I've put the word out in all of my leagues, but Bryno brought up a point in another thread that I think is worth discussing...
If it's cool with the rest of the league, and I think that it should be put to a vote, I'd be more than willing to make several bot accounts to help manage the un-owned teams through the offseason. There would need to be rules in place, IE, default weights on player ratings, absolutely no game-planning, filling depth charts in ways that make sense, no rules, etc. Basically, keeping it as a CPU run team in all but name, but being able to control contracts, cap space, the 12 year player rules, etc.
The pros to this are pretty simple: It allows the CPU to damage the league as little as possible, it makes drafts more front-loaded and keeps good players from falling to established owners, increasing parody. It keeps high-end free agents from hitting the market due to contract neglect, which would make it easier to find new owners to take these teams because the rosters will be more appealing. It also keeps the non-player teams from falling into salary cap ****, which of course makes finding a new owner harder.
The cons are there. You would have to trust the bot owners to not tip the scales in their favor should the bot team be playing a rival, or their actual team, but I feel like there are plenty of owners who have proven to be trustworthy enough to handle this.
Like I said, I would want a vote on this, but I for one would love to volunteer to take on as many of the open teams as possible, because I'm a sucker for team building in good leagues. If you guys don't like this idea, it's certainly not going to hurt my feelings, but I think for the league to survive something like this is going to have to happen.
