Well the problem with this bidding system, is that the reason teams become bad is they usually have bad management, and a team might do something stupid like oh... bidding all their draft points on one player. Then having nothing left over to draft others. But there's really no way to regulate human stupidity, so instead let's deal without via structure.
Such is life. The stupid suffer.
1. The bidding is only for picks, not for players.
Done.
2. There is a cap on points that can be bid in each round. There will also be a minimum bid amount in each round.
There are no rounds. Why place an artificial cap on anything? Let demand determine price
3. In case of a tie bid, the winner is the team with the worst record, unless they have already made a selection in the current round, in which case they would lose the bid to other tied bids.
The team with the worse record already is given a bigger budget. to win an auction they must use it.
4. The bids will be blind. The commissioner will announce the winner of the bid, then nonwinning bid points will be refunded to the losing teams.
No way. Knowing the competing bids is like knowing the pot in a poker tournament. It increases drama, ratings and interest. Clearly if you lose the bid you get your "value points" back.
Ok let me explain point 2 in depth.
Let's say it is round 1 of auction day. The max bid will be 2600, and the min bid will be 590.
So if the team with the worst record in the NFL wants to ensure winning the bid for the #1 draft spot, they will have to bid at least 2600 points. Or they can enter the min bid of 590, essentially passing on pick #1 if anyone else bids above that amount.
Not sure I see the need for this. Why must artificial caps be in place? Let demand determine the price.
Point 3, the tie bid rule is just for resolving conflicts in case bid points are tied. And I don't think it's fair for a team that has already gotten a pick in that round to get priority on another pick in the same round, even if they are bad, so that's the last part of the tiebreaker rule.
As I said earlier, bad teams are given bigger budgets for a reason: to win bidding wars.
And so the auction will continue onwards like that according to the value chart until all draft slots are assigned.
IMO the bidding for draft slots and the selection of the player should happen immediately, in the 10 minute time window between picks. That way every fan in the country would be paying attention to every slot for the whole draft. The drama would be open to the public and very compelling.
On draft day, the teams will pick according to the draft slots that they have won with their bidding. However, slot positions may be traded as normal, if they see a player they like falling but they are out of position to take him.
Slot positions cannot be traded. Trades are made current value points for future value points only.
This basically alters the economics of the draft in that bad teams can choose to pass on high draft slots by bidding 590, and then bidding an unexpectedly high amount on medium draft positions, say 2000 points. They will then have more points left over to bid in later rounds, but will be capped on how much they can be bid by the round cap.
They would probably have to do a study to see how to allocate the points to make this work out fairly. But I believe the rules could work if the numbers are done right.
Really the only thing the auction, does imo is make it so a team doesn't have to "trade" if they want to get rid of a high draft pick. It all seems to be a little complex, and doesn't target the real problem imo.
The real growing problem with the draft is the way salaries are slotted, and basically agents have taken over the process, and made it difficult and very expensive to sign top rookie players. If you solve this issue properly, the complex blind-bidding, auction system becomes entirely immaterial and unnecessary.