This rule forces teams to win at least 30 percent of their games each season. That may seem drastic at first glance, but in reality there have only been four teams with under 50 wins in eight seasons of the world, and at least one of those was an abandoned team. This rule would have effected Colorado (48 wins) last season and Las Vegas (44 wins) this season, but I'm confident that both teams would have been able to reach the 50-win threshold with little difficulty by signing a few moderately priced free agents. And that's ultimately sort of the point. Go 50-112 and you're safe.
2. Any two consecutive seasons under 125 total wins results in an automatic ejection from the world.
This rule forces teams to avoid losing 100-plus games in consecutive seasons. Other worlds set the bar at 130 wins over two seasons, but my goal was to make it as low as possible while still having an impact. Avoiding back-to-back 100-loss campaigns seemed like a good baseline. A fair number of teams would have been effected by this rule in various seasons, but ultimately averaging 62.5 wins over every two-season stretch shouldn't be overly difficult to maintain and forcing teams to avoid triple-digit losses in consecutive seasons seems pretty reasonable. Going 62-100 and 63-99 is all it takes to avoid the ejection.
3. New owners receive a one-season grace period during which their win total will not count in any negative manner.
When someone takes over a new team, the team's performance in their first full season at the helm will not count towards their ejection in any negative manner. In other words, if someone takes over a team and loses 120 games in their first season, they won't be ejected based on Rule 1 (must win 50-plus games) and those 120 losses won't count toward Rule 2 (must win 125-plus games over two seasons).
4. During that one-season grace period for new owners, their win total may count in a positive manner.
While a new owner won't have his first-season performance taken into account in a negative manner, if the team performs well that will be accounted for in a positive manner. In other words, if a new owner goes 81-81 in his first season, then those 81 wins count toward Rule 2 (must win 125-plus games over two seasons). The idea here is to reward new owners for doing well right off the bat and give them some incentive to perform well immediately without providing them with any real first-season pressure.
My goal with these rules is to increase the world's realism by forcing teams to at least be respectable each season. My feeling is that forcing teams to win at least 50 games per season and 125 games over two seasons is far from unreasonable and easily accomplished by improving rosters at the margins. One of the unrealistic aspects of this league is that good, solid veteran players sit unsigned on the open market because poor teams have no incentive to pay $1.5 million for a solid player when they can pay $350,000 for a sub par rookie. Under these rules, some teams may need to sign a few $1.5 million veterans to improve from 48 wins to 55 wins, and ultimately that's a good thing for the world.
Despite the world's name I'm not interested in running a dictatorship by installing rules that the world as a whole is against, so there will be a vote on all four rules as a whole. With 32 total teams in the world, 17 votes are required for the four-rule package to pass. Please submit votes to me via e-mail, instant message, or trade chat. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please contact me privately with those as well.
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