NO DO OVER DRAFT PICKS NEXT YEAR

[got heeem]

Best of all i play that team in week 9 . Same week Brady & Gronko have as a bye . What is the chance in that .

[Greg Ambrosius]

The most irritating and to me unfair NFFc rule is let someone benefit from the do over draft pick. You know what I mean ,having the draft stopped because of a glitch; usually caused by someone using draft software not being able to keep up. That is what your draft list is for people. If you meant to pick someone else tough. We are playing for thousands of dollars if you are not prepared , cannot keep up or make a mistake you definitely should not beneit from it at this level. Once picks are made after the screwup they should not be taken away from players who have not messed up and are better prepared or why do we bother to keep time. as it is now you can miss a pick see someone make the the pick you were too stupid to make press the help button and take a player from someones roster. I suggest changing the do over draft policy to better luck next time.

This is a fair post and we certainly have no problem explaining why we take such a hands on approach. If anything, I'm proud of the hands on approach we take. In case you haven't noticed, either Tom or I -- or sometimes both of us -- have been in every single online draft room. We get there early, give a number to call if you have any technical issues and watch every pick right up until the very last one, when we thank all of you for being so good!!

We learned early on with online pay leagues that technical issues can occur and often do occur. I would have to say that in the early years it was 90 percent human error because Internet connections were slow and people panicked before the clock ran down. But there were also Internet glitches before high-speed Internet and even the software wasn't perfect when we paid another service to run our drafts. So we immediately took a hands-on approach with pay online leagues to make sure that at the end of every draft every owner got the player they had intended to take. We rolled back picks when we started this online in 2006 with MockDraftCentral.com and we did everything we could to help each owner.

Since that time, however, high-speed Internet has made these pay online drafts so much easier and I believe our own software now makes these drafts so much smoother. I can tell that many folks have updated their player default list and can more easily find the players they are looking for, either through the Search function or by ranking their own player lists. Picks are being made much, much quicker and some of these leagues are being done in less than 2 hours without a single issue throughout the draft.

In fact, Tom will tell you that there are times when we can have 6-8 drafts going at once and never once have to jump into a draft. We might get a call for HELP and we stop the draft to see if there's an issue and sometimes it's nothing. The drafts have run very, very, very smoothly.

If there are issues now, I do believe it is 99 percent human error and usually early in a draft. And sometimes it's because someone has an old computer or they are in the HTML version rather than Flash. On Tuesday night I asked someone not to draft in HTML (we can see when they are in that version) because it's slower than Flash and not as good, but they had an old computer and didn't want to try the Flash software. They timed out in the first round and called for HELP. We caught it immediately and they made their pick again, tried HTML for their second pick and could see how it wasn't as fast, downloaded Flash and had no problems from the 3rd round on. They needed to see for certain that technology was there and that downloading Flash wasn't going to blow up their computer.

Our goal with the online drafts is to give everyone the chance to select the players they wanted without any technical issues. Those technical issues are few and far between involving the technology we have in place to select a player, but not everyone is as computer savvy as the next person and thus we do jump in if needed, especially early on. Is it a pain in the a-- when we do and have to roll back? Yes, but we have a solution to minimize that a bit going forward. But let's get through this season and I trust that these will continue to be minimal as they have been so far.

Instead of rolling back picks, we do have a new function now for Tom and I to just replace the pick within our administration tools. We don't have it set up perfectly yet, but once we do nobody will have to "repick" after the rollback and thus nobody will be able to change their pick after the rollback. That will solve the one problem brought up in this thread. And then that person can tell us who they wanted and we'll just make the change and move on from where we were when we stopped the draft. Easy enough. I hope we don't have to use that function in the next week, but it's there now for us and it will make these stops much easier going forward.

Good luck everyone and just BE PREPARED for these online drafts. They're not that difficult and the technology is much improved from the early years (which was only 2006). We understand your concerns, but these rollbacks have been minimal compared to years past and the technology is getting to the point where some of the issues here have already been addressed. But no matter how good it becomes, humans still have to make the picks and do so correctly. At this price level, however, it still takes a live person in each draft to make sure those picks are done correctly and if not to have a personal touch to help. That's what we do in the NFFC and I'm proud of it.

[CraigW]

Is there an actual written rule or is it an unwritten rule that you don't necessarily know about until it happens in a draft? I looked at the rules page(skimmed them) and couldn't find anything written about this. Not trying to stir the pot as we all know shit happens, just curious if is written or assumed.

[BigBlueNation]

JMO, this is much ado about nothing....Online drafts aren't perfect....Always assume the owner in front of you is going to take your player....Just deal with it.... ...When the battery goes dead in your battery operated wireless mouse, thank Greg/Tom for rollbacks...

