Off Season Free Agency Regulations

[Ian Noble]

Off Season Free Agency (OSFA) Regulations

Basics

• Contracts may only exceed the salary cap if a team has kept their player for three seasons or more (see 'D5 Bird Rights' below).
• Contracts cannot be longer than 4 years in length (unless Bird Rights).
• The maximum an offered salary can increase/decrease per year is by 7.5% of the initial offer or the league minimum salary.
  • For instance, if a team offers a $10,000,000 contract, the most they may offer in the second year is $10,750,000. The most they may offer in the third year is £11,500,000 ($10,750,000 + 7.5% of $10m) and so on.
  
  
• Contracts may only contain one Player or Team Option. Options can only exist in the final year of a contract.
• Players signed during Off Season Free Agency cannot be traded until December 15th of the regular season following their signing.

Promises to Players

• If a player is promised a starting role during contract negotiations and this promise is not fulfilled, the player may seek a trade from the team he joined.
• The team's GM will be warned that the player is unhappy with his situation and to rectify it.
• If a month passes and nothing is done, the GM is given 1 month in which to trade the player.
• If that month passes and the player has not been traded, the player is benched onto the Injured Reserve indefinitely and a contract buyout will be reached, leaving the player to join free agency.
• GMs may not promise to trade a player that is already on their team for the purposes of luring other free agents.

Timing of Signings

• Since a signing must not take your team over the salary cap, offering multiple contracts which take your team over the salary cap is done at your own peril. If one player signs with your team and you then do not have the space to sign the other player, you will miss out on the other player.
• In the event that Player Agents mis-communicate and allow a team to somehow sign two players within quick succession of each other, and if those two signings combined take the team over the salary or roster restrictions, the team's GM must decide themselves which player to keep.

Dynasty Five - 'Bird Rights'
This section has moved here.

[Ian Noble]

Reclarified sign & trades:

Expiring players cannot be traded and re-signed players cannot be traded until December 15th of the following regular season. For this reason Sign & Trades cannot happen.

[Ian Noble]

Updated bird rights:
[/li][li] A team possesses the bird rights to a player if that player has 3 years left on their contract when they join the team.

[Ian Noble]

Updated:

• If a player is promised a certain role during contract negotiations (such as a starting lineup position) and this promise is not fulfilled, the player may seek a trade from the team he joined.
  • The team's GM will be warned that the player is unhappy with his situation and to rectify it.
    
  • If a month passes and nothing is done, the GM is given 1 month in which to trade the player.
    
  • If that month passes and the player has not been traded, the player is benched onto the Injured Reserve indefinitely and a contract buyout will be reached, leaving the player to join free agency.

[Ian Noble]

I just thought of the following addition to Bird Rights that has not been clarified:

Once a player is re-signed using Bird Rights, their new contract does not count against the team's salary cap until after the Off Season Free Agency period.

[Ian Noble]

Updated:

Re-worded the December 15th rule for next year since it's driving me insane:
"Expiring players cannot be traded and re-signed players cannot be included in submitted traded until December 15th of the following regular season. For this reason Sign & Trades cannot happen."

Basically it just means - if you submit a trade that includes a player who cannot be traded until Dec 15th, that trade will be automatically rejected. This is because the number of queued trades is becoming completely unmanageable for me this year.

[Ian Noble]

Amendment:

You may include a maximum of two Player Options and/or Team Options in the contracts you offer.


Addition:

GMs may not promise to trade a player that is already on their team for the purposes of luring other free agents.

[Ian Noble]

Amended pretty much the entire OP in this thread since it was a bit of a mess.

Added Cap Holds to BRs.

Added this to BRs: "Players with Bird Rights will tend to sign later during the OSFA period for the realistic reason that real-life players who have Bird Rights also tend to wait, to allow their teams the slight advantage of only having a cap-hold on their salaries whilst looking for other talent."

[Ian Noble]

Updates:

* Contracts may only contain one Player or Team Option. Options can only exist in the final year of a contract.

[Ian Noble]

Update:

May 4, 2012 19:01:50 GMT Ian Noble said:

The maximum an offered salary can increase/decrease per year is by 7.5% of the initial offer or the league minimum salary.

• For instance, if a team offers a $10,000,000 contract, the most they may offer in the second year is $10,750,000. The most they may offer in the third year is £11,500,000 ($10,750,000 + 7.5% of $10.75m) and so on.

[Ian Noble]

Update:

Regular free agent signings are now a maximum of 4 years in length, 5 years with Bird Rights!