Cannot believe that espn and Yahoo were sending me stuff about fantasy football back in late May/early June. I mean, do I really care about this at that time?

Then again, do we really care about it on July 1? I dunno... but they were talking football on the radio, so I figure we might as well get the thread going.

Who is in this year? We doing espn or Yahoo again? I like the Yahoo format, have done both last year. How many teams, who is organizing it, etc?

I am definitely down. Need to rebound from last year's dismal performance- way to choose Henry and Jones as my running backs, only to see them combine for like 3 TD all year!

Share your thoughts and ideas- how many positions, what format, scoring, etc etc..

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Scoring was fine last year after I reset it to the defaults. The only shitty thing from last year was that damn trade. We need to turn on league approval for trades. Other than that, I don't see any changes we need to make. I can run it again if need be. As long as we have league approval, nothing should really be a problem.

One thing we do in my big money league is limit who can trade with who about a third of the way through the season. So if you have 10 teams, the top 5 can only trade with the top 5 and the bottom 5 can only trade with the bottom 5. You could also make it so you could only trade with people either 1 place below or 1 place above you. Something you may want to consider.

I think League Approval makes more sense really.

The Lanys Connection
PW: lanys

I did the auto e-mail invite for those that I remember participating. If you didn't get an invite it was because I couldn't remember if you remained active or not.

Sola - Don't join the league and then never manage your team like the last two years.

League Approval is set to on for trades. Draft is tentatively set for August 30th.

Early registration this year!


I'm already anxious for football to start. /sigh.

In.

The Magicians are back and ready for football!

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Of course I'm in... it's fun every year

For people to join you need to post the actual league id #, not the name. I'm not sure if you invited me (Anathae's Trannies/Archibald M.), because I changed e-mail.

http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com ... connection

ID# 111470

I'll register tonight

I'll play!

Registered & stuff.

In and registered. I'd rather see 14 or 12 teams this year than 16 teams with 2 to 4 absent or I don't give a fuck owners.

Hoping for 16 again because it's the one "big" league I play in, and I like the variant dynamic of it. I do agree, though, that it would be better if all the managers were active.

On another note, is there any way to set up a keeper league in Yahoo? We've run this with essentially the same people for 3-4 years now. It'd be sort of cool to get to protect a player or two. Just a thought.

Forgive my ignorance, but what is a keeper league?

Ok, I'm in as the Sunday Spoilers.

Normal league as far as rules go, but you keep players year to year. Usually you protect 2-3 players from your previous year's roster and start with them when you draft the next year. Rules vary, but it allows for higher priority drafting of certain prospects because you might have them long term.

I'll look at the rules and figure it out Zat, but I don't think so.

In the free Yahoo league you can't do keepers.

You used to be able to at ESPN but that is when it was a pay league and you had to pay for three years (three year keeper rule)

I would love to do a keeper league, but we must have the same people in the league each and every year or it wouldn't work very well.

EDIT: It COULD be done "off-line" but that would require everyone to be at the draft to draft their keepers first. If the people know that they won't be there to fix their list where their keepers are the first two or three picks AND they would be required to remove the other keepers from their list.

Like I said, it could be done, but the chances for a mistake are greater.

Yahoo added in support for keepers this year, and nothing on their site says it's PLUS leagues only. It would be interesting to try it out, but I'm not sure how well it would work with new people and all.

Keeper leagues in my experience give bonus picks to new people and base draft orders on the prior season. They also don't snake draft, so picking 1st is better in every round etc. That's how they kept people who had bad teams without good keepers involved and viable for the following season. A lot of leg work imo, but for a free just for fun league, I guess it doesn't matter if we don't get it exactly balanced.

I would be for a keeper system based on last year and having the prior year finish set the new year draft order.

Where would the "new teams" draft? Before the teams from the prior year? Between those that made the playoffs and those that didn't? After the previous teams?

I would be ok with new teams drafting first or close to it, honestly. We lose a team or two every year, and don't really see much new blood. We've got 12 signed up now, all of whom are previous managers. If we get more than 14 teams I'll be surprised. I wouldn't really want to discourage joining down the road, so a decent to good draft position for a new manager would be a plus.

It also would somewhat depend on how many players we decided to allow protected.

With 12+ teams, we should not protect more than two players.

Given my losing team last year, part of me wants to start with a fresh slate :p

Keeper leagues serve no function if you aren't doing an auction draft. The only reason to do a keeper league in a snake draft is because you have a Tom Brady and just want to have him again next year. Dumb idea.

Even without keepers an auction draft would be fun. I only did one ever and it was great. Is there any free software we could use for that?

