SDMB Big League FF 2010

The Game Room
1

Last year’s thread

Everyone is invited back, so recruitment is not open yet, but I suspect we’ll fall short. If you found yourself not wanting to bother with the league towards the end of the year, please don’t bother to rejoin and let someone more active take your slot. Because it’s hard to recruit for a league this big, I’m going to start early - if you don’t sign up by the end of July someone else may end up getting your slot.

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

We’re staying with the auction draft format last year unless there’s widespread objection because it seemed to work out a lot better IMO. The only thing is that it becomes absolutely critical to attend the draft - generally in auction leagues, but specifically in this league where there’s so much fierce competition for players and yahoo default ranked values are useless.

I don’t think this will go over well, but the fickle nature of head to head matchups can be especially brutal in this league - it’s more likely some weird shit is going to happen to certain people and people who deserve to make the playoffs won’t and some that do will. I personally would suggest that we should consider switching this league to a points-only league, given its unusual nature.

I’m also not sure divisions serve a useful purpose and would have no problem disbanding them, but that suggestion met with resistance last year.

I picked the same relative day as we drafted last year - the Tuesday before the NFL opener. This gives takes our draft past the last round of cuts for NFL teams which are especially important in this league because we end up drafting the vast majority of nfl players. The draft is set for Tuesday, Sep 6 at 9:15pm 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. It is very important that you attend the draft for this league.

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 plus any money you have left over from the draft 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.

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.

League standings

2009:

  1. Cobra Kai (Boozahol Squid, PI)
  2. Donte’s Torino (Taber)
  3. Fightin’ Quakers (Furt)
  4. Scissor Me Timbers (Munch)
  5. No Use For A Name II (RetroVertigo)
  6. Frosted_Lightning
  7. Varlos’ Zzzzzz
  8. We Do HGH (Stringer)
  9. Curry Porkrinds (tds1273)
  10. Antonican Druids (Oakminster)
  11. Quentin’s Jammers (Jules Andre)
  12. Team Ed Gruberman (It’s Not Rocket Surgery)
  13. Kid_A
  14. Unrelated Siblings Uncle Brother Walker)
  15. Exploding Pancakes (SenorBeef)
  16. Phoenix Redbirds (dalej42)
  17. Master Baiters (mhendo)
  18. Stinkers (Stink Pot Fish)
  19. The Gusterrhoids (Justin_Bailey)
  20. Court Jesters (D_odds)

2010:

  1. Exploding Pancakes (SenorBeef)
  2. Varlos’ Zzzzzzz (VarlosZ)
  3. Hamlets Out of Ideas (Hamlet)
  4. No Use For A Name II (Retrovertigo)
  5. Garcon’s Cedilla (friend of MrSquishy)
  6. Not Sure (brickbacon)
  7. Evil Monkey (MTRG)
  8. Up by three (Taber)
  9. Scissor Me Timbers (Munch)
  10. CMFD (Chuck, off board)
  11. Curry Porkrinds (tds1273)
  12. The Gusterrhoids (Justin Bailey)
  13. Hey There Fancypants (Mr Squishy)
  14. Frosted_Lightning (Frosted Glass)
  15. The Brute Squad (Only Mostly Dead)
  16. Court Jesters (d_odds)
  17. Return of Ryan Leaf (Mhendo)
  18. Sizzurp Sippers (Gray Ghost)
  19. Unrelated Siblings (Uncle Brother Walker)
  20. Phoenix Redbirds (dalej42)

I’d just like to remind everyone that Court Jesters started with absolutely fucking nothing after missing the draft, and somehow managed to finish ahead of 4 of you. In certain cultures you would all be expected to commit seppuku.

DISCUSS THINGS!

2

I’m pretty sure we aren’t going to get 100% retention of last year’s players, so if you’re interested in the league and can make the draft (this is critical in this league, not making the draft will leave you with an empty shell of a team), please indicate your interest here, and I’ll make a prioritized list based on how reliable I know people to be.

