Cleveland
Contract League

Basics & Payouts

The foundational rules of the league — roster shape, dues, and what you're actually playing for.

Roster Construction

Governance

• Commissioner: Tom O'Malley.
• The master contract & roster spreadsheet is viewable by everyone; edit access is limited to the Commissioner.
• Any rule change requires a 7-of-10 vote to pass.
• All rules are kept available online for any owner to reference at any time.

Dues & Payouts

League dues are $100 per team, going straight into the payout pool. The Fantrax platform fee is covered separately by the 9th and 10th place finishers under "Buy the Bye" (see The Draft tab).

The Neal Huelsman Initiative Unanimous · 2018

Named for the man who inspired it: if you finish "in the money" (1st, 2nd, or 3rd) but are not present at the draft — even if you sent a proxy to draft on your behalf — half of your winnings roll into next year's pot instead of being paid out.

Divisions & Schedule

Two five-team divisions, a locked-in rivalry structure, and a schedule that bends around the NFL's own bye week.

Standard Schedule (14-week season)

Built around a single NFL bye week (currently week 14):

• Play your own division twice, and the other division once.
• One extra crossover game against the team in the other division that finished in the same standings position the year before (10-ball's 5th plays 9-ball's 5th, 4th plays 4th, and so on).
• Division winners auto-qualify for the playoffs, joined by the next 2 best records league-wide.

Why the Playoffs Start in Week 15

The NFL currently places its own bye week in week 14, which is why our playoffs kick off in week 15. The goal is to avoid playing a championship in week 18 — by then, plenty of NFL teams are resting starters with playoff seeding locked, and we don't want a title decided by a bunch of backups. So the bracket runs a one-week opening round (week 15) followed by a two-week championship round (weeks 16–17).

How Wild Cards Are Determined

The four-team championship bracket is filled by the 2 division winners plus 2 wild cards — the next-best overall records league-wide, regardless of division. Standings ties (including wild card ties) are broken in this order:

1. Most wins, full season
2. Most fantasy points, full season
3. Best division record
4. Head-to-head record vs. all teams tied with

Divisions

Current division alignment, effective 2025:

Contracts & Tags

Every roster runs on a 30-year contract-year ledger. This is where most of the league's actual strategy — and most of its arguments — live.

The Basics

• Owners have 7 days after the draft to assign contract years to drafted players. No submission means an automatic 1-year deal.
• Every roster has a hard cap of 30 contract years total, distributed however the owner likes — a 15-year kicker and fifteen 1-year deals is entirely legal.
• After each season ends, every player's contract loses one year automatically.

Franchise Tag

Once a year, you may designate one expiring player your Franchise Player, granting him a one-year contract extension so he doesn't hit the draft pool. Franchise tags are due 1 week prior to the draft date.

• A given player can only ever be franchised once. If you franchise a player heading into a draft (say, 2026), that extension covers him for that season only — he won't automatically be on your roster the following year (2027) and returns to the draft pool unless you re-draft him.
• You're still free to cut a franchised player mid-season just like any other one-year player.

Restricted Free Agent (RFA) Tag

Also once a year, due the same 1 week prior to the draft deadline, you may designate one player a Restricted Free Agent, opening him to bidding from the rest of the league. Adam runs the process, held via blind bidding immediately prior to the draft.

• Bidding currency is contract years. Ties are broken by draft order — whichever team picks first gets first dibs.
• The team that placed the tag can match the winning bid, and may match with any number of years they choose, not just the years bid (e.g. two years are bid on a player; his own team can match and place four years instead).
• If an RFA gets no bids at all, the tagging team may sign him to any number of years but must place at least one.
• You can only restrict a given player one time.

The "Mahomes Rule"

No release-and-resign for multi-year deals: if you drop a player, he must clear waivers before your own team can place a multi-year bid on him again. This closes the loophole of dropping a player right before his RFA year to reset his contract clock. The same principle covers RFA signings directly:

• Any player you win in RFA bidding cannot be dropped before the draft that same year.
• If an RFA signing runs 5 or more years, he cannot be dropped or amnestied during year one of that contract.

Injured Reserve, Retired & Suspended Players

Players listed as Out can be placed on IR, which frees the roster spot without needing to cut them. Each player on IR grants a +1 contract-year credit above the 30-year cap, so two IR players raise your effective cap to 32. The league carries a maximum of 3 IR slots per roster.

