SRL Methodology

Front Office Build Profiles

These labels describe how each connected franchise has built its roster from the records loaded into SRL History. They are evidence-based history tags—not grades, predictions, or reconstructed Reality Sports Online cap accounting.

What this measures: completed rookie selections, the scheduled number of rookie-draft rounds during a franchise’s active seasons, reported auction awards, stated contract terms, and source transaction entries. It does not recreate annual salary-cap charges, inherited contract allocation, dead money, guarantees, or full trade details that were not preserved in the source records.

Primary build path

Draft Capital Labels

Draft Capital Accumulator

A supporting distinction for a team with positive rookie-pick surplus, premium first-round capital, or repeated seasons with extra picks. Exceptional accumulators are classified primarily as Draft-First Builders.

Draft-First Builder

A franchise whose documented draft pattern is its clearest build path: repeated selection surplus, first-round surplus, or extra-pick seasons. A team with exceptional draft-capital accumulation remains Draft-First even when it also uses auctions to fill out a roster.

Hybrid Builder

Active in both surplus draft capital and annual market-auction commitment, without an exceptional draft-capital pattern that clearly makes drafting the primary build path.

Auction-Led Builder

Top-tier annual market-auction commitment without a top-tier draft-capital profile.

Balanced Builder

Recorded draft capital and annual market-auction activity fall between the SRL extremes.

Supporting tendencies

Contract & Activity Labels

Long-Term Locker

Commitment-weighted stated contract term is at least 3.0 years, or at least 40% of documented market contracts are three years or longer.

Short-Term Shopper

Documented market contracts have a commitment-weighted stated term of 1.75 years or less. It is not used when the franchise already qualifies as Long-Term Locker.

High-Activity Operator

At least 12 recorded source transaction entries per active season, or 60 total entries. Source entries are not always one individual player move.

Selective Mover

Recorded transaction activity exists but does not reach the High-Activity Operator threshold.

Extension Keeper / Position Investor

Extension Keeper requires four or more documented extensions, tag extensions, or rookie options. Position Investor identifies the position with the largest recorded reported-contract total.

Owner / Coach Era Profiles

A franchise page displays the current owner/coach era by default. Earlier ownership or coach periods appear as selectable links. Each era profile counts only the seasons, draft selections, auction awards, contracts, and source transactions recorded during that specific tenure.

Why “Picks Acquired by Trade” Is Not Shown

The archive proves which franchise made each selection and whether it held more picks than the normal annual allotment. Many historic entries do not preserve the original pick owner, so a claimed pick-trade total would be incomplete and potentially misleading.

How Draft Capital Is Determined

Draft-first does not simply mean “more picks than auction awards.” Every franchise uses auctions and FCFS additions to fill a roster.

Measure	What it means
Normal allotment	One pick for every scheduled rookie-draft round during a franchise’s active seasons.
Pick surplus	Completed rookie selections minus that normal allotment. A positive number means the franchise selected more rookies than a standard one-pick-per-round path.
First-round surplus	First-round selections minus one normal first-round slot for each active rookie-draft season.
Extra-pick seasons	Seasons in which the franchise made more completed selections than the number of scheduled rounds.
Draft Capital Pattern	A plain-language summary of selection surplus, first-round surplus, and extra-pick seasons. SRL History does not display a “picks acquired by trade” total because original-pick ownership is incomplete for much of the historic archive.

How Auction Reliance Is Determined

Auction comparison uses market-auction commitment per active season: reported auction awards divided by active seasons, after removing exact one-year / $500K minimum awards. This prevents inexpensive depth or FCFS-style minimum deals from defining a franchise as auction-led.

Reported award money is not treated as actual cap spend or remaining cap space.

Relative SRL Thresholds

The current archive contains 10 connected franchises with season records. “Top tier” means the top 3 for the relevant SRL-wide measure. This is recalculated from the database as league history grows.

Profiles are descriptive snapshots. They are designed to show how a team’s documented history compares with the rest of SRL—not to claim every owner follows one fixed strategy forever.