Are you ready? Royale with Cheese 2013 starts Aug. 17!

High school football practice started Aug. 1. I went to the Panthers' first preseason game Friday.

It's time for football, y'all.

We are less than a week away from the 2013 Royale with Cheese draft! I hope you all have been preparing for the draft as much as I have (not at all).

Oh, Mark.

Before I get to draft information, I want to introduce you to the newest member of the league. Mark will be joining us this year after Ryan (The Dream Crushers) let me know last week that he wouldn't be coming back. I've enjoyed having The Dream Crushers in the league but look forward to seeing how Mark does. His team name is currently undecided, but if it doesn't have the word "Pudgy" in it I will be very disappointed.

Now to the draft.

I'm going to dump all of the draft information on this blog so that I don't send a monster email to everyone.

There are three different ways you can participate in Saturday's draft: 1) Come to the draft party and make bad decisions; 2) Draft from home online (and also make bad decisions); or 3) Pre-rank your players and let the computer do your drafting for you.

1) If you come to the draft party: I'll be sending out an email shortly with information about the draft party being graciously hosted by Katie and Jeremy. We will be cooking out, enjoying beverages and drafting at 8 p.m. Remember to bring a computer! The draft is still taking place online to accommodate players that can't make it, so you need to have a computer to draft.

2) If you don't come to the draft party but still want to draft: Log-on to the online draft a little before 8 p.m. to get into the draft room and make sure everything is working. If you want, we can try to get you onto a Google Hangout so we can still talk trash with you.

3) If you don't want to come to the draft party or do the draft: Well fine then. You can still rank your players and the computer will pick the highest player still remaining on your list when it's your turn in the draft. If you click on your team on the league website, you should see a link to rank your players. If you don't, let me know.

For everyone participating in the draft, whether at the party or at home, please test the draft client on your computer to make sure it works. You can do that here, in the Draft Center on the league website.

Also in the Draft Center, you can try some mock drafts to see how the process works.

It's also not a bad idea to rank your players even if you're doing the live draft. The players you want will be easier to find come draft day.

Like last year, the draft is a snake format, which means that the first round goes from 1-14, the second round goes 14-1 and the third goes back to 1-14. So, if you draft first in the first round, you'll draft last in the second round. If you draft last in the first round, you'll draft first in the second round (two picks in a row!).

The draft order is the reverse order of finish from last season, with the two new teams plugged into the middle. That order is: 

1. Dolphins of Old
2. The Reservoir Dogs
3. Muscular Mathletes
4. PerpetualMotionSquad
5. Chicks Dig Scars
6. Something
7. Can't Be That Hard
8. Mark's unnamed team
9. Big Kahuna Burger
10. Jeff Fisher's Mullet
11. Academic Probation
12. Taking it to the next level
13. Correctamundo
14. Blaupunkt

 I hope this answered a lot of your questions. If you have any others, please shoot me an email at coreyinscoe@gmail.com.

Again, the draft is 8 p.m. Aug. 17, which is Saturday.

Looking forward to the season!