Fantasy Football Draft Primer 101
Those who have played fantasy football before can skip down to the "Draft Day & Time" section.
Yahoo has ranked every draft eligible player based on where Yahoo's "experts" believe a player should be drafted. However, most people have their own opinions on where a guy should be drafted. Because of this, Yahoo gives you the ability to adjust ranking to your taste. To get to the player rankings, follow the directions below:
Assuming you have joined the league, you can click on the following link:
http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com/league/acaeumcollectors
Sign In
Click on "My Team"
Then in the middle of the page, click on "Pre-Draft Player Rankings"
Click on "Edit My Rankings" (it is in white next to "Pre-Draft Player Rankings List")
The "Edit Pre-Draft Player Rankings" screen is displayed with three columns "Exclude Players", "List of Players", "My Players". The Exclude Players and My Players column will be blank initially.
In the "Sort Available Players By:" section you can filter players by a few different Criteria including:
*Yahoo's Rank or Player last name AND/OR
*Top 25, Top 100, Top 500, All AND/OR
*All Positions or specific position
Then select the "Go" button
After you filter players, the "List of Players" column will change based on your filter. You can then drag and drop players into the "My Players" list or the "Exclude Players" list.
Players in "My Players" become your default order (superseding Yahoo's rankings). If you don't rank players, you will default to Yahoo's rankings. Some people might rank 50 players and then go with the Yahoo rankings.
The "Exclude Players" column is used to select players you do not want on your team.
Be sure to click on the "Save" button at the bottom of the screen when you are done or your rankings will be lost. You can update your rankings as often as you like, right up until draft time.
DRAFT DAY & TIME
The draft date must be before the first regular season game Thursday, September 6th. My recommendation would be some time next week (8/13-8/19) or the week after (8/20-8/26) but whatever the majority decides is fine with me.
When I set up the league, I let it default to an Auto-Draft. This means that a day is selected and the teams are chosen automatically based on your (or Yahoo's) rankings. The draft occurs overnight and the next day everyone has a team based on their rankings and the players that were available.
I went with auto-draft because I wasn't sure if we could get anyone together at the same time. For me, the draft is my favorite part of the fantasy football experience so I would love to interact with league members for a "live" draft. If we can find a day and time where more than a couple of teams could meet online (at Yahoo) I will change the draft type to "live".
Note: If the draft is changed to "live" and you are not able to attend, then your selections will be made based on your rank lists (as though you were participating in an auto-draft). So, if 10 of 14 people show up, the 4 people who are absent won't lose their place in the draft order. When it is their turn, the computer automatically selects the person highest on their rank list.
So, anyone want to live draft? If so, what date and time (please include time zone) work for you?
I am early to bed and early to rise. So a Sunday through Thursday live draft starting much after 9
PM Central Daylight Time will probably not see me in the final rounds (though I will show up for as long as possible). But I don't need to be there and am ok with an auto-draft since I will rank all my players. Friday evenings and Saturdays, I could be ready at any time.