3

One thing to discuss is if we want to allow an owner to deliberately start players who are on bye or leave a position empty for a given week.

I think there was one week where I left the D spot open on purpose since mine was on bye and the only ones on waivers were likely to give me negative points. Of course, some of the new scoring categories should make it advantageous to want to have a starting D every week.

4

I don’t see why not. It’s that owner’s team to do with as he sees fit. The potential to score negative points always exists.

5

I’m in. I want to see if i can maintain my consistency and come in 17th again. :slight_smile:

6

I’m going to start recruiting new people soon. It takes a lot to fill up 20 slots in a league where it’s pretty much mandatory that everyone makes the draft, so I don’t want to cram at the last minute when people are already in the leagues they want to be in. So if you’ve been reinvited but haven’t signed up yet - do so now. If you try to sign up sometime past August, there may not be a slot left for you.

For new players interested in the league, I’m not sending out invites yet but I’m creating an interest list, so please indicate if you want to get into the league.

As for the discussion… Given that very weird things happen in this league with the unusual format, I’d be willing to try this league as a points-only league which would more accurately reflect the actual quality of the teams. I know most people strongly prefer H2H, but I was just thinking in this particular case a points league may be more justified. I wouldn’t make such a drastic change without widespread support, so get back to me with your thoughts.

7

I’m not opposed to going points only, rather than H2H. There’s no extra strategy in H2H football beyond “score the most points possible” - it’s simply luck of the draw. Really the only thing that changes is not worrying about pulling a player going into MNF with a win that can only be lost with some fumbles/INTs/etc.

8

Re-registered, with a name change.

Hopefully we have enough people back from last year who learned some lessons on how to auction draft a big league that it will go a bit more sensibly than last year.

And I vote to keep H2H, with divisions. I like the analogue to real life, that a weak team, with a better than average week, could beat a good team on an off week. It’s what makes Redskins games (admittedly rarely) worth watching!

9

Can we go over how the playoffs are determined? I’m looking at last year, and I can’t for the life of me figure out how Evil Monkey was ranked above Up By Three. They were both in the same division, UBT (10-3, 2-1) had a better divisional record than Evil Monkey (7-6, 1-1), and UBT even had more overall points (1417) than Evil Monkey (1389).

10

Right. I think in general head to head is more fun because you not only get a set of players to root for, but a set of players to root against. You get those dramatic “can my WR score 13 points on monday night?!” finishes. And I think for the most part, that outweighs any sort of unfairness that goes on.

But due to the whacky nature of our league, more odd/unfair things happen than average, so that skews the results. In year 1, I was the league’s top scorer. 8 teams made the playoffs, so I was in good shape, right? No. Every fucking person in the league had their best day of the year against me. I finished with like a 5-8 win/loss record with the league-leading score and finished in 15th! Which is the craziest fantasy football result I’ve ever seen.

[brag]That actually makes both years of this league where I’ve lead in scoring in a league of 20 people. That’s pretty damn impressive[/brag] - the difference between year one and two - where I finished 15th and then 1st, was strictly due to the luck/oddness injected by 20 teams playing a head to head schedule where there are more chances for odd things to happen.

I think for this league in particular, a points league would make more sense. Because this isn’t most people’s (or maybe anyone’s) only league, you could still get those dramatic monday night finishes from other leagues. I don’t feel that strongly about it, but I do feel like if any league was going to go to a points system, this is the one that should do it.

11

I just spend like 10 minutes trying to figure out wtf would explain all of the inconsistencies of the ratings… and then I figured out I was wasting my brain cells. The ranks on the standings page for the playoff teams were their ultimate result in the league standings after the playoffs were resolved, not their original playoff seeding. So I started as the #3 seed, but I’m listed as #1 because I won the playoffs. Up By Three started the playoffs as the #5 seed, and Evil Monkey as the #6, but Evil Monkey ended up being him in the 7th place game in the consolation bracket, hence his listed rank there.