• Retired: if a multi-year player formally retires from the NFL mid-contract (not merely goes unsigned), you can drop him with no penalty.
• Suspended: suspended players keep counting on your roster and cannot go on IR. Dropping one carries the standard dead-weight penalty.

Dropping Players & Amnesty

• A player with exactly one year left on his contract can be dropped in-season with no penalty.
• A player with multiple years remaining can still be dropped, but those years stay on your cap as dead weight until they would have expired.
• Amnesty clears a player's remaining years with no penalty — but it's limited to once every 3 seasons, counted by league season (not calendar date), and you must declare the amnesty to the commissioner before the drop.
• A moratorium blocks amnesty (and drops generally) from the start of RFA bidding through the point add/drop reopens after the draft — all cuts and amnesty declarations must happen before RFA bidding begins.

Waivers

A blind-bid wire where the currency isn't cash — it's the contract years you're willing to spend.

• Waiver "dollars" are actually contract years: $1 bid = 1 contract year offered for the player.
• Ties go to whichever team sits lower in the standings (the platform's own tiebreaker settles same-record ties).
• There's no limit on the number of adds or drops.
• A player with one year left on his contract can be freely added and dropped in-season with no penalty.
• Waivers clear overnight Wednesday into Thursday morning.

The Thursday–Sunday Free Agent Window

Once waivers clear, any player not claimed (i.e. all remaining free agents) can be freely swapped in for any one-year player on your roster from Thursday through Sunday, with no contract penalty — though these pickups can't immediately be signed to multi-year deals. They remain eligible to be tagged Franchise or RFA later.

Trades

Contract years travel with the player. No renegotiating on arrival, and the league gets a say before any deal is final.

Trade Window

Trades are permitted through the Thursday of the week 10 game — roughly two-thirds of the regular season. No trades are allowed from that point through the end of the playoffs.

What Can Be Traded

• Future draft picks, by either or both sides.
• All trades — including any pick-involving trade — must be proposed, voted on, and finalized directly in the Fantrax app.
• A traded player keeps his exact assigned contract years — there is no renegotiation period. A trade also can't push your roster over the 30-year cap; you may need to cut a player to make room.

Veto Process

Every trade has a 24-hour veto window. If 5 other owners vote to veto within that window, the trade is reversed.

Offseason Trades

• Offseason trades are allowed and go through the same Fantrax process as in-season deals.
• Deals from the end of the playoffs through July carry a 1-week waiting period for veto votes; starting August 1st, that drops to the standard 2-day window.
• Players can't be traded while carrying a 1-year contract if the roster hasn't yet had its post-season contract-year adjustment applied — since they'd otherwise be traded as pre-draft roster spots.

Trading Draft Picks

• Traded-for late-round picks your roster size doesn't need become "dead picks" and are simply skipped — the original owner does not reclaim them.
• The rights to those picks can themselves be traded again, right up until the draft-pick lock one week before the draft.
• If a traded pick isn't available at the promised slot, it slots to the receiving team's next-best available pick, or rolls forward to the same round next year if no pick is available at all.

Playoffs & the Toilet Bowl

The top four chase the Leg Lamp. The bottom four chase the exit from the Toilet Bowl.

Championship Bracket (Seeds 1–4)

• Standard format is a two-week/two-week bracket: 1 vs 4 and 2 vs 3, winners advance to the Leg Lamp Championship, losers play for 3rd.
• The #1 seed picks its own opponent for the opening round.
• The bracket runs a one-week opening round followed by a two-week championship round in seasons where the NFL's own bye week requires it — see Divisions & Schedule for the full rationale.
• Two division winners plus two wild cards (next-best overall records) fill out the bracket — see Divisions & Schedule for how wild cards and standings ties are determined.

Toilet Bowl (Seeds 5–10)

Seeds 5 and 6 are essentially playing out the string once the top of the standings is set — no more add/drops once their season is decided (roughly after week 12). The bottom four (7–10) play into the Toilet Bowl:

• Round 1: 7 vs 10 and 8 vs 9 — losers fall to the Toilet Bowl proper.
• Roster moves are allowed as long as you're still playing for something, but stop entirely once you've "won" a Toilet Bowl series.

Full Losers Bracket (Places 5–10)

Offseason Calendar

The full year, start to finish — from the final whistle of the championship to the reopening of the wire.

