League bylaws

1. Money

• Buy-in is held by LeagueSafe on majority-approval payout. That setting means the commissioner cannot release funds alone — a majority of the league has to approve the payout before anyone, including me, can touch it.
• Prizes are fixed in advance and published on the pricing page before you pay. They are dollar amounts, not percentages, so they cannot shrink if a manager drops out.
• How the prizes are set, at every buy-in:
  • 3rd place gets their buy-in back — you finish third, you go home even.
  • 2nd place gets three times their buy-in.
  • 1st place gets everything that is left.
• The commissioner fee is capped at $50 per league — that is the most I take from any league at any buy-in, and it is the entire fee. Because first place is the remainder, the cap is not a formality: on a larger league the money the cap saves you goes into the top prize, not into my pocket. You can check the whole thing yourself: add the three prizes, compare to twelve buy-ins, and the difference is the fee.
• Dues deadline is before the draft. No payment, no pick. An unpaid manager's slot goes to the next paid manager on the waitlist.
• I submit the payout to LeagueSafe within 48 hours of the final game — the exact printed figures, never a recalculated version; the published prize table is the only payout I will ever submit. The money goes out as soon as the league's majority approves it, normally inside a week. A manager who won't approve it is holding up their own money too, and LeagueSafe's own dispute process takes over from there.
• Prizes are paid to the LeagueSafe account that paid the buy-in for that team. No exceptions, no "send my share to my buddy" — that is how pots get stolen.
• Refunds: full refund any time before the draft begins, no reason needed. After the draft the buy-in is committed — a mid-season refund would take money out of a pot the other eleven are still playing for.
• Chargebacks. Disputing your LeagueSafe payment with your bank after the draft is quitting mid-season: immediate removal under section 5, out of the prizes, named in league chat. If a chargeback ever shrinks the pot below the printed prizes, third and second are paid in full first, my fee goes to zero next, and whatever is left is first place — the same remainder rule the prizes were built on. A prize shrinks only if the money literally is not there, and my fee dies before any prize does.

2. Format and scoring

• Twelve teams. Full PPR, 4 points per passing touchdown. No kicker, no defense.
• Starters: 1 QB · 2 RB · 2 WR · 1 TE · 2 FLEX (RB/WR/TE) · 6 bench · 1 IR.
• Every league at $100 and above runs this identical format — same roster, same scoring, every time. Leagues under $100 may vary, and any difference is stated on that league before you join. Settings are visible in the league's Sleeper settings before the draft and are never changed mid-season — not for any reason, including a rule that turns out to be unpopular.
• These are managed leagues, not best ball. You set a lineup every week and you work the waiver wire. If you want to draft and walk away, this is the wrong league.

3. The draft

• Snake draft, scheduled, live. There are no instant drafts here — the draft happens on a set date that the league picks from windows I offer, and I am on the call running it.
• Draft order is randomised on the call, three times, no less than one hour before the draft, where everyone can watch it happen.
• 90 seconds per pick, the same in every league. Autopick covers no-shows. It is written here rather than "set per league before draft day" because a range is not a rule — if you can't know your own clock before you pay, it isn't published.
• If a league hasn't filled by its draft date, I'll either move the date or refund in full and cancel. I won't quietly run a twelve-team league with nine managers and three autodrafting ghosts.
• If the draft itself breaks. A no-show gets autopick — that's your clock, not an outage. If Sleeper goes down mid-draft, I pause and resume, or reschedule within 48 hours, announced the moment it happens. If a verified platform malfunction corrupts the board — picks landing on the wrong teams, a player drafted twice — I void the draft and we redo it, and I publish exactly what malfunctioned. Not liking your team is not a malfunction, and a redo never touches the money: dues sit in LeagueSafe untouched either way.

4. Season operations

• Waivers: FAAB with a $100 season budget — the same in every league — clearing Wednesday overnight. It is set before the draft and does not change during the season. No free agency between clears.
• Trades process immediately. They are reviewed only if someone contests one — see section 6.
• Trade deadline: end of NFL Week 11.
• Lineups lock per-player at that player's kickoff.
• I never edit a roster except to reverse a verified platform error or to start a legal lineup for an abandoned team under section 5 — and every such edit is announced in league chat with what was changed and why.
• When I get something wrong — a mis-set waiver clear, a voided pick, a fat-fingered setting — I fix it and announce it, same as a platform error: what changed and why, in chat. A fix puts things back to the published rule; it never invents a new one. And a fix has a deadline: anything touching a completed week is corrected before the next week's waivers clear, or it stands as played, even when that costs me.
• Scores are final when Sleeper applies the NFL's official stat corrections, normally by Wednesday night. I never edit a score by hand, in any direction, for anyone, including me.

