Petitioner Austin serves as Commissioner of three workplace fantasy football leagues—itself a remarkable administrative burden. During the current season, several new members joined who possess no prior experience with fantasy football. More remarkably still, these novices lack even basic football knowledge. The Commissioner and existing league members assisted these individuals in drafting their initial rosters. Now, two weeks into the season, Petitioner contemplates trade negotiations with these inexperienced managers.
Petitioner seeks guidance on “proper etiquette” when negotiating with individuals who “don’t really know anything about football.” He acknowledges a tension: he wishes to improve his roster through favorable trades, yet recognizes his duty as Commissioner to prevent league discord and “potential mutiny.” As the hosts aptly characterized it, Petitioner seeks to discover “the best fleecing [he] can get away with on these schmucks who don’t know football”—to thread the needle between competitive advantage and Commissioner responsibility.
We hold that commissioners may trade with novices, but face a binary choice: nurture these members to become engaged league participants, or exploit their ignorance and accept the consequences of that exploitation. A commissioner may not pursue the middle course Petitioner seeks—extracting maximum value while maintaining plausible deniability and avoiding league revolt. That path violates the heightened fiduciary duties commissioners owe their leagues and creates unacceptable risks to workplace league stability.
I
We begin with a principle we have stated repeatedly: commissioners occupy fiduciary positions requiring heightened duties of good faith and fair dealing. See Denmark Team Owner v. Commissioner, 25-0717-2 (2025); Andrew v. Commissioner, 24-0830-1 (2024); Andrew v. Commissioner, 24-0826-1 (2024). Commissioners may not exploit informational advantages over league members to benefit themselves at their leagues’ expense. They may not engage in self-dealing. And critically, commissioners may not exploit conflicts of interest—whether familial relationships, information asymmetries, or superior knowledge—when executing trades affecting their own competitive interests.
In Denmark Team Owner v. Commissioner, 25-0717-2 (2025), we confronted a commissioner who systematically exploited an auto-drafted team owner’s explicit written instructions, selecting different players for the absent manager while acquiring the specifically requested players for himself. We held that “commissioners occupy fiduciary positions prohibiting exploitation of informational advantages over league members” and that such conduct “violates every principle of fair dealing this Court has articulated.” The commissioner there possessed private information—the absent manager’s draft instructions—unavailable to other league members, and exploited that advantage for personal competitive benefit.
In Andrew v. Commissioner, 24-0830-1 (2024), we voided a trade where a commissioner executed a transaction with his father-in-law hours after one player sustained a potentially season-ending injury. We emphasized that “commissioners occupy fiduciary positions requiring heightened obligations of good faith and fair dealing” and that “commissioners may not exploit information asymmetries or familial relationships when executing trades that appear to ordinary league members as conflicts of interest requiring intervention.”
The present case involves a similar information asymmetry—though one even more fundamental than injury news or draft instructions. Petitioner possesses basic football knowledge. He understands player roles, depth charts, offensive schemes, and the relative value of fantasy assets. The novices in his workplace leagues possess none of this knowledge. They do not merely lack fantasy football experience—they “are new to football as a whole.” They cannot evaluate whether a trade is fair because they cannot evaluate whether players are valuable.
This information asymmetry creates a conflict of interest requiring heightened scrutiny of any trades Petitioner executes with these novices. We need not hold that such trades are categorically impermissible—reasonable people can disagree about player values, and divergent evaluations drive the trading market. But we must acknowledge that a commissioner trading with someone who lacks basic football knowledge occupies a position analogous to the commissioners in Denmark and Andrew: he possesses material information unavailable to the other party, and any trade benefits from that asymmetry.
II
The degree of informational advantage here approaches—and may exceed—that present in cases involving exploitation of minors. In Ryan v. His Brother, 24-0814-1 (2024), we voided a trade where a father exploited his nine-year-old son’s ignorance that Javonte Williams had been relegated to backup status. The child “believed he was receiving two starters for one player—the fantasy football equivalent of trading three nickels for a quarter.” We held that “parent-child trades involving minor children who lack the capacity to understand fundamental roster information create insurmountable conflicts of interest requiring commissioner intervention.”
