It went live on Monday evening and stunningly, we’ve had a handful of new people sign up already for our services. This is going to be really fun to be a part of. My main contribution is going to be a League History/Records application that we’ll offer to leagues. Meanwhile, the other guys in this group have some GREAT graphics/CSS/web design skills that are going to make some leagues look stunning this season.

I Like Fantasy Football

• I play fantasy football
• A lot
• 7 leagues last year
• Massive withdrawal in February

League Management – Commissionering

• I’ve used several different sites to manage fantasy leagues over the years, from paper and pen in the mid 90′s to a PC-based product that offered downloadable stats in the late 90′s to CBS Sportsline in the early 00′s and finally to my
• fantasyleague.com the last few seasons.
• myfantasyleague.com is my favorite site to use because it offers the most usefulness to the geeky side of me (customizable layouts, etc
• Two years ago, I created a website specifically to house the history and stats of my league — PFFL. (interesting side note — that was the start of waymorefunner and also my first foray into coding anything on the web
• Last year, I taught myself PHP and built a very functional database-driven maintenance and reporting capability (example) for tracking league records, history and so on

MFL opens up XML feeds

• Back in February, myfantasyleague announced a new feature in the hopes that people would develop some addons/plugins to the extend their core product
• At the time, I really only viewed this as something that would save me time in updating my site at waymorefunner
• Then, this guy Sam went and created mfladdons.com
• His goal was to assemble a team to offer a set of addon features for myfantasyleague leagues that would (a) enhance the MFL product, (b) without competing with it, and (c) maybe make a little bit of money someday
• He asked me to join up with the effort, and maybe to work on a league history/records app similar to what I had built at my site
• I said yes

And THAT is precisely how I’ve been spending most of my free time.

I’m actually excited about it. I mean, I’ve never truly developed an application for “mass” distribution before, so the newness of the experience is totally fun. (of course, I worry a little about things like “dealing with support questions” and “maintaining an application that other people are depending on” — but then I remember that we can just call it a Beta release and tell people to not get into a tizzy — of course, that won’t stop everyone — so then I think about how I just need to be smart and make sure it works)

It’s also something I know I can totally do — and that at least some people (even if we’re talking like, only 30) are going to truly enjoy. And that will make me feel very warm and fuzzy inside.

So, anyway, that’s a story about my little side project.

I’ve even got some ideas about things I would build AFTER releasing this piece, but I’m not going to mention those because I don’t want to build the expectations of anyone out there who might happen across this post. Plus, I am going to need some time to actually prepare for my own fantasy drafts, right?

Saturday’s draft had an auction format. Each of the 12 teams had 1000 “dollars” to spend on their 8 players. In order, we each nominated a player. If no one bid on that player, the nominator got him for free. Otherwise, high bid wins.

I came in with a strategy and a ranked list of players with dollar values attached. Part 1 of my strategy was to get the best fantasy player in the league – Ladainian Tomlinson – for 700 or less. From there, I had budgeted 100 for a QB, 800 total for my RBs, 90 for WRs and 10 for a TE. Based on my estimated values for players, here’s what I thought I might be able to get in the draft:

• Tomlinson – for 700
• Michael Vick – for 100
• Fred Taylor – for 50
• Chris Brown – for 50
• Hines Ward – for 25
• Steve Smith – for 25
• Drew Bennett – for 25
• Alge Crumpler – for 15

That would’ve been less than 1000, so I knew I had some room to play with.

Of course, things didn’t work out exactly like that…

If I had the first nominating choice, I would not have done this, but Ladainian Tomlinson was the first player thrown out there. Bids quickly rose for him, and I was very active. In the end, just like I had hoped, he was mine. In fact, I got him for 620, which was less than my budgeted value of 700. So, I felt really good.

For the next several nominations, my bids were pretty much mainly intended to drive up values. Shaun Alexander also went for 620, Priest Holmes went for 570, and I nominated Curtis Martin with the full hopes that people would overpay. I think they did — spending 380 to pick him up.

Then, Corey Dillon went on the board. I had him rated as my 8th best overall player, with a budgeted value of 450. I stayed in this bidding for a while, and ended up getting him for 350. This obviously blew my RB budget out of the water, and I really had mixed feelings about what happened here. On the one hand, I got two players in my top 10, so I’m very happy about that. On the other, I was left with only 30 to play with, and I knew I was going to be out of the bidding for pretty much every other player in my top 50.

Here’s where my lineup ended (with corresponding auction values):

• Ladainian Tomlinson – 620
• Corey Dillon – 350
• Roy Williams – 30
• Alge Crumpler – 0
• Tom Brady – 0
• Ashley Lelie – 0
• Larry Fitzgerald – 0
• Jerome Bettis – 0

Overall, I’m happy with it. Assuming good health, LT should put me in a position to win any game, and if I can build out a WR corps, get a good year from Dillon and a solid year from Brady and Crumpler? Well, I feel good about things. Plus, in this keeper format, I should be able to build this franchise around LT for the next four years. I like that.

I’m also even more intrigued by the auction format than ever before. I really want to join a complete auction draft league now. I think it would be really fun to see how all this stuff plays out when you are fielding a complete roster.

Lessons Learned
I think you have to choose between basically two strategies to field a competitive team in an auction draft. You can either do what I did here and spend big on 1 or 2 studs and build out your roster with a bunch of “decent-but-not-great” players; or, you can try to build out a roster with as many 200-300 type value players as possible — in other words, build your roster from the 11th-50th ranked players on the board. I think both can be successful.

The other key is bidding up other players appropriately, forcing another team to overspend at times on a player you really don’t want to end up with. This is key so that you bring more teams either to your balance level or below your balance so you can gain control of the board.

Overall, it was a helluva fun Saturday!

And if you’re not aware of my level of interest in fantasy football, here’s the key stat: I was in 7 leagues last year (3 championship game appearances, one title, btw). Yep, 7. And I’ll be in at least as many this year. Maybe this is why I’m single?

Well, the first draft of the 2005 season is coming up on April 23rd (to coincide with the 2005 NFL draft date). It’s a brand new league being started by a friend of mine, and we’re only going to be drafting 8 players (2 of whom we will drop before our regular draft in August) as a way to kickstart what will become a “keeper” league. If this were August, I’d already have about 3 different cheat sheets and a complete draft plan. Since we’re only in April, I’ve got nothin’. Plus, this initial draft is going to be an auction. I’ve never done one of those, so this is going to be real interesting.

And yeah, I’ve got no real point here, other than to share with you this story of impending FFL fun.