Fantasy Football: Conducting an offline draft

[TODD]

I, along with my brother-in-law, am trying to conduct the best way to conduct an offline fantasy football draft. We have a league with 12 people who all live within an hour or so from each other. We figure that a computer-based live draft will not work because of inevitable technology issues. Anyway, it's probably not possible to get everyone out to someone's house to conduct a draft even if there is free food. But, I was wondering if any of you all have ever conducted an offline draft and if so, how you pulled it off.

[Sebowski]

Sure.
The easiest way to draft if you can't do a live draft is on a mock draft website. Everyone in your league signs up for a mock draft together. You control the timer on each pick. You can set it at 12 hours per pick. Nobody takes the full 12hrs. The clock just makes sure everyone can pick when they can. If your owners have a fair amount of computer access the draft shouldn't take more than 10 days.

This format also gives you a chance to really thin about your pick. It aslo makes it a lot easier to trade draft picks.

Here is my favorite sebiste for Mocks:
http://www.antsports.com/

Sign up for one to test it out for your league. It is good practice anyway. Sign up here:
http://www.antsports.com/mock_draft/...ft_Signups.asp

I do a tone of these every offseason. If you have any questions at all about them or the site, let me know.

Another decent site for mocks:
www.xpertsports.com

[TODD]

Originally posted by Sebowski
Sure.
The easiest way to draft if you can't do a live draft is on a mock draft website. Everyone in your league signs up for a mock draft together. You control the timer on each pick. You can set it at 12 hours per pick. Nobody takes the full 12hrs. The clock just makes sure everyone can pick when they can. If your owners have a fair amount of computer access the draft shouldn't take more than 10 days.

This format also gives you a chance to really thin about your pick. It aslo makes it a lot easier to trade draft picks.

Here is my favorite sebiste for Mocks:
http://www.antsports.com/

Sign up for one to test it out for your league. It is good practice anyway. Sign up here:
http://www.antsports.com/mock_draft/...ft_Signups.asp

I do a tone of these every offseason. If you have any questions at all about them or the site, let me know.

Another decent site for mocks:
www.xpertsports.com

Wow, Seb. Thanks a bunch, man! Very cool stuff, I had no idea this type of thing existed!

[Heidenreich]

This year will mark the fifth year of my fantasy football league. And we've held offline drafts every year. I believe offline drafts are much more entertaining. It's much easier to bust someones balls over a bad pick when you're right there.

We all live within 45 minutes of each other, although some house locations are more centralized than others

Here's the best advice I can give you.

Get the word out now. Usually around the baseball all-star game, I (as commissioner) send an email to the rest of the league about the upcoming season. I make it a point to include the tentative draft date (ours is September7th). That gets someone to hit their "reply to all" button & start talking smack.

So now, there's seven weeks until the draft, but we're all running our yaps & we all have our calendars marked.

As for draft night itself. Detertmine who's house it's going to be at (Since our league has been the same for five years, we let the champion host the event. Mainly because it pisses everybody off when you welcome them to the "House of Champions") If it's your joint, make sure you have chips & beer. Oh wait, I didn't see your age. Chips & SODA.

If you're using a website like CBS.sportsline.com to host your league, make sure you pay early & get their free draft board. That way somebody isn't stuck having to write anything down. Then when someone yells "Ahman Green" in the fifth round, you can point right to the sticker board & call him a dipsh** for 10 minutes.

Getting everybody to agree on a date is always the hardest part, so I would get to work on that.

[TODD]

Originally posted by Heidenreich
This year will mark the fifth year of my fantasy football league. And we've held offline drafts every year. I believe offline drafts are much more entertaining. It's much easier to bust someones balls over a bad pick when you're right there.

We all live within 45 minutes of each other, although some house locations are more centralized than others

Here's the best advice I can give you.

Get the word out now. Usually around the baseball all-star game, I (as commissioner) send an email to the rest of the league about the upcoming season. I make it a point to include the tentative draft date (ours is September7th). That gets someone to hit their "reply to all" button & start talking smack.

So now, there's seven weeks until the draft, but we're all running our yaps & we all have our calendars marked.

As for draft night itself. Detertmine who's house it's going to be at (Since our league has been the same for five years, we let the champion host the event. Mainly because it pisses everybody off when you welcome them to the "House of Champions") If it's your joint, make sure you have chips & beer. Oh wait, I didn't see your age. Chips & SODA.

If you're using a website like CBS.sportsline.com to host your league, make sure you pay early & get their free draft board. That way somebody isn't stuck having to write anything down. Then when someone yells "Ahman Green" in the fifth round, you can point right to the sticker board & call him a dipsh** for 10 minutes.

Getting everybody to agree on a date is always the hardest part, so I would get to work on that.

Thanks for the advice! I'm 2/3rds there. We have the league actually set up, we have the trash talking started in June, and We do the Yahoo free league because no one really has money (I, a college student, everyone else early 20's with young kids). But Yahoo really improved the interface this year so it works well.

We're going to try to get everyone at our house for "chips and soda", but everyone is always so busy.

[Sebowski]

Originally posted by TODD


Wow, Seb. Thanks a bunch, man! Very cool stuff, I had no idea this type of thing existed!

No problem. If you have thick skin hit the message board. Lots of FF knowledge on there.