[Greg Ambrosius]

Is there an actual written rule or is it an unwritten rule that you don't necessarily know about until it happens in a draft? I looked at the rules page(skimmed them) and couldn't find anything written about this. Not trying to stir the pot as we all know shit happens, just curious if is written or assumed.

Craig, great to see you on our boards. Jump into one of our drafts and you'll see us in action!!

It's very clearly written in the rules:

16. Random League/Draft Spot Selections
There will be a 75-second time limit for each owner to make his/her pick during each round of the NFFC Online Championship draft. If a participant does not make a selection in the allotted time, the computer will select for that owner using STATS LLC’s overall ranking system. If there is a computer failure, an error made with a selection by an owner or any other type of technical malfunction, the draft moderator can stop the draft at any time and correct the error and then resume the draft. We will allow the draft moderator to roll back the draft if a technical error occurred, but if the desired player had already been selected before the draft was stopped that player is no longer available to be drafted. All decisions will be made by the NFFC moderator during the draft and will be final.

[Jersey Dawg]

I screwed up the other night and decided it was my bad and did not want to disrupt the draft. I was adding a player to my queued player list and when it came time to draft my eyes looked at the top of my que and I hit "draft player". Oooopppsss. I got the player I added to my que, not the player at the top. It was not a "technical" issue and I suppose I could have hit the help button and claimed "computer failure". But it was my mistake and I ate it. I now have an easy player to release week one waivers....

Pete

[BigBlueNation]

I screwed up the other night and decided it was my bad and did not want to disrupt the draft. I was adding a player to my queued player list and when it came time to draft my eyes looked at the top of my que and I hit "draft player". Oooopppsss. I got the player I added to my que, not the player at the top. It was not a "technical" issue and I suppose I could have hit the help button and claimed "computer failure". But it was my mistake and I ate it. I now have an easy player to release week one waivers....

Pete

Pete, I did the same thing in a previous draft, in fact, Wayne Ellis texted me and ask why I made a pick so out of character for me, I explained it was a mistake and I'll deal with it...

[Diesel]

I'm going to play Devil's Advocate here and ask, what is to stop someone online from noticing a GREAT pick, 2-3 spots after his/her pick, and ask for a roll back due to a "mistake", and take that great pick for themselves?

I think WE, the drafters have to help enforce the integrity of the drafts sometimes too. If you've made a mistake, IMMEDIATELY ask for a PAUSE, and call the moderator. Asking for a roll back 2,3,4 picks later shouldn't be an option. If I'm drafting to win $100,000, if my computer stutters, I am calling Greg or Tom IMMEDIATELY. If my computer just froze, my cell or home phone didn't. All drafters should have a phone right next to them during the entire draft, and this will become less of an issue.

My .02

[Greg Ambrosius]

I'm going to play Devil's Advocate here and ask, what is to stop someone online from noticing a GREAT pick, 2-3 spots after his/her pick, and ask for a roll back due to a "mistake", and take that great pick for themselves?

I think WE, the drafters have to help enforce the integrity of the drafts sometimes too. If you've made a mistake, IMMEDIATELY ask for a PAUSE, and call the moderator. Asking for a roll back 2,3,4 picks later shouldn't be an option. If I'm drafting to win $100,000, if my computer stutters, I am calling Greg or Tom IMMEDIATELY. If my computer just froze, my cell or home phone didn't. All drafters should have a phone right next to them during the entire draft, and this will become less of an issue.

My .02

Marc, nobody can take someone who has been picked after them. Again, we have the technology in place to just replace the pick and no longer do rollbacks. We're working to perfect that and will implement it.

[Greg Ambrosius]

I screwed up the other night and decided it was my bad and did not want to disrupt the draft. I was adding a player to my queued player list and when it came time to draft my eyes looked at the top of my que and I hit "draft player". Oooopppsss. I got the player I added to my que, not the player at the top. It was not a "technical" issue and I suppose I could have hit the help button and claimed "computer failure". But it was my mistake and I ate it. I now have an easy player to release week one waivers....

Pete

Correct and that's not what it's meant for. It would be no different than being at a live draft, announcing you want Tony Romo and then realizing that Michael Vick was still on your Cheat Sheet and you didn't see him. You can't then holler out, "never mind, I want Michael Vick." Everyone has to be on top of their game with announcing their picks or selecting their picks. We're there to help if there are technical issues, which can happen in online leagues.

Trust me, it would make our jobs easier if we just turned on the drafts and went to bed or actually talked to our kids. But that's no way to run a high-stakes pay contest, online or live. We have people there to help live or online and the "rollbacks" will be "changes" soon and hopefully we won't have to make many going forward.