[Gator]

Originally Posted by peanburn

Well, the reason people would pay for a league would be the commitment and competiton that pay leagues could offer. Most Free leagues lack these important characteristics as a few teams usually dominate after taking advantage of poor-playing GMs. They stock up on talant leaving many teams decimated. The decimated team's GM quit and those teams are hard fill.

I don't think the loss of an entry fee of say $10-20 would prevent poor GM's from quitting, anymore than the price of a ticket would prevent me from walking out of a bad movie. In my experience, the problem you reference above is a common one, but can be better overcome by a set of rules (salary cap, no trading draft picks, limited financial inequities) which don't allow teams to become too dominate or too decimated. However, many league commissioners who also own teams want some kind of payback for all the hard work they do and as commissioners tend to be a very honest bunch, that tends to be in the form of a rules package which allows teams to dominate or be decimated. These commissioners often have two or three very close friends who are GM's who also have strong teams in the league so nobody feels like there's anything wrong with abusing the guys who rotate in and out of these leagues. If you want to join a strong, fair league, look for one with a good rules package which promotes equity and where the Comish has a losing team.