Commissioner Guide

Everything you need to run your league in CFM OS, start to finish. Read it once and you should not have to ask how anything works. It is written so you can also point your staff and players at the sections that apply to them.

Jump to:

1. What CFM OS does for you
2. Getting set up (about 5 minutes)
3. Connecting Madden
4. Setting up College Football
5. Plans: Free, Standard, Prize League
6. Features (what each one gives your league)
7. Channels and roles
8. The Commissioner Hub (your control panel)
9. What your players can do
10. Your league website
11. Pre-season tournaments
12. Running the league day to day
13. Making the league feel alive
14. Troubleshooting and FAQ
15. Getting help

1. What CFM OS does for you

CFM OS runs the busywork of a league so you can focus on playing.

• A franchise that keeps itself current. For Madden, your schedule, scores, standings, and every player stat land in Discord automatically when you advance the week. For College Football, results come from screenshots (there is no data feed for college), and CFM OS reads them for you.
• A home your players use. Every member gets a private hub with their profile, balance, schedule, and the latest league news.
• A media team built in. Game recaps with real numbers, weekly previews, power rankings, and press-conference panels for the games that matter.
• A currency you run. Reward great play, charge for trades, run a shop, hand out weekly allowances.
• Your identity. Your league name, colors, and voice. Every feature is yours to turn on or off.

Everything you run day to day is a button. You do not type commands twice.

2. Getting set up (about 5 minutes)

Setup is a guided, one-step-at-a-time flow. It tells you up front which steps are required, then walks you through them. You can save as you go and tweak anything later.

First: pick your league type

The very first screen asks what kind of league you are running:

• Madden. A Madden franchise. Connect your EA league and CFM OS pulls your games, stats, and standings automatically.
• College Football. A college dynasty. Build your conferences, draft teams, and run your season with recruiting and NIL.
• Both. Run Madden and College Football side by side, each with its own currency and channels.

Picking College Football or Both switches on the college tools, screenshot reading, and the NIL currency for you.

Then: choose how to build

Right after the intro, you pick how you want your server set up:

• Build it for me (recommended). CFM OS creates your whole server, channels and roles, in one tap. Rename anything after. Best for a brand-new server. It also gives you an "Undo Server Build" button in case you want to start over.
• Use my own channels. Already have a server? Point CFM OS at your existing channels and roles. Best for an established server.
• Walk me through it. Build it fresh, step by step, with guidance at each stage.

Moving into an old server? There is an Archive Old Channels button on that screen. It sweeps your existing channels into a hidden folder (you can name it, for example "Last Season") so you start clean. Always archive first, then build, or the archive would also sweep the channels you just made.

The six steps

Required steps are 2, 3, and 5. Steps 1 and 4 have sensible defaults, so you can breeze past them and adjust later from the Commissioner Hub.

3. Connecting Madden

This is step 5 for a Madden (or Both) league. CFM OS pulls straight from EA, so there is no phone app to install.

1. Tap Open Dashboard on the connect step.
2. Sign into EA (the same login you play Madden with).
3. Pick your console and your league.
4. Choose All Weeks and tap Export.
5. Come back to Discord and tap Refresh.

From that moment, every time you advance the week in Madden, the data flows in on its own. You can also advance and pull from the Madden Sync Hub in the Commissioner Hub (Game Operations).

One thing to expect: a first "All Weeks" export can run for a few minutes. If the dashboard flashes "Export failed," that is usually just the browser giving up on a long job. The export keeps running and the data still lands. Give it a minute and confirm the weeks filled in (see the FAQ).

4. Setting up College Football

College Football has no data feed, so results come from screenshots. Your setup is quick.

At step 5 you get a three-item checklist, "Set Up Your Dynasty":

1. Set Season. The year or number you are playing.
2. Build Conferences. Your groups. The default is the four power conferences. Keep 8 members in each so every conference earns an auto-bid.
3. Load Team Catalog. The schools your players can pick, in one tap. Seed the full 136-school catalog or add your own.

