Ways To Speed Up A Draft

[JoshSamBob]

tMBU (www.tmbu.com) is in the midst of the Initial Fantasy Draft to begin the league. I hand-recruited 24 owners, some of whom I knew and many of whom I did not, and figured I would get strong participation in the draft.

In three days (Sunday-Tuesday), we have completed ten full rounds with a mixture of live, list, and forum drafting. We have run two 4-round live drafts (Sunday night and Tuesday night), each of which was attended by 15+ owners.

For those, I accepted lists from owners, as well as voluntary deference to the CPU picks). Any owner who did not show up or send a list/message of some type was given CPU picks (which are not nearly as horrible for Fantasy dispersal drafts as they are for ammy drafts).

During the non-live periods (i.e. Sunday morning/afternoon, all Monday, Tuesday morning/afternoon; and on through today), owners pick on the Message Board. They are usually very good about picking within an hour or two, although some lag off and have computer picks (6 hour time limit). I have asked them all to email the next person whose pick it is, and they have been excellent about that, too.

All-in-all, I am quite happy that we're into the 11th round after only 3 full days of drafting. I think this will be the method that we will employ for future drafts, and I encourage any other commishes to utilize this format (especially for dispersal drafts).

- - - JSB

[fhomess]

In the JOBL our last two drafts have gone very quickly, although I don't know how well it would work in other leagues. We use BOSI to draft, and have a time limit on the picks. The nice thing about BOSI is that you can set up a draft list to automatically pick for you if you'll be away.

The thing that's really helped the draft go well, though, is that we time it to coincide with offseason free agency (sorry June drafters). The FA period is run one day at a time for a week, and then it picks up the pace. The fact that owners come back to the league site to get the new FA league file and check the signings each day of that week helps the ammy draft go along, too, since it's easy to make a quick pick while you're there.

I know this wouldn't work for everyone, but in our league it's worked very well, allowing us to complete the draft in about a week (usually 8-9 days). Since our whole offseason is about 2 weeks we don't lose any time or feel like it's dragging.

[Crackerjack]

Our league has done them all and IMO the best is a live draft. It commits everyone to either be there or get a list in.

[kq76]

Thanks for all the ideas everyone. I'm going to comment on some (all?) of them.

-Regular E-mail - perhaps the ideal if everyone is on the ball, but if not, it is not ideal

-BOSI - great, would be awesome with the auto e-mails, just can't use it on any server

-E-mail with Tentative Picks - after some more thought it's a lot more work for little gain. only a few people a round are going to run out their clocks, there's no sense in making tentative picks for every pick. I guess you could only do it if they're a couple hours away from running out, but there's probably better alternatives

-Msg Board - I'd like to see this (not necessarily how I detailed it) in action first. In the meantime we'll look at other options.

-AutoDraft Once Clock Has Run Out - At first I thought this was too harsh, but I'm thinking that a good tweak to it would be that the member would have to e-mail you inbetween their computer pick and their next pick, otherwise their next pick would be computer picked as soon as they were up. I think this is something we might add to our draft.

-You Pass Once Your Clock Runs Out - I think I like this and it might be what we go with (in addition to the previous?). Only thing is I think we'll use a max # of picks that you can fall (I'm thinking 12 right now) before you're autopicked for instead of the max 24 hours. There's a lot of ways in which this can potentially speed up the draft and there's very few cons to it imo. This is what I said about it (#3) in our forum:

I much prefer option #3 myself. #3 is very similar to #1 but I think that with the chance of falling in the draft that people will be much more likely to send in lists when their pick is a few picks away. They'll also be much more likely to check in every 12 or 6 hours (however long the clock is at that time) just in case their pick might be up.

#3 will also add some excitement to the draft. Remember last year's NFL Draft when Minnesota ran out their clock and the next several teams rushed up representatives to make their picks? Minnesota only slipped a few spots, but a number of teams behind them were seconds away from getting in their picks on the off chance that Minnesota might take the player they wanted. The draft sure went fast after Minnesota dropped the ball and boy was the room electrified.

We can also adjust the maximum # of picks we can fall. I only suggested 3 because we want it to be a penalty, but we don't want the penalty to be so severe that someone gets overly upset over falling in the draft. Sometimes things come up and you just can't help it. One OOTP league uses a 24 hour max clock before they get an autopick, but I can imagine that if the rest of the league is on the ball that that team just might fall a whole round or so. 3 picks max is probably the minimum we would go with, but I wouldn't have a problem with going so far as even 8 or maybe even 12 picks max. Also remember that the more picks we can fall the more teams who will hurry their picks in. If you like #3 then maybe add what you would like the max to be.

-Live Draft - Personally, I really don't like this option. If it's for late rounds then it's not so big of a deal, but for early rounds I just don't think it's fair. Sending in draft lists imo is clearly a disadvantage, it's more work and you don't get to see what types of players are becoming scarce. For people who can make the draft, but would rather skip it and send in a draft list, it's fine. But for those people who would like to make the draft, but just can't, I really think you're putting them at an unfair disadvantage. Yes I know it works for some leagues especially since it makes the draft go by fast, but the cons just aren't worth it imo. I also think it's hell on a commish and helper, every time I've participated in one I kept thinking to myself, "geez, poor guy.." Probably not as bad as e-mail where you feel like you need to be ready every 12 or 6 hours to make a computer pick. At least with a live draft the workload and pressure to be fast is condensed for you, but I still don't think it's worth the cons.

-Draft Lists At the Beginning of Each Round - I think this could be a fair option if you're using a serpentine draft, but I just think it can be too much work even though the workload is switched every round. If I was at the end of the round there is no way I would make a list of specific players, I would just list the type and hope the chooser (commish?) interpreted my instructions correctly. Like the previous option, the later the round this is done the less important it is, but for still early rounds I don't like this option. We will use this, but I think it will be closer to the middle of the draft.

Computer Picks for Everyone - For late rounds I think this is best. Pretty much no one cares about scrubs and it's extremely fast. For early to mid rounds I, and I'm sure others, would be absolutely furious at what the computer picked.

If anyone else has any other ideas, please keep them coming.