Tiebreakers and the Arguments They Settle

In the 2017/18 combined table, 18 points landed on two different managers. So did 28. The totals repeated, and the league had already written down what happens when they do.

Photo: Shixart1985, CC BY 2.0 · source file

Where our table ties

Our board scores each season separately, then adds them up. The champion in any sport takes 14 league points. Last place gets 1. Everyone else fills the gaps. Do that across football, baseball and basketball, and the maximum any manager can collect is 42 points. The minimum is 3.

That 14-to-1 scale is fixed. It does not flex to break ties. So when two managers finish their three seasons with identical sums, the table shows identical ranks. In 2017/18, that happened twice. Two managers sat on 18. Two others sat on 28. The ledger does not round, does not guess and does not defer to the spreadsheet's sort order. It waits for a rule.

The repeat totals are not a flaw in the system. They are the system working exactly as designed: converting seasonal finishes to numbers, then adding them. The design assumes ties will occur. The only question is whether the league decides the tiebreaker in advance, or in the group chat afterward.

The tiebreaker that runs every week

Our FAAB bidding system runs on a $100 budget per sport per season. The minimum bid is $0. When two managers bid the same amount on the same player, the tiebreaker is reverse order of standings on the day waivers run.

That rule is invisible until it matters. Most weeks, nobody bids identically. But when they do, the standings page from that morning becomes the decision. The manager lower in the table wins the player. The rationale is straightforward: worse teams get relief first. The execution is automatic. No vote, no argument, no delayed resolution while the commissioner checks old screenshots.

The $0 minimum means a manager can technically win a player for nothing if no one else claims him. The reverse-standings tiebreaker applies even then. Two $0 bids trigger it. The rule does not carve out exceptions for free claims.

Ordering teams that lost

Football playoffs introduce a different tie. Teams eliminated in the first and second rounds need ranking against each other. Our rules do not treat all playoff losers as equal. Instead, regular-season finish decides who finishes higher when comparing a first-round loser to a second-round loser.

A team that won its opening game, then lost, finishes above a team that lost immediately. But among teams that lost in the same round, the season-long record breaks the deadlock. This matters for the combined table. A deep playoff run can be erased by an early exit, but the regular season still leaves fingerprints on the final ledger.

The rule prevents the arbitrary: coin flips, points-for totals, or whatever the commissioner remembers from September. It anchors playoff performance to the six-month record that preceded it.

When two keepers claim the same round

Keeper costs create ties of a different kind. Two players kept at the same round value do not simply duplicate that cost. They escalate. Two keepers valued at the 14th round cost their owner both the 13th and the 14th selections.

The rule compresses the draft. A manager protecting two late fliers sacrifices earlier capital than the round values suggest. The penalty is not intuitive. A manager might assume two 14th-round keepers cost two 14ths. They do not. The first claims the 14th. The second claims the 13th, because the 14th is already spent.

This matters for tiebreakers indirectly. Draft position affects roster construction, which affects standings, which affects waiver priority. The keeper rule shapes the season before it begins.

Writing the rule before the argument

Every tiebreaker described here shares one property: it exists in the document before the tie occurs. The 2017/18 table did not force an emergency vote because the rule for repeated totals was already published. The FAAB tiebreaker does not get invented when two managers bid $3 on a backup quarterback. The playoff ordering does not get negotiated after the second round. The keeper penalty does not get interpreted when the draft clock is running.

A tiebreaker written after a tie is not a rule. It is a negotiation dressed up as one. The party with leverage in that moment—better record, louder voice, closer relationship to the commissioner—shapes the outcome. The party without leverage discovers that "fair" means "what we agreed to right now."

Our 2017/18 standings did not produce arguments because the arguments had already been settled. The document said what happens at 18 points, at 28 points, at any repeated total. The managers knew before the season ended. The board did not need to intervene.