When those three are done, your league is ready to open. Assigning GMs, generating the season plan, and running the draft come after, from the Commissioner Hub CFB section. The next section walks that flow.

Getting your GMs onto teams

Once you Lock It In, your league is open and your members can join. Getting everyone from "in the server" to "running a school" is a short, ordered flow:

1. Players join. Each member opens the Player Hub and taps Join the League to register their gamertag and enter the pool. You can see who has signed up on the Group Board (CFB section of the Commissioner Hub).
2. Place them in conferences. Tap Assign to Conference, pick the member, pick the conference. A member has to be in a conference before they can hold a school.
3. Give out schools. Two ways; use either or both:
   • Run the draft (the fun way). Tap Start Draft. A live draft board posts and members pick their own schools in snake order, from dropdowns grouped by team strength. Late joiners can be added mid-draft, staff can pick for a no-show, and Show Draft Board re-posts the board if it scrolls away. Tap Complete Draft when everyone has a school.
   • Assign by hand. Tap Assign a School, pick the member, pick the school. Use this when teams were agreed ahead of time, or to fix a single assignment.
4. Check the Group Board. It shows every conference, who is in it, and which school they hold, so you can see what is left to assign at a glance.

Rank Lock (CFB section) caps how strong a school can be picked, so nobody grabs a powerhouse in a league that wants parity. Set it before the draft. 5.0 means unlocked.

After everyone has a school

1. Generate Season Plan builds the week-by-week schedule from your conference structure. View Plan and Verify Slate let you sanity-check it.
2. Open Week Channels (Game Channels section) creates a channel per matchup for the week. Your GMs play, submit the Post Game screen (next section), and results flow into standings and records on their own.

How your players report college games

After a game, a player opens their Player Hub and taps Submit Game Result, then drops one screenshot: the Post Game screen (the final score screen with both teams and the quarter-by-quarter box).

That one screen is all they need. Tell your players clearly: send the Post Game screen, not the stats pages. The result lands in a review queue for you to approve, and a low-confidence read gets flagged to your staff channel so nothing gets rubber-stamped.

5. Plans: Free, Standard, Prize League

Important thing to know about Free: on the Free plan, a Standard feature can be stored as "on" but will still read as off until you upgrade. So if you flip on College Football or recruiting while on Free, it will look like nothing happened. That is expected. This is the number one thing commissioners ask about. If a feature will not appear, check your plan first (see the FAQ).

If you bring your own model key for the chat and writing features, those unlock at any plan (you pay that provider directly). Screenshot reading stays a Standard feature.

6. Features (what each one gives your league)

Pick these at step 4 or anytime from the Commissioner Hub. "On by default" means it is already on when you start.

There are also three opt-in server-protection tools (honeypot trap, anti-spam, DM protection) with no plan requirement, all off by default. Turn them on from Server Protection in the Commissioner Hub.

7. Channels and roles

You map these at setup (steps 2 and 3) and can change them anytime with the Commissioner Hub or the setup wizard.

Channels worth setting: Announcements, Player Hub (required), Staff Ops (required), Schedule, Standings, Stats Center, Game Zone, Rules, Welcome, Info Desk, Help Desk, Ticket Lobby, Audit Log, AP Bank, Streaming. College leagues also use CFB Results and CFB Standings. Tournament leagues use Tournament Hub and Matchups.

Roles worth setting: Commissioner and Staff (required, these gate admin actions), plus Member, Visitor, Muted, and (for tournaments) Referee. College leagues get a CFB Player role.

A channel that is not set will simply not receive its posts. If something is not showing up in the channel you expect, check that the channel is mapped in setup.

8. The Commissioner Hub (your control panel)

The Commissioner Hub is where you run everything. In Discord it shows your most-used sections up front (Daily Tasks, Player and Currency, Game Operations, Game Channels, Announcements) with a More Tools dropdown holding the rest. Every action is audit-logged.

Here is what lives in each section. Sections you have not enabled do not appear.

Daily Tasks. A morning and evening checklist. Most of it runs itself; you are spot-checking.

