Since I'm always hovering around the $15-18 million range...
No, just kidding about that. I'm lucky when I have enough gas in the tank to improve my bench most days.
Anyway, I think the serious issues of imbalance between old and new teams is probably mostly a thing of the past before a whole lot of salary changes, day trading rules, etc. went into place (was it somewhere around Season 9? I totally can't even remember anymore!). It's my opinion that newer teams promoting (and older teams demoting) is more common than back when I started, which is probably the result of a lot of things (more BB teams, more players on the TL, more stable market (you can argue on that if you want), etc.). I think what separates the newer and older teams in a middle division like what I'm in now (USA D.III) is experience. The older teams are better at staving off disaster and rebuilding while newer teams are more likely to be too slow to improve from the TL, invest in balanced players, not destroy their bank accounts, etc. Besides, I don't think the best thing for the game is make it so a new team can instantly compete with older teams, or that the time it takes to catch up is short. I can go on and on about how I think this is one of the areas that the developers really mostly fixed since I started here, but that's probably a more appropriate topic for extended debate in the Global Forum. But, having set the table for a response that more directly addresses your idea...
If teams are able to hoard cash in the $10million range, I don't think that that is really the problem in itself (though I do think it would be a problem), I see that as a symptom of a bigger problem (that it's too easy to turn a regular profit that allows for hoarding like that). Ideally, I think the average team should pretty much break even over the course of several seasons, spending when necessary to make a championship run (which doesn't necessarily mean losing money, but at least taking a risk in spending and losing money if the run falls short), and saving smartly when a championship run isn't possible (which should also be a risk since losing games should inherently lead to losing money, which is being addressed with the latest "fight against tanking").
My inclination is that setting a bank account limit at $10million is, well... I think a team sitting on $3million is too much! What the limit should be I think would be really difficult to determine. If it's too low, it will unreasonably hurt some teams, but if it's too high it won't help anything. Besides, the amount of money that's useful to hoard is relative to the TL market and salary levels, which fluctuate over time.
I recognize that it's easier to poo poo the idea from a country that has a lot teams, and that this is a much more serious issue in the countries with fewer teams (I won't explain why here, just think this through and you'll understand), so I don't want to dismiss the idea all together since maybe it really is a necessary step to take if there are teams that are able to dominate thanks to old wealth. But I think it's better to make try to maintain a larger economy that makes regular (and sizable) profits too difficult, that leans towards balancing budgets as the path to success, and that we try to learn how some teams are able to hoard cash and attack the causes more directly since hoarding is more a symptom of a problem rather than the problem itself (though it is a problem).
Thanks for bringing this topic up. As you can tell, I really thinks it's a good one to discuss!
Last edited by chihorn at 8/17/2012 1:03:56 PM
Don't ask what sort of Chunks they are, you probably don't want to know. Blowing Chunks since Season 4!