We emphasized in Ryan that “a nine-year-old does not monitor depth charts” and “does not track snap counts or backfield rotations.” The child “relied on the adults in his life to help him understand which players are valuable and which are not.” The father “exploited that reliance” by using his son’s ignorance as a trading opportunity rather than educating him. We held that this “transforms what should be a teaching moment into a predatory transaction.”
The novices in Petitioner’s workplace leagues occupy a position functionally similar to the nine-year-old in Ryan. They do not monitor depth charts because they do not know what depth charts are. They cannot track player roles because they cannot identify the players. They rely on more knowledgeable league members—particularly the Commissioner—to help them understand fantasy football. Petitioner now contemplates whether he may exploit that reliance for competitive advantage.
We distinguish adults from children in important respects: adults possess greater cognitive capacity, can be expected to learn and adapt more quickly, and bear greater responsibility for their own decisions. But the structural dynamic remains similar. Where one party to a trade possesses basic knowledge the other party lacks—whether because of age, inexperience, or complete unfamiliarity with the sport—and where the knowledgeable party occupies a position of authority or trust, trades between those parties require heightened scrutiny.
III
The workplace context compounds these concerns. This is not a league among friends who can laugh off a lopsided trade. This is not a family league where disputes can be resolved over Thanksgiving dinner. These are workplace leagues—competitive enterprises embedded within professional relationships where fantasy football disputes can create real-world consequences affecting careers, advancement, and daily work environment.
As one host astutely observed: “this is your workplace.” Another host elaborated the key question: “is the person you’re trading with your subordinate or your boss?” If the novice is Petitioner’s subordinate, competitive ruthlessness may be more tolerable—”fuck them.” But if the novice is Petitioner’s superior, Petitioner must “be careful” because exploiting a boss’s ignorance through trades creates professional risks that transcend fantasy football.
We take these observations seriously. Workplace leagues exist within hierarchical professional structures where power dynamics affect permissible conduct. A commissioner who systematically exploits subordinates’ ignorance risks creating a hostile work environment. A commissioner who fleeces his boss risks career consequences when the boss eventually realizes he has been swindled. And a commissioner who extracts value from colleagues at his own professional level risks poisoning relationships essential to workplace functioning.
Petitioner’s question—seeking to identify “the best fleecing [he] can get away with”—reveals his awareness of these risks. He understands that if trades with novices appear too lopsided, the league will revolt. He seeks to extract maximum value while remaining just below the threshold that would trigger vetoes or collective action. But this calculation itself demonstrates the problem: Petitioner is not asking how to execute fair trades with novices, but rather how much he can exploit them before getting caught.
This is precisely the kind of conduct our precedents condemn. In Andrew v. Commissioner, 24-0826-1 (2024), we voided a commissioner’s self-interested introduction of future draft pick trading, emphasizing that commissioners may not “exploit the absence of written prohibitions to introduce unprecedented mechanisms benefiting themselves.” The commissioner there sought to push the boundaries of permissible conduct—introducing a trading mechanism never before used in a thirteen-year redraft league to acquire Saquon Barkley. We held that such boundary-pushing violated fiduciary duties even absent explicit written rules.
Petitioner seeks to engage in similar boundary-pushing. He wants to extract favorable trades from novices while remaining just within the zone of plausible fairness—threading the needle between exploitation and detection. We hold that commissioners may not pursue this strategy. The heightened fiduciary duties commissioners owe their leagues require a different approach.
IV
We establish today what we term the “binary choice doctrine” for commissioners trading with novices. Commissioners face two permissible paths when contemplating trades with league members who lack basic football knowledge:
Path One: Nurture the novices. Help them learn fantasy football. Explain player values. Educate them about depth charts, target share, offensive schemes, and the factors that drive fantasy production. Propose trades that serve both parties’ interests. Use the trading process as a teaching opportunity. Accept that some profitable trades will not materialize because the novices, once educated, will recognize and decline unfavorable deals. Build long-term league engagement and competitive depth at the cost of short-term competitive advantage.
