Fixing the "Tanking" Problem

[geejay76]

Introduce controlled, salary cap free agency. with current draft setup sans any PP.

No, that's too easy...

Essentially what you're saying is to incorporate the NFL model, arguably the most 'even' league in all of professional sport.

Very underrated post here....

 

[The Passenger]

I think an auction draft would be pretty interesting.

draft auction would be excellent.

would make the recruiting staff work a lot harder.

 

[WCE_phil]

draft auction would be excellent.

would make the recruiting staff work a lot harder.

Im not sure on how the details of it would work but to my mind a draft auction would be best if implemented properly.

 

[The Passenger]

Im not sure on how the details of it would work but to my mind a draft auction would be best if implemented properly.

probably only work for the top 30 draftees. get each club to rank their top 30 picks, and then rank the top 30 lads (30 points for being ranked first) that finish in the top 30 positions get auctioned off in order.

then 18th on the ladder gets 40 points, down to the premiers who get 23 points.

then each club can allocate as many points as they want on those top 30 draftees. do it as a silent auction.

havne't thought it all through so it mightn't be as simple as that and may require some (or a lot) of tweaking.

but i reckon something along those lines would be very very interesting.

EDIT: probably do top 36 picks (and allocate more points to each club) so each club should on average have 2 picks each in the auction, and then the do the draft as it is now after that point. not too many clubs tend to get beaten to the guy they are after from about pick 30 onwards.

 

[The Passenger]

one thing i just thought of is that it could be exploitable for teams finishing up the ladder is to nominate they guys who they really rate on their recruitment list....

would they rather the top picks like Tom Scully etc,. get into the rest of the draft or would they rather them be in the auction part of the draft??

 

[legend166]

Excuse my ignorance - but I don't follow the NBA - how does the tanking over there work? Can you explani this a bit more please?

The tanking is worse in the NBA, because one player can turn your entire team around. Here's a couple of articles on it from 2007:

http://www.ethicsscoreboard.com/list/nba.html

Discussions of "tanking" are open and frequent in the sports pages of the bad teams, because it is so obvious. Suddenly, the best players aren't on the court as much as before, or at all. The stars stop playing through injuries. The coaches stop going all out in close games. Vegas odds makers start taking the "tanking factor" into account when setting the odds, and gamblers do likewise when deciding on their bets. Nobody seems to care, especially the fans who pay outrageous amounts to see the crummy teams play. They generally support and encourage the tanking; they want to see some good teams in their home city before they die. Former Boston Celtics coach Doc Rivers told the Boston Herald that after one late season victory when the Celtics were, as this year, competing for the bottom slot, he received an e-mail from a fan that saying, "Great job. Now quit it!" Rivers, who was an NBA player himself, asserts that tanking games in pursuit of ping-pong balls is epidemic and has been for more than a decade.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/070411


Either way, I think post-priority pick, it's not going to be as big an issue as people make it out to be.

 

[compass]

The best way to remove the tanking incentive is to separate exact ladder positions (and/or number of wins) from the draft order. To do that, while at the same time help teams that are genuinely struggling, we need to look at the long-term lack of success of a club, not just 1 year (or even 2 or 3 years).

You do that by looking at the clubs that are out of the finals for the most number of seasons. Give these clubs the top picks.

So there’s always the incentive to get better without this threat that it’s against the club’s long-term benefit.

 

[wmvaux]

Not sure if serious?

Every team has done it.... you can't stop it, so why pretend it can be stopped.

Every team that can't play finals either gets players who need surgery over the off season to go in early so they can get back and try and have a full pre season or start to bring kids in to see if they can cut the mustard.

Lottery systems don't work, they don't help teams that need the most help.

Having a lottery system where last gets more balls...etc is saying that team needs more help, so why pretend to cover things up by giving them more chances..... because they obviously need a helping hand.

Finishing last only means that team gets first pick, it doesn't mean that player will be the best player in that draft, how many number 1 picks have been the difference to winning a flag or not? It's 1 player than can help a team move up the ladder.

If you don't give the bottom team the first pick, then there is more chance for them to stay down near the bottom of the ladder, we should be trying to get teams off the bottom as quickly as possible.

