This is the giant ass 20 man league we started last year. People from last year are invited, but if you found yourself getting bored and half-assing it by the end of the year, please allow us to give other people your slot. I assume we’ll have some slots to fill, but I’ll give a few more weeks to see how many slots we’ll have open.
I want to suggest we switch to an aucton draft this year because yahoo supports it. It will keep people more involved in the draft - you won’t have to wait 35 slots if you get stuck at one end of the draft for your next turn to be up, you’ll be invovled in every pick. Auction drafts are just generally superior in pretty much every way.
The only thing with that is that with an auction draft it’s very important that everyone be there. The computer will auto-draft for you, but it kinda ruins the flow of the draft - much more fun if everyone is there.
The draft is currently set for Tuesday Sep 7 at 9:15pm eastern. It’s not set in stone but we’re scheduling a lot of FF drafts together so it has limited flexibility. Speak up now if you have a scheduling issue. It’s important that everyone be able to make the draft.
Any other discussion of rules or structure is welcome.
I don’t have time to finish looking up which team names match up with what SDMB names right now
Standings from last year:
With my current schedule, I’ll have to leave work early. That’s ok I’ve got some odd vacation time from leaving early another day last month.
There is no way on earth I’d auto draft any auction draft, but especially not one this deep. I also hope that everyone who joins makes every effort to attend the draft.
Somebody explain how this auction draft would work, please. Also, how long does it take compared to a regular draft? With a league this deep, we don’t want to be drafting all night. Well, I don’t, anyway.
A well-implemented auction draft takes around 20%-25% longer than a snake draft. A poorly implemented one takes around 50% longer. ESPN’s first effort was poorly implemented, but the next year it was fixed. This is yahoo’s first implementation. Fingers crossed.
With auction drafts, everyone starts with an amount of monopoly money (typically $200) and they bid to build a roster. In order, each team will nominate a player to go up for bid, and from there, any team can keep bidding it up. It’s just like an auction at this point - if no one bids in 10 seconds, the last bidder wins him.
You’ll see the top end players (Chris Johnson/MJD/etc) go for about $65, mid-tier players (Ronnie Brown/Anquan Boldin/etc) go for $25-35, and towards the end of the draft bench players start going for $1-5.
It’s really fun because you’re involved with every pick - there’s always a chance that the player up for bidding will be undervalued by everyone else. There’s also a strategy element to watching who has how much money left and what roster positions they have left open, and trying to figure out when you have to overpay to get the last player of their tier or get good value later.
It’s a lot more involved… you never run into the situation where the guy you’ve been desperately hoping will drop goes to the guy before you - you can always choose to splurge and get your guy. You have way more control over your roster than with a snake draft.
They’re also fairly quick. Yahoo seems to have stolen ESPN’s solid design, so it probably only takes maybe a half hour more than a snake draft.
Auction drafting is clearly superior to snake drafting IMO. I want all my leagues to do it.
I love auction and I can’t wait. Each owner has their own strategy. For me, I’m not going to be bidding up the top 3 running backs, but I am going to get a good QB and at least one elite receiver.
I’m interested, but i’m not sure i can do the suggested draft time.
I could be there for the first two hours, but my wife and i are on campus that day teaching, and she finishes her last class at 8:15pm Pacific. We’ll be two hours into the draft at that stage, and she’s definitely not going to want to hang around at work after teaching three classes, just to watch me do my Fantasy Football draft. And, even at that time of night, we have a half-hour drive home.
If you get a spot open in the league, I’d love to jump in. I see no reason I couldn’t make the draft, and as long as I’m only going with one or two leagues in a season, I don’t get so bogged down as to fade away.
(I’d kind of prefer the big league, but if you have free spots in another, I may be willing.)
We need to decide if we’re doing the auction draft or not. If we do, I’m probably going to to drop out. I’m not willing to learn some new draft system, when the old one seems perfectly fine.
I wonder if the auction will go even faster than the snake draft? Towards the end of the snake draft, I know that I had to do some quick checking on a lot of the players at the end of the draft. With the auction, I already know most of the sleeper guys towards the end I’m interested in and willing to bid on. I also like how you can pick your strategy a bit more with auction. If you’re willing to spend big for an elite RB and QB, you know you’re going to having to hunt for bargains at other positions. With snake, you have to change your strategy based on your position in the draft.
Auction draft is pretty much superior in every way to a snake draft. I’ve not met anyone yet who’s done an auction draft and still prefers a standard draft. Is that not enough reason to learn a new way to draft?
Anyway, you can give a mock auction draft a try to see how it works here. It’s an anonymous mock, so you may get jackasses in there doing retarded stuff so it’s not totally representative, but you’ll get an ida of what you’re in for.
I need more opinions on the auction/snake draft thing, since I want to form a consensus. I honestly think this draft will be massively more interesting as an auction, especially since otherwise you’d only be involved in every 20 to 39 picks. I don’t want to unilaterally change it though if there’s general unhappiness with the idea.
I do ask that before you reject it, you give at least half a mock auction draft a try, linked in the above post.