Team owners may trade with other owners in their league when trading is open during the regular season and the off-season. A trade must involve exactly two teams. Each party to a trade must give up and receive at least one asset (NFL player, draft choice, or Gonzo cash in multiples of $1K), and the transaction must take place completely at a single point in time. Only one of the two teams may give up Gonzo cash. All items given or received in trade must be specifically identified by both parties, and both teams involved in the trade must be clearly identified. A draft pick being traded by a team other than its original owner must be identified by using the name of the team which initially owned it. (Example: if Albany owns and is trading the pick which was originally Boston’s Round 2 pick, it must be identified as “Boston’s Round 2 draft pick” when mentioned by the trading parties.)
Team owners should report trades only after they have been agreed to in all specifics by both trading parties. Trades which an owner merely anticipates offering or completing should not be reported. Trades contingent upon future events, or which involve movement of items from team to team at more than one time, are not permitted. Trades which are reported as a single trade by one team and as multiple trades by the other team will be considered non-matches.
Team owners may trade assets which they expect to acquire in another trade at the same deadline. But a trade which is dependent upon another trade for success will be nullified if that other trade is not also successfully completed. Team owners may not trade free agents whom they expect to acquire in that week’s free agent bidding, since trades are resolved before free agent bids. Trades may not be conditional upon the success of free agent pickups being attempted the same week. (A free agent pickup can, however, be used to fill a position deficiency created by a trade.) Trades which would put a team’s roster over its size limit during the season should be accompanied by another trade or player cut(s) for the same week, to keep the team’s roster within the size limit. Failure to do this will result in a default cut for the team (see below).

A trade becomes confirmed once the Commissioner has received notification from both parties of the exact trade being made. (This does not mean that the trade will necessarily go through, as it is the responsibility of BOTH team owners to make sure it is legal. See the section on trade restrictions.) The Commissioner may verify any confirmed trade to any team owner, but will not normally contact a team owner to do this.
A trade which has been confirmed will go through and take effect at the next transaction deadline, as long as it is legal. A confirmed trade will not succeed if it has been illegally made. Examples of illegal trades include one in which a team would be left without a legal starting lineup, or is trying to trade away an asset it doesn’t have, or hasn’t paid a required deposit. Team owners should be careful, therefore, to determine that their trades are legal for both teams, or that they will be legal in conjunction with other transactions.
A trade which does not go through will be discarded after the deadline. After that time, the trade must again be submitted by both team owners in order to go through.

Following are the restrictions on trades:
A) A team may make up to three trades per week. The time between the draft and the first transaction deadline counts as one week for this purpose. Each side of a trade may include up to six assets (players, draft picks, and Gonzo cash).
B) During the regular season, a team may not trade so as to fall below its minimum roster requirements, unless that deficiency is corrected by another transaction in the same week, nor may a team at any time trade away so many draft choices that it will be unable to draft to meet its minimum roster requirements after the next draft. A team may not end off-season trading with fewer than 10 players (the number it needs to keep), and a team must end off-season trading with at least two lines or kickers as described in Rule VII.1.
C) A team may trade draft choices only for the next draft, and during the season may trade away draft choices (even those which originally belonged to another team) only after its nonrefundable deposit for the following season has been received. To trade away a Round 1, 2 or 3 draft pick for the next year (again, including those that originally belonged to another team); the team must first pay its league fee in full for that year. These deposits and league fees may not be paid conditionally upon the success of a transaction that depends on them, nor are they refundable if such a transaction fails. A team owner who trades away a draft pick is committing to pay for the team, and stay in the league, for the following season. League members who acquire future draft picks do so at their own risk. If the league folds, or if Gonzo Sports, Inc. goes out of business, the team will lose any draft picks acquired, and is not entitled to compensation for them.
D) A team should not, during the season, trade for a player it traded away during the previous two weeks. For example, if a team trades away a player in Week 6, then it should not receive that player in trade until Week 9. If a trade in violation of this rule has gone through and then is brought to the Commissioner’s attention prior to the following deadline, the reacquired player will be considered to have no stats (all zeroes) for the team which reacquired him for three weeks, starting when the Commissioner is alerted to the situation.

