SDMB Auction FF League 2010

Last year’s thread and our general discussion ff thread.

We’re not recruiting yet - everyone from last year is invited - but if some people don’t show up this year, I’ll start sending out some invites.

Our standings until now:

2007:

  1. Omniscient
  2. Boozahol Squid, PI
  3. LOUNE
  4. SenorBeef
  5. VarlosZ
  6. Chuck (from off board - the roomate)
  7. Ellis Dee
  8. Kiros

2008:

  1. Hamlet
  2. It’s Not Rocket Surgery
  3. Mike (the random dude in our mock draft on ESPN who became part of our league)
  4. SenorBeef
  5. Kiros
  6. Boozahol Squid, PI
  7. Spiritus Mundi
  8. Ellis Dee
  9. Chuck
  10. VarlosZ
  11. Omniscient
  12. RNATB

2009:

  1. Exploding Pancakes (SenorBeef)
  2. New York Fanboys (Ellis Dee)
  3. The One Man League (It’s Not Rocket Surgery)
  4. Orlando Rage (RNATB)
  5. Quentin’s Jammers (Jules Andre)
  6. Overly Sentimental (Chuck)
  7. Show me your TDs (Mike)
  8. Varlos’ Zzzzzz (VarlosZ)
  9. Last Place (Kiros)
  10. The Jackson 4 (Hamlet)
  11. Chicago Cutlery (Omniscient)
  12. Cobra Kai (Boozahol Squid, PI)

Yahoo will have auction drafts so we won’t have to go through the extra hassle of signing up for an ESPN league. It works pretty much the same way.

Rules are up for discussion, propose any changes you wish.

The draft is scheduled for Tuesday August 31 at 9:45pm EST currently. There’s a little wiggle room with the draft time, but speak up soon if this is going to be a problem.

The draft time works for me.

Looks like only about half the league has signed up so far. Currently missing:

RNATB
Jules Andre
Chuck
Kiros
Hamlet
Omniscient
Boozahol Squid, PI

Yahoo invitations expire, so if you only sent out invitations when you first created the league you’ll want to send off another set of invitations for those on the above list. A group PM to the dopers on the list would probably be good, too.

I haven’t received an invite for this league. Do we need to get them in email or can we sign in without an invite sent out? I’ll be rejoining this league this season.

I should’ve handled this before I went out of town this week, but we’re still missing Boozahol Squid and Kiros. And… I’m reasonably sure RNATB said he needs to take this year off. I got a bunch of PMs from people telling me they wouldn’t be able to return to various leagues, and I copied who said that about what league to a text file… and apparently crashed before I saved it because I can’t find it.

I think RNATB was out of this league, correct? Kiros and Boozahol may show up, but we’re getting close to the draft and need to look at plugging in holes. RNATB will need to be replaced. I’m going to start sending out feelers to reliable players, but we may have to do some quick public recruitment. Anyone have someone who might be interested?

I have no real recommendations, but make sure they are available for the draft is all I’d say. The fluid nature of the auction draft makes it much more important that all the owners be present for the draft.

I’m interested if there is an open spot. I can make the draft.

Yep, Dale, you’re good people, so I’m going to PM you the info.

Boozahol Squid, PI and Kiros can still sign up and take their slot if they get the message, but I’m going to give their slots up to anyone who seems reliable because a week from the draft is way too late to be holding those slots open. I should’ve really started inviting people earlier, but I was confident people would trickle in eventually, and I’ve only had intermittent internet access and haven’t kept up like I should.

In any case, those 2 slots are up for grabs. If you’re serious about FF (you won’t stop setting your roster because your team sucks halfway through, you’re willing to view/consider trade offers, etc) and you like the idea of an auction draft even if it’s your first time, and you can attend the draft on next Tuesday, Aug 31, at 9:45pm EST, please post here or send me a PM.

Thanks! I joined as Phoenix Redbirds.

I’m making a very similar post in the all my leagues, so if you’ve read it in another thread no need to reread.

I plan to use the Free Agent Aquisition Budgets style of waivers rather than standard rotating lists. Everyone starts with $100 plus whatever money they have left over from the auction. We also use the yahoo system to give everyone a fair shot at grabbing free agents on game day, detailed in a post I made last year in the league:

"Yahoo now supports automatically putting all players on waivers from Sunday to Tuesday to do what we did manually - prevent the first person to their computer when a player goes down from getting their backup and instead giving everyone a chance to make a claim. The difference in this case is that it’s built in to the yahoo system, and we’re using a silent auction style bidding system for players. You start with $100 + whatever money you had left at the end of the draft. In the event that there’s a tie, there’s also a rolling waiver list that works like a standard list where you get sent to the back every time it resolves an issue. Having no other real criteria, I also set the initial waiver priority list by the amount of money people had left after the draft, and in the case of a tie, reverse nomination order. The issue should rarely come up, though as there won’t be that many ties.