 

[Zagg]

People suggesting that 9th place should get pick #1 aren't thinking it through - in that system it'd (arguably) be better to finish 9th, avoid getting smashed in the first week of the finals, and get the best youngster available.

Also did Hawthorn deserve the #1 pick in 2009 a year after being Premiers?

The best solution is the obvious one of just scraping the priority pick. Most people reckoned it should've been done when Melbourne clearly cheated the system in 2009 - the AFL just didn't have the guts to do it back then as it would've meant admitting that Melbourne had tainted the sport (as had other clubs previously).

 

[TheProwler]

While the "blinkered" AFL rewards failure clubs will ensure they finish as low as they can to get the best reward. How about rewarding success for a change, you never know a few clubs nearing the end of the season might just have a go rather than "play players in different positions". From here on in why would Port, Crows, Brisbane etc even want to win another game? By finishing where they currently are or lower they will get an earlier pick. Hardly seems any incentive to win some games? One option would be to hand out money from 1 through 18 to encourage a team who is 15th after round 18 to try and win some games in the last month. Every club needs money to eradicate debt, improve facilities, employ the best coaches etc..... The AFL obviously don't want the players to get much of a share of the new media deal so why not use it in other areas?

It would have to be a bookies nightmare the last month, not knowing who will come out to play

 

[wmvaux]

While the "blinkered" AFL rewards failure clubs will ensure they finish as low as they can to get the best reward. How about rewarding success for a change, you never know a few clubs nearing the end of the season might just have a go rather than "play players in different positions". From here on in why would Port, Crows, Brisbane etc even want to win another game? By finishing where they currently are or lower they will get an earlier pick. Hardly seems any incentive to win some games? One option would be to hand out money from 1 through 18 to encourage a team who is 15th after round 18 to try and win some games in the last month. Every club needs money to eradicate debt, improve facilities, employ the best coaches etc..... The AFL obviously don't want the players to get much of a share of the new media deal so why not use it in other areas?

It would have to be a bookies nightmare the last month, not knowing who will come out to play

So you want to reward the top teams even more?

Just spread that gap even further

Team are down the bottom because they can't win games, it's not they don't want to win games.
The priority pick is where the problem is.

 

[12Hoops7]

What the NBA have would seem like a smarter idea if they were to change the current system.

 

[Big Blood]

Separate out the bottom ten and the top eight teams. For the bottom ten, the first two rounds are decided by raffle. So the only way to improve your pick is to miss the finals, and then you're in a crap shoot.

And if 9th placed team gets #1 pick, so be it.

The point of the exercise is to provide zero incentive for a low ladder finish. Supposedly, that's what the game is all about.

 

[baja]

question asked on AFL 360, define 'tanking'?

I believe if your season is done and dusted and you send players off to surgery or you rest injured players(put them in cotton wool) thats just good management, but playing to lose is tanking, playing players out of position to get a result is tanking, MFC tanked no doubt.

 

[bluekidjoe]

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of the longest team out of the finals getting the 1st pick and so on... And for teams on the same amount of time, it goes to ladder position. It's perfect because no team will plan for long term failure. Put it into practice!!!

 

[Baldur]

question asked on AFL 360, define 'tanking'?

I believe if your season is done and dusted and you send players off to surgery or you rest injured players(put them in cotton wool) thats just good management, but playing to lose is tanking, playing players out of position to get a result is tanking, MFC tanked no doubt.

Trying to lose to gain better draft picks is tanking. List managment is not tanking.

 

[The Passenger]

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of the longest team out of the finals getting the 1st pick and so on... And for teams on the same amount of time, it goes to ladder position. It's perfect because no team will plan for long term failure. Put it into practice!!!

we could be onto a winner here.

that's a really really good solution imo

won't erridacate the problem completely because a team that knows it can either take 8th spot, get belted, or just lose, take 9th or 10th and get pick 1 has to face the dillema. but it would be much much rarer than the current situatioin.

 

[DardySingh360]

1st-18th pick
2nd-17th pick
....................
9th-18th- one ball each in a lottery machine and vrooom!
No team will deliberately finish outside the finals and, at worst, the wooden spooners will get the 10th pick which can still be a very good player. All remaining rounds the wooden spooners get the first pick in each round after the first.