The Annual Cycle

1. Championship ends → the "offseason" begins immediately, and a new league year starts. Every player's contract drops one year (timing on the spreadsheet depends on the commissioner's schedule).
2. No new adds are permitted during the offseason itself — the wire is closed.
3. Franchise & RFA tags due 7 days prior to the draft.
4. RFA bidding is conducted blind, immediately prior to the draft. Right after each player's bidding closes, his current owner decides on the spot whether to match (or raise) or let him walk to the high bidder.
5. The Draft — date set by the league. Draft order and traded picks lock one week prior.
6. Contract years due one week after the draft.
7. Add/drop reopens the day after contract years are submitted.

The Draft

A reverse-standings, non-snaking draft for everyone not protected by a kept contract or a franchise/RFA tag.

Who's Available

Teams keep any player still under contract — including players currently under a Franchise or RFA tag. Draft-eligible players are anyone whose contract has expired or been terminated, plus any currently un-rostered free agent.

Draft Order

• Order is set by the prior year's finish. Non-playoff teams draft in reverse standings order.
• Playoff finishers are seeded at the top of the draft: 1st place drafts 10th, 2nd place drafts 9th, 3rd place drafts 8th, 4th place drafts 7th.
• You are not required to use every one of your draft picks — it's a live draft, so passing is simple.
• Draft picks lock in one week before the draft; any traded-for pick your roster can't use at that point becomes a "dead pick."

The #1 Overall Pick Lottery

Only the very first pick of the draft is decided by a weighted lottery, held virtually in the offseason. Ball counts come from two sources:

How Picks 2–6 Shift

Below assumes the 10th-place regular season finisher wins the lottery — the order bumps back depending on who actually wins it:

• 5th place will draft 6th
• 6th place will draft 5th
• 7th place will draft 4th
• 8th place will draft 3rd
• 9th place will draft 2nd
• 10th place will draft at worst #2

Draft-Day Trades & Makeup Picks

• Trades made during the draft are allowed and subject to an instant vote under the same 5-veto rule as in-season trades.
• Trade a player during the draft without taking one back, and you receive a 16th-round makeup pick to fill your roster (a 16th and 15th for two players traded away, and so on).
• If a traded-for late-round pick can't be used because of your roster size, it becomes a dead pick at the one-week lock — the original owner does not get it back.

"Buy the Bye" Ratified

The 9th and 10th place finishers who draw a bye in the losers bracket cover the league's Fantrax platform fee, split 50/50 between them — $130 total, $65 each. See Playoffs & the Toilet Bowl for how those seeds are determined.

Platform Rules

The official league settings as configured on Fantrax for the 2025–26 season. Some of this repeats what's covered elsewhere in plainer language — this tab is the source of truth for exact platform mechanics and scoring.

General

• League Name: Cleveland Contract League  ·  League ID: 2ihs94llmbazd2zz
• Scoring System: Head-to-Head Points  ·  Max Teams: 10
• Keeper League Type: Dynasty

Schedule & Playoffs

• Stats accumulate Thu Sep 4, 2025 – Wed Dec 31, 2025.
• Playoffs begin Scoring Period 16 (Dec 18–24, 2025) and run 2 periods; matchups are entered manually.

Roster Limits

Scoring

Flex positions score by the players' actual positions: No. 0–0 scores count as wins/losses/ties. Stat corrections apply up to the default freeze time of 8PM ET Wednesday; anything after that doesn't affect league scoring.

Transactions

Contract Values & Draft

• Platform contract length options run 0–11 years per player (1 year is the default). A player's contract resets to 1 year when he becomes a free agent, hits waivers, or is freshly drafted — the league's actual 30-year team cap and multi-year deal tracking is maintained on the master spreadsheet, not natively by Fantrax.
• Draft type: Live Online, Standard, 16 rounds, 15 minutes per pick, fixed non-snake order set manually by the commissioner. Undrafted players go to the waiver wire.

Tie-Breakers

Fees & Prizes

All platform-level transaction fees (free agent claims, waiver claims, drops, IR moves, trades, illegal rosters) are set to $0.00 — the league's cost is $100 dues per team (see Basics & Payouts), with the Fantrax platform fee covered separately by the 9th and 10th place finishers under "Buy the Bye" (see The Draft tab). Prize payouts rank by playoff winners: 1st $600, 2nd $300, 3rd $100, tracked over the Sep 4 – Dec 31, 2025 period.

Amendment History

Every rule on the books started as a proposal and a vote. Here's the record, draft by draft.

Leg Lamp Legends

Every Leg Lamp winner since the league's founding in 2009.

Champions by Year

All-Time Wins