Path Two: Exploit the novices ruthlessly. Propose trades that heavily favor your roster. Extract maximum value from their ignorance. Accept the consequences: league members may eventually revolt, novices may quit when they realize they have been swindled, workplace relationships may suffer, and you may earn a reputation as someone who preys on the uninformed. But at least you will have acquired Tyler Warren or Brandon Aubrey or whoever the undervalued asset happens to be.
What commissioners may not do is attempt to navigate a middle course—what Petitioner describes as threading the needle between “intentionally fleecing someone” and getting “as good of a deal as humanly possible.” As one host stated emphatically: “you have to pick either decide if you want them to like fantasy football and care about it and then nurture their [understanding] or just fleece them but don’t do anything in the middle like fucking pick which side of the fence you’re on.”
This binary framework serves multiple purposes. First, it prevents the exact conduct Petitioner proposes: systematically extracting value while maintaining plausible deniability. Second, it forces commissioners to think long-term rather than optimizing for immediate roster improvement. Third, it protects workplace league stability by requiring commissioners to choose between two transparent approaches rather than pursuing deceptive middle-ground strategies.
The long-term thinking is critical. As one host observed: “you have to think long term you can just fleece someone who doesn’t know anything.” Another host elaborated: “if you actually want like i assume and maybe i’m wrong if this person joined the league you convinced them to join because they didn’t like football and they’re in your league i assume you wanted this person in so don’t immediately turn them against you because they realized three weeks later you were you robbed them.”
This is the heart of the matter. Fantasy football leagues depend on engaged, willing participants. When commissioners recruit novices—people with no football knowledge who join workplace leagues as social participants or professional accommodation—those commissioners assume responsibility for those novices’ experience. If novices realize three weeks later that they have been systematically exploited, they will quit. They will not return next season. They will tell other potential members that the league is predatory. And workplace dynamics will suffer as colleagues realize the Commissioner uses his position to prey on the uninformed.
Petitioner himself acknowledges this risk, seeking to avoid “a potential mutiny.” But his proposed solution—finding the maximum exploitation that avoids mutiny—represents precisely the wrong approach. The solution is not to calibrate exploitation more carefully. The solution is to choose Path One: nurture the novices, help them learn, build long-term league engagement, and forgo short-term trades that exploit ignorance.
V
We provide practical guidance for commissioners who choose Path One—nurturing novices rather than exploiting them. First, when proposing trades with novices, use trade calculators and analytical platforms to demonstrate fairness. As one host suggested, “send them like a screenshot of a trade a trade grade or whatever from any of the different platforms and it’s like see look this is somewhat reasonable on both sides and that gives them the [confidence].”
These trade grades serve multiple functions. They provide novices with external validation that the trade is balanced. They give novices confidence that they are not being exploited. They create a paper trail documenting good faith. And critically, they constrain commissioners’ ability to propose grossly unfavorable trades—if the trade calculator shows a C- grade, the commissioner cannot plausibly claim the trade is fair.
We acknowledge one host’s hilarious story about a league mate who created a fake trade calculator website that always showed trades as equal, no matter what players were entered. That conduct—while innovative—obviously violates every principle we discuss today. Commissioners may not create fraudulent validation mechanisms to deceive novices. The whole point of using trade calculators is to provide genuine third-party assessment, not to manufacture false legitimacy for exploitative trades.
Second, build a paper trail. As one host advised: “you gotta you gotta create a paper trail take some pictures for yourself of trade simulators so if the if the if the league revolts You can show them the receipts that said, look, this looks like a pretty fair trade, according to this, that or the other.” This advice is sound. When trading with novices as Commissioner, document that trades are supported by external analysis. Save screenshots. Share them with the league if questions arise. This protects both the Commissioner’s reputation and the novices’ interests.
Third, consider submitting proposed trades with novices to neutral review. The hosts suggested they could “act as the board” to pre-approve such trades. We endorse this approach. Where commissioners face conflicts of interest—and trading with novices who lack football knowledge constitutes a conflict—neutral third-party review provides procedural protection. Commissioners can submit proposed trades to co-commissioners, league veterans, or even to Fantasy Court for advisory opinions. If neutral reviewers approve the trade as fair, the Commissioner gains protection against subsequent challenges.