 

[compass]

The problem with the current draft is much wider than the tanking issue:

Take the following scenario. Let’s say that I invite you for a game of tennis where the loser gets a $1000. The winner gets nothing.

It raises the following points:

a) Is it fair that the loser gets the prize?
b) Where is the incentive to win?
c) If you lose, would anyone believe that you genuinely tried to win?

An AFL type response would look like this:

a) Yes, because the loser needs the money to get tennis lessons.
b) Everybody plays to win anyway.
c) There is no tanking!

It is ridicules, but for some reason some of us are buying the AFL line.

A much more sensible approach (using the tennis analogy again) would be that if you’re trying hard, match after match, but are still struggling to win a tournament, you’ll get paid to get some more tennis lessons.

In the AFL world that would mean, give the top draft picks to teams that miss the finals the longest.

Simple, fair and avoids tanking.

 

[wmvaux]

question asked on AFL 360, define 'tanking'?

I believe if your season is done and dusted and you send players off to surgery or you rest injured players(put them in cotton wool) thats just good management, but playing to lose is tanking, playing players out of position to get a result is tanking, MFC tanked no doubt.

Exactly... If there is a coach out there who doesn't want to give players the season off early due to needing surgery when their team can't make the finals and try young kids, then he's not doing his job managing the list of players.

Have a look at the teams who did that and we able to turn it around quickly over the last 10 years.

2010 West Coast
2009 Fremantle
2008 Carlton
2007 Western Bulldogs
2006 North Melbourne
2005 Collingwood
2004 Adelaide
2003 Melbourne
2002 Fremantle
2001 West Coast

Now management of the players is different to tanking, tanking is when a team goes out to deliberately lose because they stand to lose and advantage if they were to win. Coaches and teams would be silly not to go for an advantage if ones there. Teams will find themselves in a position to take an advantage if the system is changed or not. Generally there is only one game where there will be serious tanking and that is when you have a situation where 2 teams are looking to get an advantage by not winning and that's likely to be in the last 3 games of the season. The priority pick is the main reason why teams would tank, so they can get an extra player. The difference between getting pick 1, 2 or 3 is so minimal it shouldn't matter.

 

[Top_4_Tiger]

Exactly... If there is a coach out there who doesn't want to give players the season off early due to needing surgery when their team can't make the finals and try young kids, then he's not doing his job managing the list of players.

What if the coach chooses to put a lumbering ruckman on the opposition's most dangerous small/medium forward (eg Dean Bailey with Nathan G. Brown)?

 

[Freo Dr]

Priority pick is just really stupid and makes a bad situation worse - should have been abolished in 2009 but AFL didn't have the balls.

Any other changes (like time since finals) that is perfectly sensible would require the AFL to admit there is an issue... but there is nothing but denial.

 

[wmvaux]

What if the coach chooses to put a lumbering ruckman on the opposition's most dangerous small/medium forward (eg Dean Bailey with Nathan G. Brown)?

That's the coaches prerogative, realistically how often would that happen? maybe 1 game.

 

[PapaJ]

There are lots of reasonable suggestions on this topic, but pretty much all of them at the very least involve removing or making very difficult the acquisition of PP. Why is it so f**ck*n obvious to pretty much every AFL fan, commentator etc. in the land except the AFL Leadership.

I know struggling clubs need to be given a boost, heck I support a club that has needed some help along the way, but the PP system as it has been has been too blunt an instrument. Some teams who have really needed them have been given the same treatment as teams that have simply had a bad year (eg. Eagles), which can happen to even very fundametnally sound clubs (eg. Hawks after their premiership). We all could go on about the problems with it ...

I Like:
- Lottery of some sort.
- Base PP or similar on a bigger time frame (eg. 3 year performance) and 'graduate' extra picks over that time.
- Limit PP's to 1 in 3-4 years or the like.

all have merit over the current system (as it was before the expansion stuff), but surely something needs to be tried.

 

[muttley45]

easy to fix:
1st 8 picks {teams 9th to 18th} are drawn from a barrel
picks 9 to 18 go teams 8th to 1st in order
thereafter picks go in reverse ladder order,
no tanking as you are not guaranteed 1st pick,and finishing 9th you still have a shot at no 1 draft pick,priority picks to be abandoned