SDMB All-Pro fantasy football league 2011

Last year’s thread

Everyone from last year is invited back. We are not yet recruiting. We’ve got 8/12 signups in the league currently and we’ll wait for the other 4 to get back. I will be more aggressive about recruiting this year … last year I was sure that some of our reliable players would sign up and when they didn’t we had to run the auction league 10 handed because I didn’t leave myself enough time to recruit. So if people aren’t signed up by early August, I’m going to start recruiting to fill their slots.

We’ll proceed as if we expect the NFL season to begin on time, since there’s not really anything else to do.

I picked the same relative day as we drafted last year - the Thursday a week before the regular season opener. Thursday, Sep 1, at 9:45pm eastern. We went to later starts last year to help west coasters get home from work, and the east coasters didn’t seem to mind starting late, so unless there are objections I plan on using the same draft times as last year. If there’s a problem with this, speak up now so that we can still get a good draft slot at the right time before they’re all booked.

I plan on using the sunday through tuesday waiver system for free agents that we used last year. Yahoo automatically puts all players on waivers as of 1pm Sunday, so you can submit a claim rather than having the person closest to the computer pick them up as free agents. We’ve done this for a while now. The added rule is that if there are any games that start before Sunday at 1, you can’t pick up those players after their game has begun - you have to wait until they go into the waiver pool on Sunday and put in a claim for them.

I also plan on doing the FAAB waiver system where you start with 100 to bid on players (maybe adding a little bit of money based on draft order) rather than using a rolling list. That seemed to work better.

I’m also going to keep the commissioner approval on trades for all the reasons I outlined last year. I will automatically and quickly approve any reasonable trade. If there’s something fishy about a trade we’ll discuss it, but there’s no real chance of a trade being rejected in this league - we’re all serious players, no one will say “fuck it” and throw their season, we all know enough not to get ripped off, and as we’ve proved, people tend not to want to rock the boat and vote against trades anyway.

Practically, this means you have later in the week to work out trades. Previously if you worked out a trade on friday evening, that trade wouldn’t go through by the time Sunday’s games started, so you’d be screwed if someone got hurt late in the week or if you just didn’t have time to conduct the negotiations. Now you can make trades up until Sunday morning and still get them through before the game starts.

I’m usually around early Sunday mornings to push trades through, but if you make a very late trade on Saturday night or Sunday morning, I may not be able to approve it in time. If that happens, both of you should make your intent clear “I plan on starting player X I just traded for in place of player Y” and I can retroactively make the rosters reflect that.

If there are any problems with these policies, feel free to voice them and we’ll discuss it.

Yahoo has some new scoring metrics available, so we should discuss if we want to use them, and generally any other tweaks we want to make to our scoring system. Also new is an official way to trade picks pre-draft, which we’ve been doing manually previously. Again this year I will generate a random list for the draft order well before the draft actually takes place (using the randomized/fair system Ellis Dee came up with years ago) so you can know where you’ll be in the draft order and can start talking about trades.

Here are the league results since the beginning:
2006:

  1. Exploding Pancakes (SenorBeef)
  2. Tazmanian Devils (Tazmanian Devils)
  3. Chitwood’s Penance (Jimmy Chitwood)
  4. Last Place - Kiros (Kiros)
  5. Isotopes (Petey, I think)
  6. The Gridbirds (brianjedi)
  7. Court Jesters (D_Odds)
  8. Holding out for Bush (Kid_A)
  9. Purple Helmed Warriors (OneCentStamp)
  10. The Faceisburgers (MsRobyn, I think)
  11. Zone Blitz (RetroVertigo)
  12. Og’s Cowboys (can’t remember)

2007:

  1. Quentin’s Jammers (EsotericEnigma/Jules Andre)
  2. The Gridbirds (brianjedi)
  3. Exploding Pancakes (SenorBeef)
  4. The Opposites (Kid_A)
  5. Frosted Lightning (Frosted Lightning)
  6. Tazmanian Devils (Tazmanian Devils)
  7. The Concussions (Kiros)
  8. Isotopes (Petey)
  9. Court Jesters (D_Odds)
  10. New York Fanboys (Ellis Dee)
  11. chitwood (Jimmy Chitwood)
  12. No use for a Name (RetroVertigo)

2008:

