time commitment, but doing smaller things like increasing cap space, resurrecting minimums, expanding the league, thus increasing retention rates. The appeal kinda dies for some folks once you tell them it’ll take 3 seasons to see significant playing time and some prospects don’t want to wait that long, which is understandable. I articulated my thoughts about this earlier in the rookie server, but essentially we need to bring the excitement of contracts to the ISFL, something that it’s lacking compared to the NFL experience. Most rookies will only earn 1-2 million per season for their first few seasons, but we should be trying at getting that to 3-5 million, depending on draft placement, and taking some workload off of those new users.
It's also a valid calling point for expansion, so that newer players can get out of the DSFL and play some big boy snaps. As a member of the expansion board I can't comment too much, but I know I'm interested to see how this S29 class plays out before really setting my mind on expansion.
RE: The State of the Cap Space, -ish - AdamS - 02-24-2021
(02-22-2021, 04:17 PM)infinitempg Wrote:(02-22-2021, 04:02 PM)excelsior Wrote: With each team rostering an average of 24 players, that leaves an average of just 3.5 million, per player. That’s honestly kinda sad. In my opinion, that number deserves to go up to 4-5 million. The fact that the top league players are only taking up 6-7% of their cap space because teams don’t have enough money to support their gigantic roster of actives is unfortunate.
This is the first article I've seen to mildly convince me that the cap should be raised. With jobs being fairly full at this point, I'm sure the casual player would want a good way to earn some money that doesn't involve media/graphics/Twitter. Not that we shouldn't somewhat force players to write media and stuff to make money, but lower earning players shouldn't have their contracts hampered by the roster sizes of their team.
There definitely needs to be a balance between raising the cap dramatically so that players can get a little greedy and preventing a possible super team. Whether it's by adjusting minimums or forcing players over 1000 TPE to switch over to a 5M minimum, there does need to be some sort of preventative mechanism to keep all the high TPE players from going to one team on all minimum contracts thanks to the raised cap.
On the flipside, not being able to support gigantic rosters of everyone they want is literally the reason a salary cap exists. That's not unfortunate. That's the point.
RE: The State of the Cap Space, -ish - 37thchamber - 02-24-2021
(02-22-2021, 04:42 PM)siddhus Wrote: Honestly, contracts should recalculate to your new minimum every season, or if you sign "min + 1 mil" then recalculate to new min + 1 mil
Ehhh... you still have problems with this, because when is this calculated? What is the cutoff for claiming TPE etc etc? I feel like a rule like this would still see a lot of shenanigans. Needs to be a simpler definition imo.
I'd suggest saying that each subsequent year of a contract must meet the minimum of the tier above the tier applicable to your first year, and cap contract length at 3 seasons for everyone. For players in the 1k TPE tier, add 1m to subsequent years (an imaginary higher tier). Not sure how this works if you still want to allow frontloading, but I'm sure there's a way.
That would eliminate a lot of the sign for 3 years under the limit for the next tier shenanigans.
If you want to make a concession to GMs in return for agreeing to this, you could also allow restructuring contracts after the first season, with conditions.
For example, only if the base contract value of year one goes up, or the player is inactive.
So, hypotheticals...
Let's say I'm at 400 TPE, and I sign for 3 seasons.
Season 1 has to be $2m minimum; season 2 and 3 have to be $3m at least. I sign a deal at 2/3/3. The lowest I can possibly agree to for a three year deal.
After season 1, my team realises that I'm earning less than expected, but I'm still active. They wouldn't be able to restructure the deal and save money in that case. Which makes sense, I'm already as cheap as I could possibly be.
Let's say the same situation happens but I go inactive this time due to unforeseen RL shit. My team can restructure my deal after year 1 so I'm on inactive minimum, but they also have to take the hit for cutting me in season 3 if they do because inactive deals are only 1 season max. In this case, they would save 4m (-2.5 season 2, -1.5 season 3 because cut costs half the contract?) over two seasons.