You'd need everyone to be at the draft for 5+ hours in order to do an auction. And, of course, you'd also have to come up with new rules (such as a salary cap).

Back when I ran a league and had a web site for it, I did look into doing an auction draft. I had the same problem we have here, everyone in different locations and the impossible task of getting them all on at the same time. So I found a free auction program and got it up and running on the web server. I never did use it but I did test it.

How it would have worked is that any owner could start an auction for a specific player. Once the auction started it would run for 3 days and the highest bidder would be winner. The program would email all owners annoucing the start of the auction and changes in bids. The plan would have been to start things about a month before the season to give enough time to complete it.



Actually auction rules are pretty straight forward. As far as setting a salary cap you really don't have one. Every owner starts with the same amount of "money" be that 100, 1000, or whaterver. It is then up to them to figure out what value they want a player is. They just have to fill their roster with in that range. So if you had a 16 man roster and 200 total dollars, you could bid 185 for Tom Brady but then you would only have 1 dollar to spend per your remaining 15 roster spots.

Correct, but you'd need to make rules such as a $1 minimum (instead of using cents), if you wanted inflation on your keepers, how long you could keep keepers for, if rookies could be kept for longer, if you could go over the cap, prices for free agents, etc.

Examples of some questions that will come up:

• If I draft a player for $50 and trade him, is his salary still $50?
• If we assign a waiver wire salary of $3 for all people picked up on waivers and I pick up someone who was originally drafted for $50 and then dropped, is his salary still $50 or is it $3 since he's now a waiver pickup?
• Can I keep a player next year if I picked him up via the waiver wire?
• If we can only keep a player for 1 year and you kept Tom Brady this year, can I keep him next year if you trade him to me?
• Can you veto a trade if I am "trading for a keeper" even if the trade appears to be lopsided right now?
• What happens if I go over the salary cap?
• If I am under the cap this year, can I add the difference to my cap at the start of next year's draft?

What you say is correct Neesha, my statements were ment to address an auction style draft only. There would be more involved to incorporated with a keeper format.

OK, the hell with that.

This all seems like a lot of work for an undetermined amount of extra entertainment.

How about we just do what we've always done? :p

Undoubtedly what we will end up doing! An auction draft some year might be fun though. Keeper+auction sounds extreme, but just a different draft type could be interesting. Either way though, I usually enjoy the lanys draft.

Gratz Zat on reaching the 300 post milestone!

You did it faster than Albert Pujols!

I've had the same league for like 16 years or something so I've seen and heard it all. Every year, we tweak our rules a little so I really do think our league is about as good as it gets (other than when I tied in the playoffs last year and we didn't have a rule in place on who should advance in the event of a tie).

My league drafts defensive players instead of team defenses. We also are allowed 3 keepers (if none are running backs) or 2 keepers if we decide to keep a running back. We are also allowed to keep one player as a "restricted free agent". What this means is, before the draft, we all write down our one restricted free agent and give it to the commish. He then calls out the list and everyone has a chance to bid whatever dollar amount they'd be willing to pay for that person, silently. We write down all bids, hand them to the commish, and he announces who the highest bidder for a player is. If you own that player, you have the choice to match the highest offer and automatically get that player for the new salary, or if nobody bid, you get that player for half of last year's salary (rounded up). I know it sounds complicated, but since we can't keep any players as our "keepers" that we picked up on the waiver wire, this gives us a chance to keep that diamond in the rough that we may have picked up early on in the season for one more year (like a Ryan Grant from Green Bay).

Fun times.

Jateki, wtf is your status?

We need one more I think.

I'm in man, thanks again for doing this. Sorry for the late sign up, work and school have been kicking my ass lately.

No problem, just glad you're playing.

heh, looks like Yahoo is one of the only major sites charging for live updates this year, bah

I shut down registration at 14. If we get two more people who want to play and are going to be active, I can open it back up before the draft which is in like 2 1/2 weeks.

I sort of hope so. This is the only league I play that's been this large. I like the different dynamic. 14 is still sort of deep, but we're getting closer and closer to an ordinary 12 team league every year. Time for some fresh blood!

I'd prefer 14 vs. 16, since 2 of the 16 go awol after week 1. Of course we could just add 2 dumby teams and have the same effect. With 14 it will give us more depth in the FA pool. Since this is the only league I have participated in the last couple of years, I'd prefer it to be more competive vs. larger. Zat if any of the other leagues you play in need a body let me know.

