Friday, August 21, 2015

2015 draft information: It's 2 p.m. Aug. 22!

The draft is currently scheduled for 2 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 22. That's tomorrow! 

We will be doing a live online draft. If you can be there, great! If not, you can always set your pre-draft rankings on the fantasy site and the computer will draft for you. This isn't the worst thing. We've had some pretty good auto-drafted teams in the league. 

**As I said in an email earlier today: If you're one of the 7 that said you can draft tomorrow and you actually cannot, let me know ASAP so I can decide if we need to postpone!**

The draft order will be the reverse of last year's standings in a snake format, which means that the order flips each round. If you picked first in the first round, you'll pick last in the second round, and on and on. 

Here's the order for the first round: 

1. Blaupunkt
2. Muscular Mathletes
3. PerpetualMotionSquad
4. Taking it one game at a time
5. Off Constantly
6. Free Crab Legs
7. Big Kahuna Burger
8. Team 8 (The currently-unnamed new team. As in the past, I put the new team in the middle of the draft.)
9. The Reservoir Dogs
10. Academic Probation
11. Cant Be That Hard
12. Turn Down for Watt
13. Jeff Fisher's Mullet
14. Dolphins of Old

What you should do now: 

- Set your pre-draft rankings, even if you're drafting live. It's easier to draft when you have your players organized. 
- Test your draft client. There's a link to that on the home page of the league. 
- Pray. 

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There will be dues this year, same as last. We will get that sorted out before the season starts.

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One change I made: Extending the playoffs. Why? 

A 14-week season for our 14-team league doesn't make sense. Each team ends up playing every other team once and one other team twice. That could either be really helpful -- you play a bad team twice -- or detrimental -- you play a good team twice. 

To get rid of that 14th game, I expanded the playoffs to six teams. Now it will work like the NFL: The top two teams get a bye in Week 14 while the next four teams play each other. The winners of those games play the top two teams and then we go to a championship. The season still ends on Week 16. 

The consolation bracket will work the same, meaning that only two teams will miss the championship and consolation playoffs. If I could find some way to have y'all play a "Who is the worst" game -- Sacko Bowl, if you will -- I would do it. We'll see. 

The other option is to have 8 teams in the playoffs, but I like the idea of the top two regular-season teams getting an advantage. 

If you have any questions, let me know! 

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Two things for the upcoming Royale with Cheese season

Friends: It's been too long. Welcome back. It's football time.

First, let me apologize for the lateness of this post and of the scheduling for the upcoming season. As most of you know, I've moved to a new job that has taken up a ton of my time this summer. When I was covering high school sports, summers were boring and I had way too much time on my hands to come up with random fantasy football ideas. No longer.

But we are still doing this league and it's still gonna rock. I'm still planning on posting weekly about the league, though the updates will likely be shorter. If anyone wants to write a weekly update, lemme know. I'm open to it.

So here are two things we need to decide right now to get started. There are polls for both of these things on the right side of your screen, so please vote!

(1) Draft date. 



As I said in an earlier email, we won't be having an official party this year, but I still want to do a live online draft.

Would this Saturday, Aug. 22 work for everyone? I'm thinking mid-afternoon would be good, like 3 or 4 so that we're not messing up anyone's dinner. And that translates to a regular time in Hawaii, I think.

If that doesn't work for most people, we'll figure out another date. Vote in the poll. If you can't make it, remember to rank your players so that when you autodraft it picks people you want it to.

(2) Add two teams? 

I have a request from a friend to join the league. (He actually quit another league in the hopes of joining us. We're that awesome.) As of now, all but two of the teams have confirmed to me that they are playing this year. If all 14 confirm, how would you feel about adding two more (it has to be an even number) to take the league to 16?

I know it will make the league harder, but who doesn't like a little challenge?

Again, vote in the poll. This will be a majority rules situation. If someone happens to drop out before Saturday, this doesn't matter and I'll plug in the new person.

I think that's it for now. Please vote in the polls! I'll do a more formal beginning-of-season post soon.

Happy football!

- Corey