What about a revenue model for a league, rather than a pure tournament structure.  Say a 20 team league, H2H, 8x8 categories, with a 10 session regular season (160 ‘games’).  Make owners pay their own payroll with no cap, but luxury taxes at certain thresholds (make them fairly severe).  20 Owners pay $300 for their teams, that’s $3.75 per win ($6,000 pot assuming no luxury taxes, depending on the league structure, 1600 total games (160*(20/2))).  Pay a $40 ‘Playoff Entry’ fee as well.  Limit FA moves and charge $1 per pickup to limit hoarding free young players off the waiver wire.

A 95 win team receives $356 just for regular season competition (plus $40 for making the playoffs to each of the 8 playoff teams).  The playoff teams see from $80 to $100 in profits before even winning a playoff game, and there’s still plenty of money to be won.

A 70 win team would see $262.50, a loss of only $37.50, plus the $40 playoff entry fee. A $77.50 loss is pretty common for losing teams in current fantasy formats.  If a team dumps, and ends up with only 50 wins, they’re looking at a much more significant loss (upwards of $150).  But of course, this money is paid to the winners right out of their pockets.  Owners are much less likely to do this.

With that structure, you can have almost the same payouts, with better incentives.  You’re paid based on a large sample size, so those missing the playoffs by a small margin aren’t completely lost (I happen to be one of these bitter people).

So what’s wrong with the “dump deal”?  I’m not sure if you follow MLB, but that makes keeper leagues all that more “realistic”.  Studs go to contenders for prospects every year. 

Here’s my situation and we’ve never had problems.
10 team NL only auction league, 8 keepers, and a $280 draft limit which your keepers eat into, with a $100 for FA claims and a team limit of $380 once the season starts.

No player can be carried over more than twice with out going back into the auction pool.

So why not let the basement teams dump their overpriced non-carryover players for some guy with a dollar contract. 

I’ll give a recent example. 

Josh Johnson $3 for
K-Rod $42 and Brandon Phillips $38. 

I know that if I’m out of the playoffs before the trade deadline, I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure my carryovers for next year are as cheap as possible. 

One of my strategies every year is to study the minors, take risks on potential call ups and pick up a half dozen guys for a buck.  First if I’m out of the playoff picture, I’m looking good for the following year.  (nothing like going into a draft with 8 decent guys and 270 to spend when you have other teams starting with 180 to spend. 

And if I sacrificed a roster slot last year on Tommy Hanson for $1, shouldn’t I be able to get rewarded for that this year by trading him to a dumper for let’s say Pujols who isn’t going to carry him over at $62 next year? 

And sorry, I take no pride winning a consolation bracket.  I can’t brag how I moved from last to 8th in the last month of season.  But I’ll talk about how I built my team up from a bunch of prospects and trades and snagged some guy who was injured last season and eventually took my team to a championship.

I can see your point, but there are other things that can be done to mitigate some of those issues.  For example in my league we have the auction where you can spend 280 and additional 100 for FA claims.  Chances are, if you’re dumping, your not dumping people worth protecting compared to their salary.  Therefore a single team isn’t going to be able to get that many studs because it will put them over the $380 roster limit that our league has set. (any empty roster spots cost $50, so you can’t get around it by dropping bench players) Not to mention our playoffs run 5 weeks.  So your probably going to need a decent bench to win it all or risk an injury and lose control over pitching matchups.

As for someone only having 3 pitchers, we have league minimums.  You have to have 9 starting hitters and 5 bench spots, 7 starting pitchers and 3 bench spots, and one floating bench.  We can only carryover a max of 4 pitchers, even if they have 4 minor leaguers in mind, they still should have at least 6 guys that are pitching each week.

And if you have someone in your league who would only start 3 pitchers, it’s about time to find a replacement.

As for strenght of schedule, the same happens in MLB.  How many people are complaing that the Cards or the Cubs have an easier chance of the Wild Card because they are in the same division as the Pirates. I’ve also seen leagues set a dump date, usually a week or 2 before the trade deadline.

I don’t like the consolation prizes either.  You could easily have a team that’s just bad and in the basement because they took Jose Reyes, Brett Myers, Rickie Weeks…you get the point. 

The league could be played out by all players exactly how you think it should…and then the guy who finishes 7th gets the advantage over the guy who finished last the next season.  And unless you are in a draft league where the winner picks last and last picks first…I don’t really think you should reward people with extra keepers for missing the playoffs but winning a losers bracket or because the moved up a few spots in the standings.

Being on the receiving end of a dump takes strategy.  Most these guys worth carrying over aren’t obvious, are in the minors, or maybe coming off an injury.  Like my example with Josh Johnson…I picked him up last year before it was mainstream that his rehab was going well and he was coming back strong.  If I had waited a week or 2 to pick him up, I probably wouldn’t have gotten him for $3…He probably would have gone a lot higher and then he probably wouldn’t have been carried over. 

Plus if you have teams that are in it for the long haul, that’s a decision for them to make, do I go for it all this year or set myself up good for next year…If I’m going to make the playoffs but don’t think I have a better than average shot at winning it all, I’m not going to sacrifice possibly my next 2 seasons by “dumping” my hot prospects.

The capping works great, especially being an NL only league. Our trade deadline is about 2 weeks before the MLB deadline and there are always a couple of big names that come over.  So most people leave a little cap room to pick up someone like Holliday or Lee that comes over.  It evens things up a little bit for the contenders made out trading with the “dumpers” because they have less room to make a bid on the waiver wire.