Last year, Stephen April suggested the AFL become a money league. Our league was pretty split on the idea, with a very narrow majority of 7 managers voting to pursue the idea further and the other 5 saying they had no interest in participating in a money league.

Because the majority was so slim and I wouldn't want to replace nearly half the league if the other five decided not to continue playing - I'd really prefer not to have to replace anybody since our league has been so stable for the past four seasons - I took the entirey of the offseason and this season trying to come up with a solid money league structure before bringing it back up.

The structure I came up with was this:

Buy-in: $50 per manager (total of $600 worth of buy-ins)

$100 will go toward league maintenance - this will cover most of my expenses for:

1. making sure all 12 of us have access to EDGE/ad-free on FleaFlicker,

2. our subscription to League Legacy, which is continuing to work on including further features that will make our league history more accessible to managers and easier for me to keep without quite so many word documents and spreadsheets,

3. and the trophy I purchase for the winner each season

The other $500 of the pot will be paid out as follows:

• $150 in weekly payouts ($10 per week)

  • $1 each week to the manager with the highest scorer at each position (QB, RB, WR, TE, K, DEF)

  • $4 each week to the Tom Brady Award winner (highest weekly scorer)

• $350 in end-of-season payouts

  • $50 to the regular season champion who earned the #1 seed in the playoffs

  • $50 to the Sabol Bowl runner-up

  • $250 to the Sabol Bowl champion

While the vote was not quite unanimous, our league was much more heavily in favor of becoming a money league with this structure than it would have seemed after last season.

When voting ended on Sunday, 10 people voted to adopt this buy-in/pay-out structure and 2 voted against it. Interestingly, four of the five people from last year who voted against becoming a money league voted yes to this year's proposal.

Some additional details regarding enforcement will be included in the 2024 Rules & Regulations document.

In a rule proposal that was contingent on the AFL becoming a money league, the following change to the Snyder punishment will be instituted this year after an 8-4 vote in favor of the change:

In addition to the completion of the Snyder punishment as outlined in Rule 8.4a, the manager who loses the Snyder game will be responsible for paying the shipping costs, if applicable, to get the league's title belt and the Snyder belt to their new respective owners.

In exchange for this added punishment, the manager who loses the Snyder game will no longer receive the last pick in the AFL's annual draft pick draft and will, instead, pick 8th, ahead of all four playoff managers.

This rule was also contingent on the AFL becoming a money league. It passed with a narrow majority of 7 for and 5 against.

Beginning in 2024, any manager who has paid in advance may trade draft picks more than one year out.

The was this will work in 2024 is:

• Any manager who only pays the $50 buy-in for the 2024 season may still trade 2025 draft picks

• Any manager who pays their $50 buy-in for the 2024 season and their $50 buy-in for 2025 may trade draft picks for both the 2025 and 2026 seasons

• Any manager who pays their $50 buy-ins for the 2024, 2025, and 2026 seasons may trade draft picks for any season through 2027

Fleaflicker only supports trading picks up to three years in advance. You do not have to pay in advance to receive a draft pick more than one year out, but must do so to trade away a pick from more than one year out unless you are receiving greater pick value for any future season(s) you have not met the buy-in requirement for.

By a vote of 9-3, our managers have voted to adopt an amendment to our IR rule changes from last year, which allows any player (healthy or not) to be placed on IR but requires they remain on IR for a minimum of three weeks.

This amendment will make any IR placement retroactive to one week earlier as long as the player did not appear in a starting lineup during the previous week.

A proposal was made to allow managers to engage in conditional draft pick trading, where managers could place a condition on players involved in a trade which, if met, could result in higher or lower draft pick compensation.

This could have been a fairly complex change which. I think it would have been quite fun but I don't blame many of our managers for having considerable hesitation on it.

And that brings us to the final ballot item each offseason. In the event there is a league dispute over an issue involving both Cory Puffett and Eric Meyer, we elect a new Assistant to the Commissioners each offseason to settle those disputes.

The Assistant to the Commissioners must have been in the league for the past three consecutive seasons and cannot serve in the role in consecutive years. We introduced this position in 2021, and Evan Ash was elected the first Assistant to the Commissioners. Stephen April took over the position in 2022 and is the only non-commissioner ineligible to hold the position in 2023.

Here are the results of that vote, where a first-choice vote was worth 2 points and a second-choice vote was worth 1 point:

Alex Kincaid - 1 second-choice vote (1 point)
Alex Mayo - 2 second-choice votes (2 points)
Andrew Perez - 1 first-choice vote (2 points)
William Battle - 4 second-choice votes (4 points)
Stephen April - 1 first-choice vote & 2 second-choice votes (4 points)
Will Massimini - 2 first-choice votes (4 points)
Sean Kennedy - 2 first-choice votes & 1 second-choice vote (5 points)
Anthony Battle - 3 first-choice votes & 1 second-choice vote (7 points) Tiebreaker: 2 points from commissioner ballots
Brandon Saunders - 3 first-choice votes & 1 second-choice vote (7 points) Tiebreaker: 3 points from commissioner ballots

Brandon Saunders will be appointed the position of Assistant to the Commissioners in 2024.