[Preds]

BTW, I want it known that I personally don't care about who gets or gives up what for Rogers, although I have had issues with a couple of the terms:

1. the no compensation issue (which was clearified to an acceptable level of comp)
2. the conditional aspect (which I stated was not against the rules, but I felt should be addressed for the future for vairous reasons, however, I never stated the deal should be struck because of this clause)

Up until this morning, I was fine with letting this deal go through based on the revision that was made (and opnely stated I thought Matt got max value out of Rogers which was great for him), however, while reviewing the rules for the RFA period this morning I realized that this deal involved picks more than one season in the future (since we're still in the 2004 season until 11:59pm), thus it is NOT a legal deal.

Which brings us to Matt's attempts to now trade Rogers to Jim for "Future Considerations"

The aspect of future considerations is not specified for, or against in the rules, however, we have never had them involved in any trade in the past 4 seasons, and I feel it was inherently impled within the spirit of rules that they were not allowed. We've never had to address "future considerations" before, and a precident judgement would have to be made if the 2 teams try to invoke this deal based on them now (which I am obviously against allowing personally).

For all the mess that this deal has been (much of which I mucked up), I think it is a beneficial thread to the league for us to invoke clear language in this section of the rules for 2006, however for 2005 I feel we need to rely on past precident, which in this case is that future conisderations have never been traded before and sholdn't be traded now (again IMO).

Finally, if "future considerations" were to be allowed, I do not think they could in turn reflect back on and be depoendent upon a player involved in a previous deal across 2 seasons. If Rogers gets traded he's traded. I don't hink you can then make a 2nd trade that is now dependent on the production of the 1st.