Suggestions For 2013 NFFC Classic

[Greg Ambrosius]

I'm going to get a head start on the NFFC Classic this year because as we head into our 10th anniversary season, we want to make our signature event as good as it can be. Please help us get there with some tweaks to the contest.

Last year we made these changes:
1. Increased league prizes to $11,500 and 1st place to $7,000
2. Increased rosters from 19 players to 20 players
3. Reduced the grand prize from $100,000 to $75,000 to bump up league prizes
4. Gave RBs a full point for each reception

Okay, let's start with those points. I think the full point per reception for RBs stays. Little debate there. I assume everyone likes the league payouts, but we can discuss those if needed. Should we keep 20 players or did that weaken the free agent pool? Is 19 the right number in the Classic or 20? Also, would we grow to 320+ teams with a bigger grand prize or is the league prize the strength here?

I'm happy that we're giving out the industry's biggest league prizes and the industry's single biggest league prize. If you win a 14-team Classic league, YOU DESERVE IT!! Plus it will be fun to see these league playoffs with $4,000 on the line over the next three weeks. Pretty exciting.

But we can't continue to trend downward with this contest. Help us get the Classic back to the levels it enjoyed 4-5 years ago. What tweaks can we make to get the Classic to bigger levels? Thanks for any feedback you can provide.

[JETS SB]

One additional overall playoff position for the next points leader (H2H, #1 pts, #2 pts, #3 pts), at least when the H2H winner is not part of the top 3 in points. No money awarded to this position, just a spot in the overall. I believe 14 teams deserves another playoff spot. I think the 12 team is good the way it is.

[mattjb]

My first year playing one of the main contests Greg and I had to choose between the two and went for PrimeTime.

The league payout is great but I felt the difference in the grand prize was just too big to get me excited about the Classic.

[JETS SB]

To further justify my point, in my Classic league, a team ranked 185th overall, made it into the overall playoffs (and won the H2H title), while a team ranked 53rd overall (not my team), did not make the playoffs and won nothing. He deserves to be in the overall playoffs. Adding 1 additional team (pts) per league would solve this issue. You want to expand the classic? Give players a better chance at winning something or at least the excitement of making the overall playoffs and the outside chance of winning a big prize. I am not the only one lobbying for this.. look at the frustrating messages from tonight and you will see many others feel the same thing. Its not like we are going against the industry standard by allowing more teams in the playoffs. In this particular case in my Classic league, only the top 2 pts teams made the overall, out of 14 teams. That is just not going to appeal to the masses.

[Glenneration X]

To further justify my point, in my Classic league, a team ranked 185th overall, made it into the overall playoffs (and won the H2H title), while a team ranked 53rd overall (not my team), did not make the playoffs and won nothing. He deserves to be in the overall playoffs. Adding 1 additional team (pts) per league would solve this issue. You want to expand the classic? Give players a better chance at winning something or at least the excitement of making the overall playoffs and the outside chance of winning a big prize. I am not the only one lobbying for this.. look at the frustrating messages from tonight and you will see many others feel the same thing. Its not like we are going against the industry standard by allowing more teams in the playoffs. In this particular case in my Classic league, only the top 2 pts teams made the overall, out of 14 teams. That is just not going to appeal to the masses.

I'm not sure how I'm going to feel in a day or two, but as of right now I do wish this was the case. My team finished 40th overall in the Classic and is on the outside looking in, the highest scoring team in the contest this year that won't make the Overall race. I have to admit feeling a bit of frustration as I do feel this team deserves to be in, and has the potential to do some damage if it was in, but isn't. A combination of my league's 9th highest points scoring team winning its H2H championship and my team falling just a handful of points short of both the 2nd highest points team in the league and the 38th place team in the Overall will keep this team out. I'm not sure if adding a team per league is the way to go, or if increasing from the 15% cut line, or whatever, but as of this morning, I do wish there was something in place that would have gotten this team in. Ahhhh well, there's always the consolation prize to go for.

PS Greg, please do something about your "Live" Overall standings to make it actually "Live". It was a bit frustrating last night to be watching that game and the Overall standings and trying to figure out if I was above or below the cut line at any particular point while waiting for the standings to update at the top of every hour. Trust me from someone who's been through this before, truly Live Overall Standings really help the excitement during the Overall race.

[TamuScarecrow]

Hi, Greg/Tom. Long time since I've been on the boards & probably the first season out of the nine I have not been active on the boards during the season. That said, there is one thing you could consider, FA for Week 14. It wasn't too bad this year but there have been years when there was a rash of injuries on Week 13 & some teams that had been competitive all year were knocked out of the running before they got started. The expanded roster helps but it is just something to consider. Everything else about the Classic is just fine.

[Greg Ambrosius]

To further justify my point, in my Classic league, a team ranked 185th overall, made it into the overall playoffs (and won the H2H title), while a team ranked 53rd overall (not my team), did not make the playoffs and won nothing. He deserves to be in the overall playoffs. Adding 1 additional team (pts) per league would solve this issue. You want to expand the classic? Give players a better chance at winning something or at least the excitement of making the overall playoffs and the outside chance of winning a big prize. I am not the only one lobbying for this.. look at the frustrating messages from tonight and you will see many others feel the same thing. Its not like we are going against the industry standard by allowing more teams in the playoffs. In this particular case in my Classic league, only the top 2 pts teams made the overall, out of 14 teams. That is just not going to appeal to the masses.