So I am in a 10 team league with some friends here in Phoenix. We had our draft yesterday, and am curious to see some of your responses to the team I have. Standard points- 10 yards rush/rec= 1 pt, 25 yards pass= 1 pt, TD= 6 pt. 1 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, 1 W/R, 1 TE, 1 DEF, 1 K. Picked eighth out of the ten, players by round-

M Barber
M Lynch
C Palmer
D McFadden
C Johnson
A Gonzalez
C Cooley
R Mendenhall (bench)
R Brown (PHI- bench)
D Bowe (KC- bench)
D Williams (CAR- bench)
R Rice (bench)
PHI Defense
T Ginn (bench)
J Hanson (K)

I loaded up on RB and WR for the time being. Not sure who I want to start, seems like Gonzalez and Brown and Bowe are all pretty much the same WR. I am dropping Ginn to get Schaub because I am concerned about not only Palmer... but all his offensive players are getting injured badly. The guy who has Chad Johnson also has Brees, I am trying to trade him a RB and a WR to get Brees.

I had a chance at Seattle defense, but went with Philly... hoping that they become more aggressive and with Samuel can get some more picks and more sacks since the receivers should be covered with Philly's secondary. Gonzalez was a stretch, and looking back there might have been another receiver I could have had. I had to grab Cooley before someone else got him or else I would have been very light at TE.

Thoughts?

PS- for a funny story, one of the guys in my league is in a NFL.com league, 12 team league, he was picking 11th. His first round choice was.... Manning. No, not Peyton... Eli. Yeah- Eli Manning, first round! I laugh everytime I see him

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Bleh cannot edit. C Johnson is Calvin Johnson from Detroit... and Gonzalez is from Indianapolis WR. Sorry, some may think that it was Ocho Cinco I drafted, no way....

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you sure do like to take chances on rookies...

Not a bad thing, really. Considering where he picked, he got a pretty damn good roster. At least one of those rookies is going to produce useful fantasy numbers this season. They all have huge upside. His starting roster is solid, if unspectacular, and given where he's drafting from, his best shot is to gamble a little.

I would have gone elsewhere from Palmer this year, and I think your receivers are weak for a 10 team league, but you got great RBs. I think it's a roster that can make the playoffs with some careful management, depending on how your league trades.

Here are the QB's that were taken before I took Palmer-

P Manning
T Brady
T Romo
D Brees
T Jackson (she is a Viking fan, don't ask)

I am not sold on Rothlisberger, and Hasselbeck is a notch below the upper tier in my opinion. Take away Tavaris from above, and those four QB and Palmer round out the upper tier of QB in the game. Rothlisberger, Hasselbeck, McNabb are the next tier. I felt I had to get an upper tier QB, and at that time I thought Palmer was a necessity because I valued him in the upper tier. Now, with Chad injured... he is starting to drop because he is losing his weapons around him.

And yeah, one of the big reasons why I drafted so many RB was for hopeful trades. I tried to trade a RB and a WR for Brees (his team has Chad Johnson, Jamal Lewis and Ernest Graham, and no other RB on the team... and has K Warner and J Russell as his backup QB) but he already said no. Which baffles me since he only has 2 RB on his entire roster, and there is not a single RB left that is of note... unless you consider Warrick Dunn to be worthy.

I always seem to draft poorly with WR. Not sure why. I am hoping to package to get a star WR eventually, not sure if that is possible or not...

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With my family visiting from northern Minnesota, I don't think I'll be able to be at the draft this year. I shall have to trust the auto-draft!

Haha, sweet. Viniateri goes to Fribur this year!

geeze fribs, if they are family, they will love you even if you take 90 minutes to draft your fantasy team...

heh-- I see my family once a year or so, for 3-4 days. We live far away from each other, and we both have busy lives. This time, it's two days, and I'm not going to give up 90 minutes of it for the draft, especially when my mother is one of those people that just "doesn't understand" why people spend any time on the computer other than to check their email.

Sorry :p.

Good draft all that were there.

Sorry guys. I totally forgot about this. I have a new puppy that keeps attacking my adult dog and it's been distracting.

Why does Yahoo have to suck so bad. I was camping this weekend but figured the auto draft would at least put active players on my roster. Thanks for Rudi Johnson...if this is a real FF service, how do they have him rated that high?

well, Rudi wasn't cut until last night. The autolist goes off current drafting averages. Until yesterday people were drafting Rudi

Pretty happy with what Auto did for me, R.Moss/Edwards/Ward recieving core should help make up for a weak RB team of Parker/Foote. Palmer and Kitna can both put up big numbers in the QB slot, will swap depending on matchups.

Should be fun!

Great, it looks like my #1 pick (Brady) is out for the season. Oh well, I'll do the best I can with what I have left.

I feel your pain, I have Brady in two of my money leagues.