Two members of a dynasty superflex league were talking rookie draft at the office. Neither could remember which pick he held. One thought he was somewhere between third and sixth; the other, somewhere between second and sixth. Rather than open the league site, they did the natural thing. One proposed that they trade picks blind, sight unseen, bound by whatever the standings revealed. Hands hovered. Hands shook. Petitioner describes the moment as exhilarating, thrilling, and terrifying, which is more emotion than most people report from a rookie draft. Then they looked it up. The swap was the third overall pick for the fourth overall pick, straight up.
Petitioner, writing as “T-Bone,” asks whether the Court will allow the swap to be processed, conceding that it will “look insane” to every uninvolved manager no matter who benefited. We hold that it may be processed. A blind swap between consenting managers, consummated before either knows what he is giving, is a trade like any other. It is not collusion, and the veto power reaches nothing else.
I
A threshold matter. The pseudonym survived roughly ninety seconds of argument, at which point it emerged that the parties to the handshake were Justice Horlbeck, who held the third pick, and Chief Justice Heifetz, who held the fourth by way of another manager and could not recall where that manager had finished. The swap occurred in the office over draft weekend. The Court’s best reconstruction is that it moved the Chief Justice up one slot, although both Justices described themselves at argument as the loser, and one announced he was considering retirement from the hobby. We need not resolve that dispute.
Neither Justice recused. This is irregular. When one of us has previously been a party, he has stepped aside, see Heifetz v. Jackie, 22-1123-1 (2022), and when two of us were, the Court sat as a bench of one and managed fine. Heifetz v. Craig, 25-1399-1 (2025). So the rule of necessity, which permits an interested judge to sit when no disinterested judge is available, does not explain today’s lineup. The more candid explanation is that both Justices wanted to be here for this one. We record their participation, note that the author’s vote alone would have produced the same judgment, and move on. The petition asked whether the Court would allow the trade. The Court, as presently constituted, was always going to.
II
On the merits, the question is narrow, because the veto power is narrow. Trade vetoes exist to stop collusion: concealed terms, side consideration, or one manager sacrificing his competitive interest for another’s benefit. In re Kelsey Trade Veto, 21-1242-1 (2021). They do not exist to enforce the league’s collective view of fair value, and they do not exist to protect managers from themselves. James v. League, 24-0846-2 (2024). We have said it often enough that it needs no elaboration: it is not your job to manage other people’s teams.
Petitioner’s worry is that the swap looks insane. It does. A manager who opens the transaction log and sees the third pick exchanged for the fourth, nothing else attached, will assume that someone is confused or that something is hidden. But we have repeatedly declined to let appearance do the work of proof. Personal relationships between trading partners create an appearance of impropriety without establishing any, Ashley v. League Member, 21-1250-1 (2021), and a spousal matchup with bye-week players left inactive looks like collusion without being it. Kristen v. Husband, 21-1223-1 (2021). Foolishness is not collusion. Neither is thrill-seeking.
What the parties made here is what contract law calls an aleatory bargain: an agreement whose value to each side depends on an event neither controls and neither yet knows. Insurance works this way. So does a coin flip for the check. The essential feature is that the risk is symmetric at the moment of agreement. Before the standings were consulted, each manager was handing over a pick of unknown value for a pick of unknown value, and each accepted that he might come out behind. That ex ante symmetry is what distinguishes a blind swap from a lopsided trade. A lopsided trade is one where the parties knew the values and one of them agreed to lose anyway; the veto exists to ask why. A blind swap is one where nobody knew the values and the standings, not the parties, decided who lost. There is no “why” to investigate. The answer is the league site.
Our decision last December confirms the point. In Steve v. Pat, 25-1427-1 (2025), we ordered a commissioner to process the transfer of dynasty picks lost on a golf course, because the wager ran between the two managers themselves and the consideration stayed pick-for-pick inside the league’s draft economy. This case is easier. Nothing external determined the outcome: no putt, no Braves, no third party. The uncertainty the parties wagered on was their own ignorance of their own league’s standings, which is about as internal to fantasy football as an event can get. And the consideration is not merely pick-for-pick but adjacent-pick-for-adjacent-pick.
Nor is there any concealment. The vice in League v. Snake, 20-1331-1 (2020) was undisclosed consideration riding beneath a facially ordinary trade. Here the facial trade is the strange part, and the explanation beneath it is complete: “We did a blind swap.” The parties have been, in their words, honest and transparent, going so far as to disclose the arrangement to a podcast audience before disclosing it to their league. Any manager who sees the swap and asks is entitled to that explanation. Having received it, he has received everything the veto power was designed to extract.
III
We add a word about materiality, because it explains why this swap was not only permissible but rather harmless. The gap between the third and fourth picks in this class is small. The tier break falls after Jeremiyah Love and Fernando Mendoza; at three and four the choice is something like Jordyn Tyson against Carnell Tate, and neither party to the swap could say at argument whom he would take. Justice Horlbeck’s stated rationale was that some chance of landing the second pick, and with it a shot at Love or Mendoza, was worth the risk of sliding a slot. That is a football judgment. It may be a bad one. But the right to be stupid is at its most secure when the stupidity is measured in one draft slot, and the league’s own transaction log, we are told, already contains a manager who gave away the first overall pick. Against that backdrop, a swap of three for four is not the trade anyone should be upset about.
* * *
Blind swaps are enforceable where (1) both parties commit before either learns what he is giving, (2) the consideration is symmetric in kind and stays within the league’s draft economy, and (3) the arrangement is disclosed to the league in full. This one satisfies each condition. The handshake was a contract, the standings were the performance, and the loser, whoever he is, must live with it. The swap may be processed.
Petition granted.
Chief Justice Heifetz, concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion in full, including Part I, which I take in the spirit intended. I write separately because I was the manager who felt something in his stomach, and the stomach deserves an answer.
Had I been an uninvolved member of this league and seen the third pick traded for the fourth come across the desk, I would have been upset. Not suspicious of collusion, exactly, but suspicious of something. If John had done it, I would have called it dumb. The Court is right that appearance alone cannot convert permissible conduct into collusion; it has been right about that since Ashley v. League Member, 21-1250-1 (2021). But I have argued before that leagues carry a legitimate interest in arrangements they never contemplated, and that the interest is best served by prospective rulemaking rather than case-by-case forgiveness. Steve v. Pat, 25-1427-1 (2025) (Heifetz, C.J., concurring in the judgment). The same is true here. A league that wants to permit blind swaps should say so; a league that wants to prohibit them should say so; and a league that has said nothing should expect them to be processed.
I can also join the Court’s reliance on Steve v. Pat, in which I concurred only in the judgment. My objection there was external determination: the picks changed hands because of a putt. The uncertain event here was the league’s own standings, which is the very thing dynasty picks exist to reflect. A manager who bets blind on his own draft slot has bet on fantasy football. A manager who bets on the Braves has not. That is the line I would hold, and the Court’s third condition, consideration in kind and within the draft economy, holds it.
Finally, the record reflects that the fourth pick I held was another manager’s, that I could not remember where he finished, and that my counterpart was willing to risk the third overall selection for a chance at Mendoza. Every element of the transaction was disclosed. What remains unresolved, and what the Court wisely leaves alone, is which of us lost. I have a view. It is the same view I have every year.