Richmond, VA - "It all started out as fun", said David Stephenson "but then we realized the problem."

With a record 40 members of the Richmond Premier League Fantasy club signed up for 2013, David Stephenson and Robert Jones made the decision to implement promotion and relegation to their fantasy league.

Within a few weeks the effects of this change was startling, "We started out as a cohesive group of 40, but the 20 people who were instantly demoted to our Championship League Only fantasy league couldn't keep track of the players they were picking. They seemed to auto select players at random and half the group pulled out. It turned into a giant shit sandwich".

The effects of the Promotion and Relegation implementation spanned more than just player acquisition issues. It created an issue with the finances of the league.

"We had all of the player buy into the league at $50 but after 20 of the players were relegated, they wanted a cheaper option to buy into the league in the second year. We had to create a balloon payment system out of the winnings of the other players to cover the costs that the relegated players didn't want to pay" said Robert Jones, executive vice president of the league. " At some point, the players who finished just out of the relegation zone were upset that the players who did worse than they did got a bigger benefit, so they all started to compete against each other to try to get relegated."

Jones and Stephenson have stated that they want implement the option in future leagues, but if they do so they will make sure that the players sign a waiver stating that they "will not complain, even if Jerry wins again like he does every season and Tommy picks all the players that he remembers from the Leeds United teams from the 1970s"