An available NFL player (one who is not on a Gonzo Football team in the league) is a called a free agent. Free agents must be, or have been, associated with an NFL team and must be identifiable by the Commissioner. Team owners may try to acquire free agents during the regular season by bidding for them with Gonzo cash. Each team may submit a list of up to three available players in order of preference, and the amount of Gonzo cash the owner is bidding for each. A team owner should list his bids in descending or equal order of cash; that is, the cash bid on a team’s second choice should not exceed the cash bid on its first choice, and the cash bid on the third choice should not exceed the cash bid on the second choice. A team may sign one free agent from its list each week, generally by placing the highest bid on that player.
Each bid is first considered for legality. If a bid is made on someone who is not a legitimate free agent, the bid will be disregarded entirely. If a bid would put a team over its 22-player roster limit (i.e. because the team owner failed to make a trade or cut which would create the needed roster vacancy), it will not succeed. If a bid consists of Gonzo cash in excess of the team’s current available balance, it will be lowered to the amount available. A bid of less than $1K will be considered a $1K bid; free agents cannot be obtained for $0K. If a bid larger than $1K is not a multiple of $1K, it will be rounded down to the next lower multiple of $1K. If an owner states a bid as a number of “thousand K”, the “thousand” will be ignored. If a bid names a free agent but not a cash amount, the amount will be considered to be $1K (even if the team says something like “bid all the rest of my cash”). If a team does not list its free agent choices in descending order of cash, the amount of cash bid on the second- or third-choice bid violating this requirement will be lowered and made equal to the earlier bid.
Once the legality of all bids has thus been established, all bids are considered in descending order of cash. The highest bid is therefore considered first. The team submitting the bid receives the free agent named and deducts the amount of cash bid from its available total. Lower bids by that team for different free agents, or lower bids by other teams for that free agent, are now disregarded. The process is now repeated for the second-highest bid, and so on until all bids have been honored or disregarded.
Bids of identical amounts by different teams for different free agents are resolved in any order; these will not conflict with one another. Bids of identical amounts by the same team for different free agents will be considered in the order the team owner has listed or stated them. Identical bids by different teams for the same free agent will be resolved in favor of the team which would have the lower (worse) playoff seeding, except at the start of Week 1 of the season. For Week 1 of the season, in the event of such a tie, the free agent goes to the team listed earlier in the basic drafting order for the current season.
Free agent lists may be conditional upon the success of trades being attempted that week. A team which picks up a free agent must, if necessary, make a cut at the same time so that the team will not exceed 22 players.
The only free agent bids which will be identified by team are those which are successful. Unsuccessful bids for a player may be published by the Commissioner, but the bidding team will generally not be identified.

Following are the restrictions on free agents:
A) A team may sign only one free agent per week.
B) A team may list only up to three choices per week. Additional choices will be disregarded.

A team owner may cut players from his roster during the regular season. Cuts are mandatory during the regular season when a team would exceed the 22-player limit as the result of trades or free agent pickups. A team may not cut a player during the regular season if that cut will cause the team not to meet its minimum roster requirements.
A team owner who must make a cut due to a trade or a free agent pickup may choose the player to be cut contingent upon the outcome of the trade or which free agent is signed. The conditions of such cuts should be stated clearly; if they are not, the Commissioner may arbitrarily choose to just cut the first player listed. In particular, it will not be assumed that a list of several players to be cut corresponds to the team’s list of free agent bids; rather, the team owner must state explicitly which cut goes with which bid.
A cut which is ordered for the purpose of making room for a free agent will instead be used (if possible) to make room for an extra player drafted or acquired in trade, if necessary, even if this results in the free agent bid being voided. A cut which is ordered to make room for a particular free agent may instead be used to make room for a different free agent if necessary.
A cut which is ordered during the regular season but not required (because the team does not exceed the 22-player roster limit) will not be made unless the team owner specifically requests that a cut be made “regardless” of whether it is necessary; if this is clearly stated, then the cut will still be made and the team will have one or more empty spots on the bench.
A team owner who bids for a free agent and expects not to need a cut due to losing a player in trade should name a cut anyway just in case the trade does not go through.
Cuts may be made only when free agent bidding is open. Players may not be cut at other times.

If a cut is not named when required to make room for a free agent pickup, the transaction will be nullified. If cuts necessitated during the season by players gained in trade are not named, default cuts will made. Default cuts will be arbitrarily selected players from the team’s roster.

A trade may be rescinded by the party that submitted it only if the trade has not yet been confirmed by the other team. Once a trade has been confirmed by both teams, it will go through if it is legal. Team owners who wish to amend a confirmed trade will need to do so via a second trade. Team owners who wish to rescind a confirmed trade may do so by both reporting this, but the trade will still count as one of the three each team is allowed per week.
A change to a free agent bid list or cut list will be considered to totally replace the earlier list (i.e. the previous list will be disregarded) unless it is made explicitly clear that the previous list is to be kept and amended.

Transactions are considered to take place before the week’s games are played. This means that a player acquired by a team can begin to play the week the transaction takes place, while a player who is cut or traded away by a team may not play for that team in the week he is cut or traded.
Trades are considered to occur before free agent bidding and cuts, even when they are due simultaneously.
A player who has been cut from a Gonzo Football team is eligible to be signed as a free agent at the following transaction deadline.