Player and Currency Management. Approve pending upgrades and trait purchases, approve achievement clips, grant or take currency, view a player, issue a penalty, post an award, run reputation actions (warn, commend, strike, ban, unban), grant a welcome coupon, and set shop caps and earning rates.

Game Operations (Madden). Settlement Board (this week's game status at a glance), Advance Now, Resync, the Madden Sync Hub, scheduled auto-advance, and per-game Force Win, Fair Sim, and Resync. Also the Skip Sim Recaps toggle (skips press recaps for computer-vs-computer games to save cost; off by default; it never skips a game a member is in, and box scores still post).

Team Assignments (Madden). Map members to NFL teams, view ownership, free a team, bulk-create team-colored roles, and reset all at season turnover.

EA League Admins (Madden). Add or remove co-commissioners and transfer the master role, straight to the EA league.

CFB League. Group Board, Assign to Conference, Assign a School, Edit Structure, Rank Lock, Team Catalog, Generate and View Season Plan, Verify Slate, Auto-Win Week, Enter Result, Generate and Clear Preseason, Force Win, Reset Record, Import Schedule, Add Matchup, run the Draft, NIL Grant, and (when screenshot reading is on) Post Top 25 and Post Standings. Scheduling Control flips who owns scheduling during a migration.

Game Channels. Configure the category and scoreboard channel, open a week's game channels in one tap (auto-closes the prior week), open playoff rounds, ping active channels, and close channels (their chat is archived to the audit log, not deleted).

Channel Messages. Repost the Player Hub, Commissioner Hub, Rules, FAQ, currency requests, or server-setup panel to the current channel.

Announcements and Recruitment. One-tap free-agency and draft announcements, the recruitment-ad builder, an open-teams list, a Broadcast DM button (see section 11), and (with the concierge on) a press-conference panel.

News and Recaps. Post commissioner-written daily news, a game recap, a game-of-the-week preview, or an announcement, all in your league's branded format.

Trade Desk, Betting Admin, Monetize. Review and manage trades, refund pending bets, and run paid drops (each appears only if that feature is on).

Server Protection. Toggle the honeypot, anti-spam, and DM protection, set the trap channel, and use Test Mode to dry-run without actioning anyone.

Branding. League name and tagline, currency name and emoji, the name CFM OS answers to in your server, colors and palette, and channel-naming style.

Content Library. Edit any of your league's text: rules, FAQ, welcome, hub copy, league voice, and more.

Utilities. System status, the audit log viewer, a hub guide, and an emergency-help card.

9. What your players can do

Every member opens their own private hub from the pinned Open My Player Hub button. They only see buttons for features you have turned on.

Everyone gets: their profile and profile editing; league data (standings, schedule, stat leaders, rankings); a support ticket button; and reference (server tour, rules, "what can I do?").

With the currency economy on: request an attribute upgrade, buy a trait, change throwing style, and submit a recap for a reward.

With streaming on: connect a stream account, update links, and view streaming stats.

With trades on: drop their trade block. With Team Builder on: build their team. With Coach Builder on: build a coaching archetype.

Madden members do not submit results by hand. Results come in through EA sync, so there is no submit button for them; you and your staff drive results from the Madden Sync Hub.

College members submit results by uploading the Post Game screen, join the league (register gamertag and enter the draft pool), check their NIL balance and the NIL price list, view their schedule, teams, and results, and claim awards.

10. Your league website

Every league gets a public website, no setup required. It updates itself from the same data your Discord uses, so whatever is true in Discord is true on the web.

Where it lives. Until you claim a name, your league is at cfmos.com/g/<your server id>. Open the Commissioner Hub and find the League home card at the top: it shows your current address and a Claim Subdomain button. Claim one and your league moves to yourname.cfmos.com. You can change it later from the same button.

What your members find there. Standings, schedule, scores, stat leaders, rosters, team pages, and player profiles that carry a career history across seasons. Depending on what you have turned on, they may also find recaps and league news, awards and championship history, records, the trade block and transactions, pick'em, the draft board, playoff picture, and the hall of fame.