  1. Tazmanian Devils (Tazmanian Devils)
  2. Kid_A (Kid_A)
  3. Exploding Pancakes (SenorBeef)
  4. Quentin’s Jammers (EsotericEnigma/Jules Andre)
  5. Kiros Mark IV (kiros)
  6. Court Jesters (D_odds)
  7. New York Fanboys (Ellis Dee)
  8. Isotopes (Petey)
  9. chitwood (Jimmy Chitwood)
  10. No use for a name (RetroVertigo)
  11. Frosted Lightning (Frosted Lightning)
  12. The Gridbirds (brianjedi)

2009:

  1. Quentin’s Jammers (Jules Andre)
  2. Isotopes (Petey)
  3. Frosted_Lightning
  4. The Gridbirds (brianjedi)
  5. Exploding Pancakes (SenorBeef)
  6. No Use For A Name (Retrovertigo)
  7. Omni’s Omnipotents (Omniscient)
  8. New York Fanboys (Ellis Dee)
  9. Court Jesters (D_odds)
  10. Kid_A
  11. Last Place (Kiros)
  12. Tazmanian Devils

2010:

  1. Isotopes (Petey)
  2. Exploding Pancakes (SenorBeef)
  3. The Great Old Ones (Ol’Gaffer)
  4. Omni’s Omnipotents (Omniscient)
  5. New York Fanboys (Ellis Dee)
  6. Frosted_Lightning (Frosted Glass)
  7. The Gridbirds (brianjedi)
  8. Kelly’s Heroes (Munch)
  9. Chitwood (Jimmy Chitwood)
  10. No Use For A Name (Retrovertigo)
  11. Court Jesters (D_odds)
  12. Tazmanian Devils (Tazmanian Devil)

If anyone wants out, I want in. I’m qualified!

Dynasty league champ!

We’ve got 11/12 signed up. The only straggler is brianjedi/Gridbirds. He hasn’t been on the boards for a few months, and he traditionally signs up late, so I’ll probably give him until the first week of August to re-up. If he doesn’t sign up and RNATB still wants the slot he gets it.

I should have said something sooner, but I didn’t put it together. If at all possible could we move the draft to any other night beside Thursday? It’s impossible for me to get to the draft on time, and I won’t have internet access. I understand if we can’t, but would be willing to humiliate myself to make it happen.

That’s doable, I just need to have everyone else weigh in on their preference and what they couldn’t make.

We could move it ahead a day, to Wednesday Aug 31. The auction league is drafting that tuesday, and I know a few people have both leagues, but it’s really not that big a deal to do two drafts back to back.

We could bump it ahead to Friday the 2nd. I’m not sure what people’s availability is Friday, or for that matter over the weekend at all. Saturday and Sunday are options too.

Wednesday would probably be the least disruptive.

So anyway, rest of the league: What’s the best day near Thursday, Sep 1 for you, and which dates couldn’t you make it on?

Wednesday the 31st would work fine for me. I would prefer to not do it on Friday night.

Ok, ran into an issue. Yahoo reserves so many drafts per time slots, first come first serve, so they don’t overload their drafting servers. At this stage a lot of the prime times are already taken up. On our best candidate day, Wednesday the 31st, there’s nothing in the 7-10pm eastern range - the earliest we can get a slot is 10:30 eastern. This works for me, but I’m not sure if it’s too late for some people. The draft will run about 1:20-1:30 I think, so it should be done by midnight eastern.

Here are some other options
All times eastern

Wed 24 9:30
Sat 27 8:30
Sun 28 9:30
Mon 29 10:30
Wed 31 10:30
Fri 2 any time 7 through 11pm
Sun 4 2:30pm
Wed 7 (last day of drafting) 9:30
The longer we take to decide on a time, the more slots we might lose, so please weigh in quickly. As of now, I took the Wednesday at 10:30pm timeslot so we can hold it if it works for everyone. If it’s too late for some people, tell us an alternate that works for you. We need to do this quickly.

Any of those dates would work for me.

I forgot that I probably can’t make anything in the Friday Aug 27-Monday Aug 29 range. Wednesday the 31st at 10:30 is our best shot if we want to draft after week 3 in the preseason. If that’s too late for some people we can probably move it up and draft after week 2. Not a huge deal, just not ideal.

I’m on the west coast so any of those times are fine with me, still prefer the 31st.

Wednesday the 31st is a good option for me. I cannot make August 24th, September 2nd or September 4th.

Labor Day weekend is generally a bad time. I could make it, but I’m sure some can’t. Also, note that I already scheduled the keeper league for 10:30pm ET on Labor Day.

