To me, clearly things are dieing here. I think what I am reading from the Colonel's post is that the KFBA will continue, but the boys have grown up, have other responsibilities and are no longer looking at this as a way to make money. I think that makes a lot of sense. However, to some extent this has meant the player base is now stagnant. Certainly the site has gone that way.
I did a look through all of the leagues. There are 12 leagues with 16 teams per; 192 teams overall. Unfortunately there are only 63 owners. Of the 63, there are probably 20 that really have a lot of teams and a few that have way too many teams (like me and Mrobinson.) I think this has to be addressed. The competition looks very similar in almost every league and that takes away some of the fun. To address that let me make some suggestions:
1 - Limit the amount of teams each owner can have (should be 3-5 in my opinion.) Let's do this ASAP and give everyone a chance to choose which 3-5 teams they want to keep.
2 - Try a couple of experimental leagues with different rules. I have heard requests for a no-keeper league and I have requested many times a franchise player league. There could be plenty of other variants that might be fun to try. We could allow participation in experimental leagues to not count towards the 3-5 team max.
3 - Have this be a membership only site that grows through referals. $30/year is about right. Credit a member with 1/2 off for each referee that buys a membership and give the referee a 50% discount as well. So, if I refer someone and they sign up both he and I get a 50% discount. KFBA loses nothing. If 2 referees join, my fee goes down to $7.50 and each of them gets their first year at $15. I think the point is that the more owners the better for KFBA financially and the better the competition resulting in more fun for all.
4 - I love the idea of the orignal OR and B-league with a relegation system. With 63 owners we are one owner shy of being able to fill 4 full leagues. We could either start 4 new leagues (Premier, First Division, Second Division, Third Division) or use the oldest four leagues and make owners choose which team they want to keep and only keep one. If we use new leagues use one of Brohams ranking methods to initially rank everyone 1-64 and place them in that way for year one.
Each year have a three up/three down relegation system. The winner of First division chooses which relegated team they want in OR. The third worst team in OR choses the promoted team they want in First division. This would give owners a reason to keep fighting until the end wether they are on top or bottom. When new members join KFBA, they would be put in a "fourth division" initially. If there are enough new members to create the league at the beginning of the season then they will play for promotion. If there are only say 6 new owners, the new owners will be promoted based on seniority (when they signed up).
This would be a great benefit to membership. A true, one team per owner system that crowns a true champion each year. It would also give people real motivation not to tank a team by getting rid of all stars for keepers. I think this would be a win-win-win.
Ultimately, I think with little effort, we could rejuvinate what is going on here. I think everyone could get excited about a new relegation/promotion system. We clearly need some contraction of regular leagues as well. The limit on owners would do that. We also need new blood and the referal system could do that. Let's move forward!