Let's say I actually signed at 2/5/5, but again, I'm earning below expectations. I could then agree to restructure that deal into a 3/4 after season 1 to save my team 3m in cap space over 2 seasons.
Probably needs some tweaks tbh, but on a basic level this approach wouldn't lock GMs into anything more than 1m above minimum for 2 seasons, while also preventing cap circumvention shenanigans and preventing super teams. You could even raise the cap a little in this case, since most base contracts will go up, unless teams want to risk players testing free agency every season (lol).
In addition, making ISFL teams pay for DSFL send downs starting a season after their ISFL draft would help. Give them one freebie year, that makes sense. Can't really expect immediate callups in most cases... but after that, you should have had a plan. Even if that plan is to trade the player for other pieces. Even if you say they only have to pay half the actual contract value, that's still (at least) 2m per player (above the TPE threshold anyway). Stashing players in the DSFL would suddenly become much less common. Allowing teams to stash players in the DSFL for multiple seasons exacerbates the issue, and often leads to high earners being stuck in the DSFL for longer than they need to be (most positions are viable at a 250-400 TPE range, just not very good a lot of the time; but isn't that kind of the point for rookies?)
That would also need some tweaks probably but the basic idea is fine, imo
RE: The State of the Cap Space, -ish - DarknessRising - 02-24-2021
(02-24-2021, 12:21 PM)37thchamber Wrote: In addition, making ISFL teams pay for DSFL send downs starting a season after their ISFL draft would help. Give them one freebie year, that makes sense. Can't really expect immediate callups in most cases... but after that, you should have had a plan. Even if that plan is to trade the player for other pieces. Even if you say they only have to pay half the actual contract value, that's still (at least) 2m per player (above the TPE threshold anyway). Stashing players in the DSFL would suddenly become much less common. Allowing teams to stash players in the DSFL for multiple seasons exacerbates the issue, and often leads to high earners being stuck in the DSFL for longer than they need to be (most positions are viable at a 250-400 TPE range, just not very good a lot of the time; but isn't that kind of the point for rookies?)The con to this would be that teams would just be calling up players with what is currently no spots to put them in. You would be having players with little player time comapred to enjoying a full time spot in the DSFL. It still also may work out the same to have them called up on the lowest contract or sent down, so it still might not change anything anyway. Now a good way of fixining alot of this would be expansion to open up more spots, but that also solves other problems with the cap so then this might not be a change that is then needed/wanted to be implemented.
That would also need some tweaks probably but the basic idea is fine, imo
This would also come at the expense of DSFL teams losing more players. Not everyone cares about the DSFL, but if there is less players in the league and they have to rely soley on the players from maybe the current and previous season, its very likely contraction would be needed so that teams aren't all half bots. Something some people may be okay with but its also alot of people would hate to see that happen
RE: The State of the Cap Space, -ish - 37thchamber - 02-24-2021
(02-24-2021, 12:34 PM)DarknessRising Wrote: The con to this would be that teams would just be calling up players with what is currently no spots to put them in.
Well no, because they could still choose to pay. Think of it as a development fee.
Or they could trade them to another team, who actually can accomodate them.
RE: The State of the Cap Space, -ish - excelsior - 02-24-2021
(02-24-2021, 12:47 PM)37thchamber Wrote:(02-24-2021, 12:34 PM)DarknessRising Wrote: The con to this would be that teams would just be calling up players with what is currently no spots to put them in.
Well no, because they could still choose to pay. Think of it as a development fee.
Or they could trade them to another team, who actually can accomodate them.
See, and all of this leads back to what? The E-word itself. I think some of the points you brought up were good, 37th, your plan certainly needs some more tweaking, and I actually am very fond of Sid's plan regarding a "minimum" tier, that calculates based off of the last update of the season. But without expansion none of this is viable. As we see more S21 & S22 players retire, holes will definitely open for some of these younger players, even if that means a huge casualty to the DSFL. Which I think isn't necessarily bad for the league. In a perfect environment, the DSFL wouldn't even have to exist, so the less, the better. Here's to hoping HO expands swiftly, and with it comes a new cap and minimum contract theory.