Why it matters. Your members can check the league from a phone at work without opening Discord, and the address is something you can share publicly when you recruit. Nothing on it needs maintaining: post a result in Discord and the site already knows.

Members do not need an account to look around. Signing in with Discord links their profile so their own pages show up.

11. Pre-season tournaments

Some leagues open with a tournament before the regular season. It doubles as team selection: results earn lottery tickets, and a weighted draft lottery decides the pick order.

How a player signs up. The commissioner posts a signup announcement. It carries three buttons:

• Sign Me Up registers you. If the league already knows your gamertag from your profile, this is one tap and no form appears. If it does not, it asks once and saves it to your profile so you never type it again.
• Scheme Guide shows every scheme and what it costs you. Each one buys real strengths with real weaknesses, so read it before you pick.
• My Entry shows what you are signed up with, and lets you withdraw.

Signing up also gives you the tournament role, so staff can reach the field without pinging the whole server.

Where you build your team. Not in Discord. After you register you get a Build My Team link to the Roster Builder at roster.cfmos.com. Sign in there with Discord and it already knows who you are. That is where you claim your team, pick your offense and defense schemes, and open your packs. The Roster Builder is the only place a team gets built, so nothing you do in Discord can disagree with it.

Where your team shows up. Your team page lives on your league website: the schemes you picked and every star you pulled, with their calling cards, their fatal flaw, and what it takes to unlock a hidden development tier. Pages are public, so you can share a good pull.

How the tournament runs. A group stage first, then a playoff bracket, then a champion. Each matchup gets its own channel with both players in it. Results are recorded by staff.

How team selection is decided. By draft lottery, not by finishing position. Everybody who enters gets tickets, and every ticket improves their odds of picking early. Years with the league earn more, past champions get a bonus, finishing your signup adds some, and every tournament win adds to the pile. The tournament champion gets a large enough stack that first pick is theirs to lose, but nothing is guaranteed. The lottery is run from a seed the commissioner announces publicly, so anyone can check it.

Commissioner side. Open the Commissioner Hub and tap Tournament Signups under Game Operations. It checks your setup first and tells you exactly what is missing if anything is: the plan, the tournament feature, the tournament role, and the record book. Then it shows a short panel where you pick the closing date, the closing time, and the start date from dropdowns. They come pre-filled with sensible dates, so if the defaults suit you it is one tap to post. Nothing is typed, and the banner image comes from your league branding automatically. The signup counter in the post updates itself as players confirm.

Testing before you launch. Most commissioners try the whole flow once before the league sees it. Give a trusted member the Beta role, which opens the beta room and nothing else, and have them sign up and build a team there. What you want to confirm is that their team page appears on your league website with their schemes and their pulled stars. If the page is empty, the handoff did not complete and staff should know before the league does.

Records. Tournament results are filed in their own record book, separate from the regular season, and both roll up into your all-time record. The commissioner sets which book is active, so a tournament run never lands in a season record.

11a. Team selection: the lottery and the draft

Hands out clubs the way a draft night does, instead of one assignment at a time. Everything lives in the Team Selection Draft section of the Commissioner Hub.

How it works. Members rank the clubs beforehand from their Player Hub. Draft order comes from a weighted lottery, not from standings: members earn tickets, and every ticket improves their odds of picking early. Everybody in the lottery gets a club; tickets only decide the order.

Before the draft

• Who Is Ready lists who has turned a board in and who has not. Ready means all clubs ranked. It shows the ones who have not started as well as the ones who have, because those are the people to chase, and it has a button that messages only them. Nobody who already finished gets pestered.
• Lottery Odds shows every name with its tickets and its real odds at the first pick, drawn as a bar. Post this before you run anything. A weighted lottery nobody can see the weights of is the thing people argue about.

Splitting the field (optional)

Builders Pick First runs the lottery in two groups. Everyone who built a club runs first, against each other, and takes the opening picks. Everybody else runs after them. Tickets still decide the order inside each group, so a big stack in the second group still picks after the first group is done.

