Here is another approach that could work for both RT and TRAD leagues to allow owners to stay powerful but also allow managers to build up losing franchises which is patterned off a combination of MLB/NBA/NFL.

What if a player automatically became a free agent after 3 years with the same team and entered the free agent spring draft. Managers could declare 2 (or some other number) free agents per year as "franchise players" but for each franchise player they trade a #1 FA pick for a #8 FA pick of whoever drafts that player. The person drafting can either pick the current year #1FA pick (whoever the other guy actually picked) or the following year's FA pick if he didn't like the guy picked this year. Franchise players would be announced prior to the draft so picking a franchise player would have some risk associated with it.

This "really off the wall" idea would stimulate trading as you would want to move guys getting ready to become free agents (similar to MLB).

I think another part of this that would almost be necessity would be to then have the FA draft order similar to the rookie order so that the weaker teams had the best chance on the top guys. The FA draft could become pretty powerful.

I realize this thought has a lot of holes in it and would need some fine tuning, but WHAT DO YOU THINK? Really stupid or positively brilliant?