The Waiver process provides an equal opportunity for all owners to add players to their roster that are new to the free agent pool. Owners' requests to add players on waivers to their roster are not executed immediately, but are put in a pending status for at least 24 hours. This allows multiple teams to request the same players. Each night Tuesday through Saturday between midnight and 6AM ET of the following morning, the Waiver Process is run, executing the pending requests in Waiver Rank order.
The waiver process is a completely automated process. The commissioner has no control over the waiver process nor does the commissioner have the ability to make waiver requests for other teams as access to add/drops is restricted to each individual team owner. It is important each team owner understands process, as control over which players are added or dropped, solely lies with each individual team owner.
Conditions for Waivers
Players are placed on waivers under the following circumstances:
A player is released during a waiver process: A player released during a waiver process is on waivers until the next waiver process. Example: An owner requests Player A on waivers and drops Player B. This request is pended until the waiver process runs. During the waiver process, the owner is awarded Player A, and Player B is released from the roster and placed on waivers until the next waiver process.
A player is released during a free agent acquisition: Requests for players not on waivers are executed immediately. However, the player dropped in a non-waivers transaction is placed on waivers for at least 24 hours. If a waiver process runs prior to 24 hours the player will remain on waivers until the following waivers process. Example: An owner drops a player on Wednesday afternoon in order to pick up a free agent. The player dropped remains on waivers until Thursday night's waiver process.
Waiver Rank
During a waiver process, pending transactions are processed in an order determined by each team's waiver rank. The team with the highest waiver rank will get its first requested player. If that team's highest pending transaction can't be executed because another team has the requested player, the transaction gets deleted and the team's next transaction, if one exists, is then executed. When a team gets a requested player, the team's waiver rank is dropped to the end and every other team moves up one and the process is continued. If a team doesn't have any pending transactions because all players requested were taken by other teams, or the owner simply didn't request any players, the team's turn is skipped but the waiver rank is not dropped. If a team has the highest waiver rank after Monday night and doesn't request any players for Tuesday night's waiver process, that team will still have the highest rank for the next process. The waiver rank for all teams at the end of one waiver process will be the starting rank for the next process. The league's waiver ranks are reset every week based on reverse order of the standings.
Preseason Waivers and Initial Waiver Rank
The default waiver rank order will be the reverse of the draft order.
Waivers Period
The waivers period is the length of time a player is on waivers before a claim will be processed and the player will be added to a roster. In the NIFFL the waiver period is set for 1 day or longer depending on the day that a player is dropped. For example, a player dropped Saturday will be on waivers until Wednesday of the following week, while a player dropped on Wednesday, will be on waivers until Friday Morning.
Making a Waivers Claim
If you want to drop a player and pick up a player off of waivers follow these steps:
Lets say you have a player that you want to drop (player A) and several players that you would like to add (players B and C), depending on their availability when your turn comes up. If player B is not available you would like to pick up player C. In order to accomplish this you would submit two Add/Drop requests:
Drop player A, Add player B, and
Drop player A, Add player C.
Lets say your turn comes up and player B has already been picked up off waivers by another team. A request cannot be executed if either the add or drop player is not available. Requests will be skipped until the first valid roster move is found. In this case, your second request would be executed and you would get player C (provided he is not also already picked up off waivers).
The same is true in the reverse. If you dropped player A and added player B, then during your next round of waiver selections it will skip over the second waiver request involving Player A and go down your list to see if you have any other waiver requests.
Note: Free agents are available on a first-come, first-served basis; they can be picked up at any time. If a player is dropped from a roster and he clears the waiver process without being picked up, he then becomes a free agent, and can be picked up at any time, without having to go through a waivers process.