There’s one catch with this system. Since Thursday and Saturday night games fall outside of the Sunday 1pm-EST till Tuesday night automatic waiver period, a player could conceivably pick up a breakout performer from the those games before the Sunday till Tuesday waiver period. This goes against our system, so I’m creating a rule regarding this: If you want to pick up a free agent from a Thursday or Saturday night game after that game has begun, you have to wait until Sunday at 1pm EST and put in a waiver claim like the rest of the free agents. Premature pickups will be reverted. "

The other issue is… last year I took my leagues off trading with a league veto period and went to commissioner approval. The reason I did that was because essentially no one was willing to veto any trades anyway, and that we’re all serious players and we’re not gonna do some goofy Randy Moss + MJD for John Carlson deals at the end of the year as part of some weird griefing.

And a benefit to this system was that I could fast-track non-controversial trades. You could negotiate saturday afternoon and still get the trade processed before the games sunday morning, whereas with the vote system, no matter what the trade will take 24 hours to process. If there was something fishy going on, I could choose not to fast track it, and get league discussion on the issue and allow people to vote on it. But that never came up.

There was an issue last year when someone was pissed that I fast-tracked a trade that ended up working against that person (the team they faced benefitted from the guy they received that week). IIRC, I ended up pushing every single trade made before Sunday through before the games on Sunday, so everything made it through. I think it’s a better way to do it because you can still do trade negotiations later in the week and still have them count, or it’s possible some injury situation may occur less than 48 hours from the game of the player you want to trade for to replace the guy, etc.

Anyway, unless there’s objection, I want to make it clear that I plan to do it again this year, and any reasonable trades will be pushed through before the games of the players involved. If there’s some sort of controversy I can slow the process down and allow the group to discuss and even veto.

So - in summary: I propose the gameday free agent->waiver system we used last year - and that we used in previous years, only manually. Furthermore, I propose that we use Free Agent Aquisition Budgets rather than straight waivers. I also plan to run the league trades on commissioner approval and quickly approve all routine trades. Strange trades will take longer and come up for discussion.

Any issues?

I screwed up by waiting so long to recruit. I figured we’d have everyone back this year and that if we just gave it some time they’d come back, but we’re still two short. Kiros is active on the SDMB every day, and I’ve sent him a PM, e-mail, and posted to a thread he’s posted to (and possibly subscribed to), but he won’t respond to me. Not sure if he’s deliberately ignoring us or what, but it’d be better to know if he’s quitting.

Boozahol Squid hasn’t been on the boards for about a month, so I don’t know about him.

We’re 5 days out from the draft, so obviously I screwed up in waiting for things to come together, but there’s still time to fill up. I’ve gone on an aggressive recruitment push, inviting all the reliable players on the boards who I knew might be open to joining new leagues, and while some invites are still pending, no definites so far. Someone said they’re already overbooked but if we’re seriously desperate on draft day he’d step in - but I won’t ask him unless we have only 11 players on the day before the draft or something.

If we can’t fill the two vacancies, it’s not that huge a deal - I like our current format, but making it a 10 man league instead of 12 wouldn’t massively hurt anything.

Still, if you have any friends - SDMB or not - who would be interested, as long as they’re involved/reliable and can attend the draft, go ahead and invite them.

We’re drafting tomorrow night. I should be available and I’m actually excited for it. What’s the latest? Do we have enough people? Will everyone be there? Can I win the league again?

I’ve done some pretty heavy recruiting but couldn’t get the last two slots filled. So we can just run the league 10 handed this year. Not ideal but but a big deal either.

Everyone make sure you attend the draft in about 24 hours. Auction drafts especially are much more fun with 100% participation.

There is no way I’m missing this draft! I’d never think of trying to autodraft an auction league, Yahoo would probably have me bidding $50 for a kicker!

The autodrafter is very rational about auctions - it’ll snatch up any values below the yahoo projected value, which sort of makes it a spoilsport - you won’t be able to sneak an undervalued (relative to projections) player for under that value because the computer will always be there to bid it up to that. At least early on, before it starts taking some players and spending some money. The autodrafter won’t do anything crazy.

But it’s just not fun having the computer lurking there on every pick. Auction drafts with everyone in a giant bidding war are great fun and it works much better if everyone is there.

I’m thrilled about this and I can’t wait. I should probably start doing some research actually…

May have to miss tonight. Stuck at hospital. Can’t draft from iPod.

Wow, the draft is tonight? I had it in my head the rest of my drafts were in September. Good thing I randomly decided to open this thread.

Crap, I’m on no sleep and no research, so my auction team might suck even worse than usual this year.

Could you send a round of PMs to the league just in case they did the same? Hard for me to do it from the iPod.

The cable guy just left, so I should be good to go for tonight. Awesome.