I think, for a lot of folks, the juice is no longer worth the squeeze. Takes a lot of time and energy to keep your bank account full and to do all the tasks. Sure you can probably get by doing mostly AC's, cheap trainings, and a PT every now and then but a lot of people don't want to half-ass it like that.

So then the question is, why do they feel like that? For GMs, its a lot of work with little payoff, at least previously. We'll see if the compensation changes there help, I hope they do.

The biggest issue that touches everything, I think, is parity. There's the top teams and then there's everyone else. An extreme case of haves and have-nots. Not going to try and litigate WHY that is, but its undeniable that its HAM, BUF, TEX, and CHI at the top, with a few teams that reach that level every now and then before falling back to earth. So then what do you do with the other 16 teams in the league? You can either try and hang out in the sim dungeon for hours and hours just to lose to the top teams anyway, or you can ratchet your energy/investment in the league way down and just not care. The vast majority of folks are in that latter group. I don't blame those teams, but that's the perception. Then you add in the extra salt when people feel that teams like HAM get preferential treatment (rightly or wrongly, but there was a reason the whole draftee signing thing was a fiasco), and it breeds general apathy.

How do you fix it? I think you have to help people feel like they matter in the league. Most people don't feel like they matter, or their effort matters, so why bother investing that time and energy into it? I don't know if I'd define it as a "crisis", but we're definitely at a crossroads where something has to change.