Fourth—and we cannot emphasize this enough—”just don’t be a piece of shit.” This was one host’s succinct summary of the governing standard, and we adopt it as doctrine. Commissioners trading with novices should ask themselves: am I being a piece of shit? Am I exploiting someone who cannot defend themselves? Am I using my position of trust and authority to extract value from ignorance? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, do not propose the trade.
VI
We address briefly the workplace power dynamics that further constrain commissioners’ conduct. As one host noted, “if you’re gonna leave the job soon whatever man” you can exploit novices because professional consequences become irrelevant. But this observation reinforces rather than undermines our holding: workplace leagues operate within professional contexts where fantasy football conduct affects real-world relationships and career prospects.
Another host elaborated the key consideration: “if [the novices are] subordinate fuck them if you’re the boss be careful.” This blunt assessment captures an important reality. Subordinates may face pressure—subtle or explicit—to accept trades from commissioner-bosses. Saying no to your boss’s trade proposal, even in a fantasy football context, creates professional awkwardness. Commissioners who exploit this dynamic by proposing unfavorable trades to subordinates abuse their professional authority in addition to violating fantasy football norms.
Conversely, commissioners who fleece their bosses create career risks. When the boss eventually realizes—three weeks or three months later—that the Commissioner systematically extracted value through trades exploiting the boss’s football ignorance, professional consequences may follow. The boss may not terminate the Commissioner for fantasy football conduct, but trust will be damaged, opportunities may be foreclosed, and the professional relationship will suffer.
These dynamics counsel strongly in favor of Path One: nurture novices regardless of their position in the workplace hierarchy. Help subordinates learn so they become engaged league members rather than exploited participants. Help bosses learn so they develop genuine interest in fantasy football rather than eventually realizing they have been swindled. Build league culture and long-term engagement rather than optimizing for short-term roster improvement at the cost of workplace relationships.
Petitioner operates three workplace fantasy leagues. This suggests he values fantasy football competition and wants to sustain multiple leagues over time. The best path toward that goal is nurturing novices, not exploiting them. As the hosts observed, “the goal is to like get them to like fantasy football so they keep playing in your league.” Short-term trades that extract value from ignorance undermine that goal by creating negative experiences that drive novices away.
* * *
We close with a final observation. Petitioner’s question—seeking to identify the maximum exploitation that avoids detection—reveals a mindset we encounter too often in commissioners who appear before this Court. These commissioners view their position as a competitive advantage to be exploited rather than a trust to be honored. They ask how much they can get away with rather than how they should serve their leagues. They seek to thread needles, push boundaries, and extract value from informational advantages rather than building fair, engaging, sustainable fantasy football communities.
This mindset is corrosive. It undermines league stability, drives away participants, and transforms fantasy football from friendly competition into zero-sum exploitation. Commissioners must do better. They must recognize that their position carries heightened duties requiring them to forgo certain profitable opportunities in service of broader league interests.
Petitioner has recruited novices to his workplace leagues. These individuals lack even basic football knowledge. Petitioner now faces a choice: help them learn and become engaged participants, or exploit their ignorance for short-term competitive advantage. We cannot force Petitioner to choose Path One, though we strongly encourage him to do so. But we can and do hold that he may not pursue the middle course he proposes—systematically extracting value while maintaining plausible deniability and avoiding detection.
Pick which side of the fence you’re on. Nurture or exploit. Teach or fleece. Build long-term league engagement or optimize for short-term roster advantage. Those are the options. Threading the needle is not.
If Petitioner chooses Path One, we commend him and wish his workplace leagues many successful seasons with engaged, knowledgeable participants. If he chooses Path Two, we cannot stop him—but we note that the consequences he fears (mutiny, league dissolution, workplace discord) are not merely risks to be managed but natural results of exploitative conduct that he will have chosen to accept.
Advisory opinion issued. We stand ready to serve as “the board” reviewing specific proposed trades if Petitioner wishes to pursue Path One and seeks neutral validation that trades with novices are fair and balanced.
Advisory opinion issued.