I'm not sure how I'm going to feel in a day or two, but as of right now I do wish this was the case. My team finished 40th overall in the Classic and is on the outside looking in, the highest scoring team in the contest this year that won't make the Overall race. I have to admit feeling a bit of frustration as I do feel this team deserves to be in, and has the potential to do some damage if it was in, but isn't. A combination of my league's 9th highest points scoring team winning its H2H championship and my team falling just a handful of points short of both the 2nd highest points team in the league and the 38th place team in the Overall will keep this team out. I'm not sure if adding a team per league is the way to go, or if increasing from the 15% cut line, or whatever, but as of this morning, I do wish there was something in place that would have gotten this team in. Ahhhh well, there's always the consolation prize to go for.

PS Greg, please do something about your "Live" Overall standings to make it actually "Live". It was a bit frustrating last night to be watching that game and the Overall standings and trying to figure out if I was above or below the cut line at any particular point while waiting for the standings to update at the top of every hour. Trust me from someone who's been through this before, truly Live Overall Standings really help the excitement during the Overall race.

Yes, the Live Overall Standings next year for both baseball and football will be totally revamped. The current setup we have now and the way scores flow from one area of our data base to this area just isn't conducive for faster delivery than we have now (updates for overall standings every hour). We know that has to be totally reprogrammed and I'm told it will be. It's the same reason why we just weren't able to roll out Live Overall Standings in baseball and why that is being totally reprogrammed this off-season as well.

[Money]

To further justify my point, in my Classic league, a team ranked 185th overall, made it into the overall playoffs (and won the H2H title), while a team ranked 53rd overall (not my team), did not make the playoffs and won nothing. He deserves to be in the overall playoffs. Adding 1 additional team (pts) per league would solve this issue. You want to expand the classic? Give players a better chance at winning something or at least the excitement of making the overall playoffs and the outside chance of winning a big prize. I am not the only one lobbying for this.. look at the frustrating messages from tonight and you will see many others feel the same thing. Its not like we are going against the industry standard by allowing more teams in the playoffs. In this particular case in my Classic league, only the top 2 pts teams made the overall, out of 14 teams. That is just not going to appeal to the masses.

I'm not sure how I'm going to feel in a day or two, but as of right now I do wish this was the case. My team finished 40th overall in the Classic and is on the outside looking in, the highest scoring team in the contest this year that won't make the Overall race. I have to admit feeling a bit of frustration as I do feel this team deserves to be in, and has the potential to do some damage if it was in, but isn't. A combination of my league's 9th highest points scoring team winning its H2H championship and my team falling just a handful of points short of both the 2nd highest points team in the league and the 38th place team in the Overall will keep this team out. I'm not sure if adding a team per league is the way to go, or if increasing from the 15% cut line, or whatever, but as of this morning, I do wish there was something in place that would have gotten this team in. Ahhhh well, there's always the consolation prize to go for.

PS Greg, please do something about your "Live" Overall standings to make it actually "Live". It was a bit frustrating last night to be watching that game and the Overall standings and trying to figure out if I was above or below the cut line at any particular point while waiting for the standings to update at the top of every hour. Trust me from someone who's been through this before, truly Live Overall Standings really help the excitement during the Overall race.

Yes, the Live Overall Standings next year for both baseball and football will be totally revamped. The current setup we have now and the way scores flow from one area of our data base to this area just isn't conducive for faster delivery than we have now (updates for overall standings every hour). We know that has to be totally reprogrammed and I'm told it will be. It's the same reason why we just weren't able to roll out Live Overall Standings in baseball and why that is being totally reprogrammed this off-season as well.

While your on the topic of live standings, you might want to look into live standings for the individual leagues. This would obviously only be on a points basis but could possibly be set up similar to baseball which has live updated league standings all day and night everyday.

With so many leagues decided this past weekend it would've added another element of fantasy adrenaline to the games.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Agreed Joe. Thanks man.

[Sandman62]

I thought this fits better here than in the Classic thread in which I'd originally posted it. Sorry.

We have had some good discussions on rules changes and I will say that after looking over all of the data for the NFFC Classic that maybe there is one tweak that needs to be looked at. This year for the first time since we installed Wild Cards for the Championship Round, we didn't have a single qualifier. And that's with us raising the number to 15% of total teams. That's certainly not the goal of this rule and we may need to look at that to make sure that as many deserving teams as possible make it into the dance for the grand prize.

Greg, maybe it's because the 15% wildcard rule doesn't account for the difference in relative difficulty from league to league? Though your data shows an average difference from 1st to 4th that is quite large, there are probably at least a few leagues where it was closer and some good teams were left out?

Using your data:
1st Place - 1,890.12 points per team
2nd Place - 1,835.8 points per team
3rd Place - 1,805.75 points per team
4th Place - 1,774.56 points per team

In any league like the above averages, if the H2H winner wasn't one of the top 3, then the 3rd highest scorer would be left out, despite only being 30 points back from #2. Now maybe that's ok, because its not 5, 10 or 15 points? But these are averages. So maybe there are some leagues where the difference between 2nd and 3rd in points was closer. In those cases, maybe the 3rd scorer should make it too?

That's what I was trying to address with my suggestion of "any team within 2% (or similar) of their league's top scorer gets in". Though I was suggesting it for LEAGUE playoffs, I suppose it could also be considered for the OVERALL?

IMO, though the 15% cutoff is a welcome additional way in, it's somewhat arbitrary, given that we competed for 13 weeks in our own separate leagues. So to me, it makes sense for playoff cutoffs to also be league-based.

What if there were two league-based ways in beyond the usual H2H and top two in points?
1) Any team within 2% of the top scorer
2) Any team within 1% of the 2nd high scorer

Wouldn't this achieve the goal of leaving no deserving teams behind, as well as having the benefit of being prorated by the strength of each league? I'm curious how many other teams would've made it in with something like this.