Off by default. When it is on, the odds board shows each group separately, because a single board would quote the second group their odds at the first pick, which they cannot be drawn for.

Who Picks First shows and edits that group by hand, for when you know who did the work and the automatic list does not match.

Running it

1. Run the Lottery. The order is drawn live in the channel, one slot at a time, and the seed is published with the result so anybody can re-run it and get the same order. The order it lands on is the order the draft picks in.
2. Open the Draft. Starts the draft on that order. You choose how long each person gets on the clock, from one minute to overnight. Long clocks are the point for a league spread across time zones: ranked boards cover anybody asleep.
3. Draft Status. Who is on the clock, how long they have left, and a button to put a pick through if somebody is plainly gone.
4. Cancel the Draft stops it where it is. Every club already picked stays assigned.

What happens when a clock runs out. The pick comes off that member's board, taking the highest club still open on their list. If they never ranked anything, they get the best club still available. The board says which of the two happened for every automatic pick, so nobody has to ask.

Clubs are assigned for real as each pick lands, so the draft finishing means the league is set.

Seats. If you name a first group, those members hold their seats outright and are not in the race for the rest. Everybody else takes the remaining seats in signup order, first come first served, and anybody past the last seat goes on a waitlist in signup order so a withdrawal moves the next person up.

12. Running the league day to day

Most days you are just spot-checking. A typical rhythm:

• Madden: advance the week in Madden, and the data flows in. Recaps, standings, and previews post on their own. Approve any pending currency upgrades and glance at the Settlement Board.
• College Football: approve the game results your players submit as they play. Post the rankings and standings when you want them (see the next section). Run the draft and generate the season plan at the start of a season.
• Both: members open tickets when they need help; you clear the queue. Trades propose and vote on their own; you review anything flagged.

12a. Profiles and the roster board

Every member gets a profile: platform, gamertag, career record, badges, and a card that posts automatically to your profiles channel and updates itself when anything changes.

Profile Roster (Commissioner Hub, Player Management) is your control room for it:

• See who can be invited today, who is half finished, and what each person is missing.
• Nudge to finish DMs only the people with something missing. Invite to set up is a separate button for people with nothing on file, so you never spam lurkers by accident.
• Create profiles channel builds the card wall and fills it. Rebuild profiles channel re-renders every card in place after a big change.

Records keep themselves: played games and staff rulings go on the real record, simmed games go in their own book, and a team changing hands never moves old games to the new owner.

The roster board is an autopost item called Team Roster Board: every team grouped by division, the owner's name or OPEN on each line, refreshed on the schedule you pick. Bind it to a channel from Commissioner Hub, Autopost. It works before your franchise is connected, so it is ready on day one.

League history is its own autopost item, History Moment: one moment per post from your league's history collection (titles, classic games, record-book entries), and old posts stay put so the channel becomes your archive.

12b. Season dues (optional)

If your league splits real costs, the dues buttons live in the Commissioner Hub: set the season and amount (or a total to split), set a deadline, see who has paid, and post a reminder that carries a pay button. Members see a simple card: what they owe, when it is due, one button to pay. Reporting only, nobody loses access for being late.

13. Making the league feel alive

This is optional, and it is what turns a pile of numbers into a league.

• Media-team content (Standard). Recaps, daily news, previews, and press-conference panels post automatically or on a tap from News and Recaps.
• College rankings and standings. Because college has no data feed, you bring the game's own poll and standings in by screenshot. In the CFB section, tap Post Top 25, drop your Top 25 screenshot (Media or Coaches poll), and the board posts itself. Tap Post Standings, drop a Conference Standings screenshot, and it posts that board. Do this once a week and your college league has a real poll and real standings straight from the game. You get told if a read looks shaky so you can re-post a cleaner shot.
• Announcements. One-tap free-agency and draft posts, plus recruitment ads that pull your live open-teams data.

