Here, here!

If money isn't the driving force, as Mike so vehemently stated, and if this really is a "community", as we've told numerous times, then owners who've stuck by their teams through the tough times SHOULD be rewarded this way. It would be a show of appreciation to those owners and it would make all leagues more viable and enjoyable for everyone involved.

2000RT1 has several unmanaged teams and their rosters are a mess. There are also several owners who haven't updated their rosters in months, so I suspect they're still being charged for teams they have no active interest in.

My main divisional rival recently played a home series against one of these mismanaged teams and got to play four games against a squad without a single available catcher. Needless to say, he was able to steal bases like crazy, the poor saps who got stuck behind the plate committed countless errors, and my chief rival had an easy time gaining a couple of games on me - something that could make all the difference come playoff time.

Allowing active owners to babysit teams like these would prevent this sort of thing from happening again.

The league appointed assistant commish idea would help, but it's not as much fun as actually managing the games and therefore not as much of a reward to loyal owners.

Also, an assistant commish overlooking all unmanaged teams in a specific league could give them too much power and creates more opportunity for collusion.

If I was overlooking a league that featured owners who were my competitors in 2000RT1, it would easy to, say, rest an unmanaged team's best starters in a given week in reward for an owner returning the favor if his team was out of contention in another league. If a person is actually playing the games, I suspect they'd be less likely to deliberately tank them.