5. Integrity

• One human, one team. No co-managed super-teams, no second accounts.
• No tanking. Playoff seeding is record, then points-for — section 7 has the full order — so tanking is self-defeating anyway. But persistent inactivity gets a warning, then a locked roster, then removal.
• Abandoned teams. The ladder is warning, then locked roster, then removal — in that order, announced in chat. From the warning on, I set that team's lineup to its best available healthy starters each week, so nobody's playoff spot is decided by a ghost starting two players on bye. That is the only lineup I will ever touch, it never includes adds, drops or trades, and every edit is announced. A removed team finishes the season that way, or under a replacement manager the league approves by majority — a replacement pays nothing and can win nothing; the paid places belong to the twelve who bought in.
• Collusion — trading to dump value, splitting winnings across teams, or covering any part of someone's buy-in in exchange for help — is the one thing that skips the warning. I investigate it and I decide it, alone, and I publish what I found and what I did. Removal means out of the prizes: a removed manager cannot finish in a paid place. Their buy-in stays in the LeagueSafe pot and its fate is decided by the league's majority-approval vote at season's end, not by me. If the accusation involves my own team, the co-commissioner investigates and a majority of the other eleven decides, binding on me.
• Start a full, active roster every week. Fielding an obviously dead lineup in a week that decides someone else's playoff spot is an integrity issue, not a strategy.
• What removal means, anywhere these bylaws say it. A removed manager is out of the league and out of the prizes, and nothing is refunded — not the buy-in, not the fee's share. Their buy-in stays in the LeagueSafe pot, and what happens to it is decided by the league's majority-approval vote at season's end. Removal is my call after the warnings each section describes, except a removal tangled up with my own team's interests, which the co-commissioner runs.

6. Disputes, and the conflict I have

• Contested trades. A trade can be contested in league chat within 24 hours of processing; after that it stands, permanently. I decide a contested trade within 48 hours — upheld or reversed, in chat, with the reasoning written out. The bar is collusion or dumped value, never "you lost the trade." During those first 24 hours I can also freeze a trade on my own if it looks like a dump, pending the same review. A trade involving my team runs the other way around: the co-commissioner administers it, a majority of the other eleven decides, and it binds me.
• Any other dispute about applying a written rule: I decide it, in chat, with the reasoning written out. The written rule beats any vote — eleven people agreeing to ignore a published rule is still ignoring it, and a league where a voting bloc can outvote the bylaws is a league where bringing six friends beats drafting well. Disputes involving my own team go to the co-commissioner, same as always.
• If something happens that these bylaws don't cover, I make the call. I publish the ruling in league chat with the reasoning written out, and it holds for the rest of the season. A ruling fills a gap — it never changes a published rule, a setting, a prize, or the fee, and it never moves money, which releases only by the league's majority-approval vote no matter what I rule. If the gap touches my own team, the co-commissioner makes the call instead of me.
• Rule changes in-season require a unanimous poll. Off-season changes require a majority.
• When I play in a league I host — each league's page says whether I do — it is at full buy-in, with no free seat. That's a real conflict of interest and this is how it's handled: in any dispute involving my own team, the poll runs without my vote, and I don't administer it either.
• Who administers it instead. Before each draft the league elects a co-commissioner from its own managers, by simple majority, and that person runs any vote I'm a party to. Until one is elected — and if nobody wants the job, which is fine — the fallback stands on its own: a dispute involving my team is decided by a straight majority of the other eleven managers, it is binding on me, and I publish the result whether it goes my way or not. There is no version of this where I am the last word on my own team. While I'm here the co-commissioner has exactly one power, this one, and they never touch rosters, money or settings — the only thing that changes that is the disappearance clause below, and even that never hands them the money.
• If I disappear. If I go silent for fourteen days in-season — no chat, no email, nothing — the co-commissioner runs the league for the rest of the season: lineups, waivers, disputes, all of it. If no co-commissioner was elected, the league picks one by majority the moment this clause triggers. What they still cannot do is touch the money: the pot releases the same way it always does, on the league's majority vote through LeagueSafe. This is the one case where the job is bigger than running votes about my team.

7. Playoffs

• Weeks 15–17. Top six teams, top two seeds get byes.
• Seeding tiebreakers, in order: record → points-for → head-to-head. If all three tie, fewest points-against takes the seed; if that ties too, Sleeper's coin flip does, on a call anyone can join.
• Playoff matchups, including the championship, break an exact-points tie by higher seed — the regular season you already played is the tiebreaker. A tie never splits a prize; the printed figures are the promise. This is set in the league's Sleeper settings before the draft, so the app enforces it, not my memory.
• If the season itself breaks. If the NFL cancels or shortens the season, placings go by playoff results so far, then seeding, based on the last fully completed NFL week. If the season dies before Week 10 is complete, there are no placings — every buy-in is refunded in full through LeagueSafe and the fee is zero. Either way the money moves the only way it ever moves: a payout the league approves by majority vote. If Sleeper disappears, the league finishes on another platform under these same bylaws.
• Three places are paid. The exact figures for your buy-in are on the pricing page.

8. Chat conduct

Trash talk is most of the fun and it's welcome. Harassment, bigotry, and deliberately stirring drama are not. If you have a problem with someone, message me instead of running it in league chat. Continued toxicity means removal, and section 5 says exactly what removal means. Team names and avatars follow the same line as chat: I ask once for a change, then I change it myself and say so, then it's the removal ladder.

9. What you're actually paying for

The fee is small enough that it's fair to ask what it buys. Honestly: written rules that existed before you paid, a draft that starts on time with a human running it, waivers that process on schedule, disputes that get a decision instead of silence, an escrow account I cannot raid, and a payout submitted within 48 hours of the final game. That's the product. If any of it fails, the bylaws are public and you can hold me to them.

10. Changes to these bylaws

These bylaws are versioned and dated. Changes apply to future leagues; a league that has already drafted keeps the bylaws it drafted under, whatever this page later says. If you want the version your league is running under, ask and I'll send the dated copy.

This page is version 3, dated August 17, 2026. It was amended before any 2026 draft, so every 2026 league drafts under this version.