Due to the time-sensitive nature of the issue, I sent out e-mails to everyone in the league asking them to weigh in on the draft time change. No one objected, and prime slots are filling fast, so I’m going to assume that 10:30et on Wednesday the 31st works for everyone.

Most of the core group of people among us have been with us since the start - or at least 4 out of 5 of our years.

I decided to rank those people by average finish.

Average finish, player name, finishing place in 2006/2007/2008/2009/2010

2.8 SenorBeef 1/3/3/5/2
4.8 Petey 5/8/8/2/1
6 Kid_A 8/4/2/10/-
6.2 brianjedi 6/2/12/4/7
6.25 Frosted Lightning -/5/11/3/6
6.6 Tazmanian Devils 2/6/1/12/12
6.75 Kiros 4/7/5/11/-
7.5 Ellis Dee -/10/7/8/5
8 Chitwood 3/11/9/-/9
8.4 d_odds 7/9/6/9/11
9.8 Retrovertigo 11/12/10/6/10

Interesting to see that only two of us average in the top half of finishers. So many people right stuck in the middle.

Edit: I guess under 7 is “in the top half” technically.

If you’re still short a slot…

We’re probably going to be full, but if not, RNATB has been requesting an open slot for 2 years now, so he’s first up.

I did ask you if you’d be able to for sure make the draft for the auction league and you never responded to me.

brianjedi signed up so we’re full now with 100% retention from last year.

Ok, so let’s discuss any settings changes.

The default trade deadline is Nov 18, right before week 11. I’m inclined to bump it up to its latest date of Dec 2, right before week 13. The main reason for the trade deadline is so that someone can’t just say “fuck it” and dump players to a friend that late into the season when they know they’re screwed. Since none of us are going to do that, I see no reason not to extend the trading season as long as possible - there are still valid, mutually beneficial reasons to conduct trades that late.

I can set the time per pick anywhere from 15 seconds to 2 minutes in 15 second increments. Default is 1:30.

Commissioner review of trades and fast tracking, as well as FAAB is detailed in the OP, but speak up if there’s a problem with either.

We can reseed the playoffs. By default, there’s a bracket formed at the start of the playoffs and the bracket will always play out that way. But we could do it like the actual NFL playoffs where every round a new bracket is made so that the top seeds always play the lowest seeds. I’m inclined to turn that on.

We can tweak our current scoring system. There are also new scoring categories added to yahoo this year.

Should we add any roster positions?

I assume we’re too firmly established to do anything drastic like start having keepers or drafting defensive players, but if you have any ideas go ahead and voice them.

Hopefully the Wed, Aug 31 10:30pm draft time works for people, because we’re pretty much locked into it now - all of the good times are taken.

I went ahead and did our draft order since everyone is signed up. The way we’ve been doing it the last few years is that I ask someone from the league to give me a list of the numbers 1 to 12 in any order they choose, and I ask another person to return to me a list of every team in the league in any order they choose. We then pair up the numbers with the names and that determines the draft slot. This creates a random list because neither of them know the other set of names, it can be independently verified (they can both confirm that those are indeed the lists they sent), and there’s no way for me to tinker with the numbers unless we’re colluding, which we totally are.

I asked RetroVertigo to send me a list of the randomly ordered 12 numbers, and he sent me back:

7
5
1
8
12
10
2
9
4
3
6
11

I asked Frosted Glass to send me a list of 12 randomly ordered names and he sent back

Tazmanian Devils
No Use For A Name
Exploding Pancakes
Isotopes
New York Fanboys
The Great Old Ones
The Gridbirds
Omni’s Omnipotents
Frosted_Lightning
Court Jesters
Chitwood
Kelly’s Heroes

If you match those up, the draft order becomes



Exploding Pancakes 1
The Gridbirds      2
Court Jesters      3
Frosted_Lightning  4
No Use For A Name  5
Chitwood           6
Tazmanian Devils   7
Isotopes           8
Omni's Omnipotents 9
The Great Old Ones 10
Kelly's Heroes     11
New York Fanboys   12


Yes, I was lucky enough to get the #1 overall pick, but there was no rigging going on :p. Those two can confirm that those are the lists they sent me. I actually would be most happy in the #3 slot if anything - I have a very clear top 3 but between them it’s a relatively tough call, so I’d be happy to snatch up whichever of them fell to #3 and then pick a bit earlier in the second round.

Shenanigans! Collusion!

heh.