When UFA cost you real money in real life.
I'm mourning the loss of my abilities in UFA and the loss of real dollar dollar bills.
I have fryed up almost every UFA to date. Here's the proof. (For all the newbie GMs, here's what not to do.)
My first season - I missed in UFA 1 due to not understanding the league used central time. So I was stuck bidding on second-tier blues and run-of-the-mill green/green in UFA 2. Worthless UFA. It was also the worst time to miss on UFA since I had tons of CAP space. But whatever, I was new and needed to learn how this thing worked, so I'll give myself a pass.
Season 2 UFA was my most successful UFA to date. I stole Richie Cuevas with a max contract offer. He wasn't worth a max, but he planned out just fine. The problem was I did not have much else to go with him, and I didn't have any more money to get other free agents for a while. So, he scored 20 points a game on a bad team with little help. (He almost got me playoffs one year.)
Season 3 UFA - I only had MLE money to spend, so I split it up between a bunch of what I thought were the best g/g players with potential—the highlight player who picked up that UFA was John Lowry on a 4-year deal. (If you get a chance, go check him out. He's still balling out for a g/g; he's top 5 g/g). While he's a solid player, you are in trouble if that's all you get out of a UFA. So, my third UFA did not improve my team.
Season 4, UFA, was an absolute disaster. I have no idea what I was thinking. I sent 9 vet min requests and put all my hope into getting Leroy Johnston on a 19 million 1 year MLE deal. I missed. It's probably because one of the other vet mins signed before Leroy Johnston could. Now that I think about it, he got his max deal that year. I don't think I even signed a low-level blue player that year. I got straight nothing! Looking back on it, the only thing I did right was offer Nicholas Zike a contract in UFA 1 before he showed any blue potential. (But I still got outbid for him.)
Season 5 UFA. Another trash UFA. I got almost nothing. All I could do was sign my own guy--Terrance Lewis-Weeks. I had to overpay him, or my team would have been even worse than the previous year. I had to use all my small amount of cap space to do it. Leaving me to sign a bunch of weak-ass vet min g/g players. Those players either signed for better teams or were so weak that I forgot about them once they got on my team.
Season 6 UFA. This one hurt the most. First, I had a plan. I cleared the books before UFA 1. I think, I had over 100 million in cap space. The goal was to buy a few good but old blue players for points before UFA 1. Then, just resign all my own guys and make a one-year way-over-the-cap push into the playoffs. It wasn't a long-term championship plan, but it would have been fun to throw caution to the wind and make the playoffs.
But the deal fell through at the last minute, so I pivoted. I had money to burn. There were tons of excellent players out there in free agency. I sent them all the quality contracts. In case I missed on all my contract offers, I sent my own players (Kuric, Weeks, and Martin) very good contracts, but a little less than they were used to getting from me. I tried to lower their contracts to gain some trade interest in them. If I got lucky, one of the outstanding players would sign with me, and then my guys would sign, and I would have a killer team. If I missed it, I would get my guys back for cheaper and be better in the long run. But it was not to be.
Kuric signed first and screwed everything up. No one else had thrown him a decent contract because he was too old. So when he saw my offer he jumped on it. But because he was the first to sign, all my other bids were no longer valid bids. Then Weeks and Martin jumped ship for like 3 million more than I offered them—ungrateful bastards. I had sent them so much money over the years that their grandkids wouldn't have to work. But for a few million more, they were out of here.
Season 7 UFA. This year was going to be different. I would be on it this year—no more bullshit mess-ups. I had cleared cap space. I would focus on sim this week, even when I wasn't supposed to. Anytime I had some free time--check sim stats. Have some free time before bed--check sim stats. Watching a TV show with my computer open because I'm really just--checking sim stats.
I planned out my bids and looked at which GM's could afford what. All that concentration was worth it; finally, UFA was good to me. (In sim league this season, not so much in real life.) I finally got a real player in UFA!!!! Stealing E.J. Liddell from the Pistons and getting Joseph Morelock, cheap cheap, cheap; felt good. I was constantly checking for trade updates and UFA pickups. Finally, my obsessive focus on Sim League caught up to me. While driving and checking trade blocks and looking at who I picked up in UFA, I got a speeding ticket. Of course. $450 dollars and a point on my diving record later; UFA fryed me every year, if not in-game, in real life.
) hearts). These points will be counted against your 25pt media limit for the season, but at least you now have an idea to write stuff and earn some media points. GO forth, GMs of PBSL, and MOURN!