Broadcast a DM to your members

When you have time-sensitive news that a channel post might get missed (for example, "our dynasty starts Monday at 8pm"), you can DM your members directly from the Commissioner Hub. It is Administrator-only, and it always shows you how many people it will reach and asks you to confirm before anything sends.

To send one:

1. In the Commissioner Hub, open Announcements and Recruitment and tap Broadcast DM.
2. Choose who to reach: pick a role from the dropdown (for a small group, like just your GMs), or tap Everyone to DM every member.
3. Type your message and submit.
4. You get a "this will DM N members" confirmation. Read it, then tap Send (or Cancel).
5. The messages go out, paced so Discord does not throttle them, then reports back how many were delivered and lists anyone it could not reach.

A member shows up as "could not be reached" if they have DMs turned off or have left the server. The report lists them so you can tag them in a channel instead. The DM arrives as a clean message titled with your league name, so it reads as official league news.

A few things to keep in mind:

• Use it for real, time-sensitive news, not routine chatter. For everyday announcements, a channel post that pings your Member role reaches everyone with less noise.
• It is capped at 300 recipients per send, which is far above any normal league size.
• Only an Administrator can send one.

14. Troubleshooting and FAQ

A feature will not turn on. The setup pick and the toggle both look like they did nothing. Check your plan first. On the Free plan, a Standard feature (College Football, recruiting, the concierge, and others) can be stored on but read off until you upgrade, so it looks like a no-op. Upgrade to Standard and it appears. This is the most common question by far.

I just got upgraded, but it still is not working. Plan and settings are cached for a few minutes. A change made outside Discord can take up to about ten minutes to take effect. Give it a few minutes and it applies on its own.

The Madden dashboard said "Export failed," but I think the data is there. A first or full "All Weeks" export runs for a few minutes and the browser can time out and show "failed" while the export keeps running in the background. The data still lands. Ignore the badge on a long export, let it finish, and confirm the weeks filled in. A "last export: never" note is not reliable either and does not mean you have no data.

Which screenshot do my college players send? The Post Game screen (final score, both teams, records, quarter box). One screenshot per game. College Football has no single all-in-one stats screen, so the Post Game screen is the one clean shot that has everything needed. Rule of thumb: if a screen shows the final score and both teams, it can be read.

I am moving into an existing server. How do I not make a mess? Archive first, then build. Use the Archive Old Channels button (you can name the folder, for example "Last Season"), then run Build it for me. If you build first, the archive would also sweep your new channels. Your rules and system channels are always protected, and archiving preserves chat history.

Recaps stopped posting for some games. That is the Skip Sim Recaps toggle (Game Operations). When on, it skips press recaps for computer-vs-computer games to save cost. It never skips a game a member is in, and the box-score card still posts for every game. It is off by default; toggle it back if you want recaps for every game.

I approved a college game and nothing recorded (no win/loss, NIL, or badges). Check Scheduling Control in the CFB section. If your league is in preview mode (used only while migrating from another bot), result writes are held back on purpose so records do not get split. Set scheduling so this bot is in control, and results record normally.

A screenshot would not read, or there is no screenshot. Use Enter Result in the CFB section to type the teams and score. It goes into the same review queue and records on Approve, just like a scanned game. Staff can Approve, Edit, or Reject items in the queue; a corrected scan still records on Approve. The team names have to match a school that is bound to a GM for the win to attach to that player.

A member says their profile or the standings look empty after simming. Usually the data is fine and they just have not claimed a team. The record and career block on a profile only fills in once the member is on a team. Have them tap Claim a Team from the Player Hub and it fills in.

Nothing is posting to a channel I expected. Make sure that channel is mapped in setup. A channel that is not set will not receive its posts. Map it in the setup wizard or from the Commissioner Hub.

15. Getting help

Already running? Reply to your receipt with the question. Not signed up yet? Email cr810ai@gmail.com. Setup hiccups, billing, feature ideas, and bug reports all get answered.

Your league's data is yours. You own it, and you can take it with you if CFM OS is ever not the right fit.

Welcome in.