12

Ah - that would make sense.

Also, it doesn’t look like you lead the league in scoring last year - there were several teams that didn’t make the playoffs that had more points than you.

13

I had 1530 points. Second up is Garcon’s Cedillia at 1520. Then Hamlet at 1418.

Are you looking at the points scored against category maybe?

14

That’s exactly where I was looking, I believe. :slight_smile: 2009 was really close though - I had a bunch of injuries in the last few weeks, and still finished just 15 points behind.

There’s merits on both sides of this. I think we could tweak the division and playoff system to make it interesting. If we go H2H, I’d really like to see the divisions be ranked by divisional record. Whether we go with two games against all divisional opponents would be a good discussion. 8 playoff teams means we still don’t play everyone in the league, which IMO lends itself to battling it out within smaller pools to advance.

15

I would generally prefer you not change your team name. With 20 teams it’s hard enough to keep track of who’s who without everyone changing each year. It gives a sense of continuity - you’ll probably remember “oh yeah this guy, he beat me in the playoffs last year” but under a completely new name most people won’t recognize each other.

Further complicated by almost everyone turning on the “hide e-mail address from commissioner” option, I can’t even figure out who you are that way.

So I would ask you not to change your name, but if you must, please post to the thread saying who you are and who you were last year so we can keep track of it.

Edit: I can see that Only Mostly Dead was The Brute Squad last year and LockoutNess Monster this year since he didn’t hide his e-mail.

16

Good and surprising news. 19/20 of our players from last year have re-upped. We had a very good level of participation and competition last year so I’m happy to see that. The only person who hasn’t signed up is Garcon’s Cedillia, who is MrSquishy’s off-board friend. Because he hid his e-mail address, it’s not letting me send him another invite, which is kind of bizarre and silly. Hopefully MrSquishy can contact him. I’ll give him another 2 weeks or so before I look to replace him… finding one replacement shouldn’t be difficult.

Remember that it’s absolutely critical in this league to attend the draft. If something changes and you can’t make it, consider getting a friend to draft for you (you can either give them your yahoo password or I think I can make some sort of comanager arrangement). We had 19/20 make the draft last year, this year I hope it’ll be 20/20.

17

Well I was wrong - we’ve got 20/20 back from last year, I figured we’d have at least 3 or 4 people drop. Cool. Only one person missed the draft last year and he still managed to claw his way back from absolutely nothing to finish 5th from last. I’d imagine he’ll make the draft this year.

No one is weighing in on the issues I brought up for discussion. Going to a points based league is a pretty huge change and I expected some people to be outraged at the idea so the silence is odd.

18

If you have someone waiting in the wings, I have no problem dropping out. I was recruited late last year, but my fantasy football plate is kinda full. If anyone wants my spot, they are more than welcome to it. And, if need be, I might be available for the draft if they/you/anyone needs a last minute replacement.

19

I agree that H2H doesn’t make a ton of sense in a league this deep. On the other hand, I think I enjoyed it last year because even though I wasn’t scoring many points I was somehow managing to win games. I’m probably the reason you want to change it! :slight_smile:

I guess (maybe this is obvious) if we go points-based, there is no reason to have divisions either, right?

I like lots of scoring metrics. I would vote against including “Pick Sixes Thrown” though. We’d have to be careful about how many points you get for some of these, too. I was in another league where, on a regular basis (i.e. 2 or 3 teams every week), a team’s defense ended up being worth more points than all their offensive players combined, and that was dumb. I know real football is about defense as much as offense, but I think fantasy football should be mostly about the offense, unless we start picking IDPs.

20

Nah I’m happy about everyone showing up again and I’d be happy to have you again. I have no one in particular in mind as a replacement.

If you have too much going on and you want to bow out, that’s cool and I’ll find someone to replace you, but I’d definitely prefer you stay if you can swing it.