June 1st Cuts/Pickups

Im psyched about warpath fantasy =D

Daseal, as usual, I guess I did a poor job of wording in my post. I did not mean it as a dig at you. That was my attempt at some self-deprecating humor. My picks MAY turn out to be lame LOL. Anyway, at this point, "those are my picks, and I'm stickin' with 'em".

Matty, I'll be glad to run a $25 league free of charge (return all money as prizes), if you like. It can be any size you like. I like 14-team head-to-head leagues, because the talent is thinned out enough that it is very competitive, and there is still enough to go around. But it could be 10, 12, or 16, also.

We can definitely do a suicide league too, and a pick 'em one as well.

Last year we had a pay league and everyone put in $10, well most everyone. We had two duds who signed up but never paid, so that's why I was thinking of raising the ante this year to $25. We want serious players only. Plus we had a free league for the less serious folks, we should have no problem putting together at least two leagues this year, maybe more.

John, that sounds great, can you hook me up with some more details? What are the draft options? How does the scoring work, etc. We usually go through Yahoo but we can definitely try something different.

Matty,

I can email you some basic info. We form leagues for individuals, and have set rules/scoring for those, but also do stats for private leagues with completely modifiable rules (you would be in that category). Our scoring system is excellent, so I would really like you to at least consider it. You can make any mods you like. I will not charge for any leagues you would like me to run.

For drafts, you can hold the draft any way you like, and enter the rosters (or send them to us to enter). If you like, I will run the draft for you - I usually charge for that, but will not for one or two Warpath leagues. My draft schedule is so packed in August, I would not want to commit to more than that. The guys LOVE our drafts, but you REALLY have to be prepared if you are going to do one of them. It is a conference call draft - everyone live on the phone line. It is a lightning draft. We allow 20 seconds to make a pick. In our "individuals" leagues, guys generally call out their pick immediately after I call their name, so they really move. We have had a 16-team 25-round draft take less than 90 minutes (but typically take a full 2 hours). We also have online support that automatically shows your top couple players at each position and top 12 overall (based on your ratings). This updates immediately as I am running the draft. But even with this support, you must be connected to the conference call. So, anyhow, that is available if you want it.

We use individual defensive players in all of our "individuals" leagues, but many of our private leagues use DT's. It just depends on how much the guys would want to get into it. We also have available in our leagues:
- coaches (get 3-6 points for games won, depending on margin of victory)
- Kick returners (PR/KR yards and TDS - can also be in another lineup position)
- Several combo positions (H-Back<WR/RB/TE>, DF<DL/LB>, Nickel<DL/LB/DB)
- Fantasy bonus (add 50% more points to any player in your lineup - can only be used 2 times during the season - save for key matchups)
- Alternates (EX: QB Alternate scores if your starting QB does not play OR if your starting QB gets zero - you choose which option your league would use)
- BYE WEEK AVERAGING!! (If your player is in a BYE, you can play him, and get his average year-to-date score. This eliminates having to draft around the NFL schedule to be sure not all QB's, RB's or WR's are on a BYE together. Like all these other items, it is an OPTION your league can select - but is very popular with our customer base)
- Injured reserve
- Practice squad (for keeper leagues only)

We allow lineup changes until Sunday gametime, even when there are Thursday or Saturday games. (No changes to Thursday players after their game starts). One drawback - we do not have live updates - would cost us $20,000 per year. But we did fork over the $8000 to get updates 30 minutes after the games are over, so you get very accurate scoring for the early games a while after the late games are underway. Most of those "live" updates have errors, anyhow.

Oh yeah, I can collect the money if you like. But I will require payment before the draft. Otherwise, you can handle it and pay the prizes.

ive always used Yahoo for my fantasy football. Using yahoo it only cost me 10 or 15 dollars for up to the minute scoring. That could be an option to to set up a private league in Yahoo or CBS Sportline.

Hogskin, do you have a website or somethign I could check out?

SkinsnCanes, sorry, I don't have a site right now. Our internet support is done via a free software package that you install on your computer. It is very nice software that has advantages over web sites (very, very fast, for one thing), but not convenient for situations like this. If you really want to see it, go to www.nfsl.com (very UGLY page LOL), and do the two downloads. Let me know if you do, and I will give you a password into one of our leagues. You can look around at the options and download rules and other reports, but will not be able to do updates.

I have not been advertising at all for about 6 years, just wanting to maintain our status quo. But I now want to get some growth going again, so I am working on getting a software firm to convert our huge VB software package to a .NET application that will have it able to operate as a typical web site. I developed all of the software, but do not have the time (or .NET expertise) to do it.

As far as setting up a Yahoo league to get the stats, I can not really do that. I need every raw stat you can imagine, since I run many different types of leagues. I AM working on doing an automated interpretation of some of the box scores online that are updated real time. Very tough to weed through all of the minutia in those files, though, and they often have info missing during the games.

sounds good John, the only tricky part may be the draft. I've found it tough to get everyone together for a live online draft, let alone a conference call. Personally I like an email draft with 12 hour time limits, but that could be tough to run on our own.

I guess we'll have to weigh all our options and see just how serious everyone is about doing this.

Matty, if you can get the guys together for a league, I would be glad to try to schedule the draft. The only problem is, I have over 40 other drafts I will be doing in August on week nights at 7 & 9, SAT/SUN at 1/3/5/7/9. I schedule them all around July 20. So there will be limited openings after that date. If you get something together well before July 20, I can send the form out to all of them for blocking out dates/times they can not make, and see if we can agree on a time. If this is done before July 20, I will give you the first shot at times. This works very well for us, as you can see, since we have no trouble scheduling over 40 leagues (mostly 14 teams each). Each league is made up of guys from all over the country.

Of course, this all depends on your guys' willingness to participate in a "lightning" draft. You have to be ready, as I mentioned. I am strict with the 20 seconds. My customers say it is the absolute highlight of the season. But just make sure this is what they want to do - no one else that I know of is even ABLE to run a draft of this type, so I'm sure it will be new to them. If you don't want it, I will help any way I can with getting a draft set up.

I am all in for the Warpath ffl, just let me know when you need the money by, and where to sign my name.

much thanks for the info, John. I'll get back to u