It's All About Drafting, Drafting, Drafting Nowadays

[Greg Ambrosius]

As we approach our 10th anniversary season of live drafts, it's amazing to look back and see just how far the high-stakes market has come since 2004. Heck, back in 2004 we had 16 live Classic leagues among three cities and a handful of Auction Leagues and Draft Champions Leagues. That was it. And trust me, Tom and I were EXHAUSTED from that heavy work load!!

This year we will have hundreds of NFFC drafts and the majority of them will be Online. It will be a full schedule of drafting from April through early September and we wouldn't want it any other way. Bring on the added draft days: WE'RE LOVING IT!!

So what the hell did we all do in 2004 and 2005 before online drafts came around? Well, for the most part we sat on these Message Boards and trash talked about how good we were as fantasy football players. We basically had one chance per year to prove who was the best at this hobby of ours and then we spent the next off-season waiting to prove it again. It's one of the reasons why our boards and even WCOFF's boards became "poisonous" at times. There was very little drafting to back up the bravado and plenty of down time to smack talk and get into Message Board fights.

Nowadays, it's all about drafting and we LOVE IT. Our goal going forward is to start the drafting season earlier each year -- getting Draft Champions Leagues up and running in March or maybe even February next year -- for all of our sports. There are benefits and drawbacks to drafting early in the season and everyone knows about them. But one thing we've learned in baseball and football is that folks love to draft and if given a fair format they will draft as soon as possible. We think we can do that with the NFFC Draft Champions National Championship and the NFFC Cutline Championship going forward and give folks ample opportunity to draft to prove their skills rather than just talking about them.

I'm extremely excited to see so many Rotowire Online Championship and NFFC Cutline Championship leagues filling up early or even on the day of drafts. The NFFC Cutline Championship is designed to be an impulse buy the day of the draft and folks will soon see an every night schedule of 7 pm and 10 pm ET in August and September. Every night they should have a chance to jump into a league and compete for the $50,000 grand prize. And next year with an earlier start for this contest, I really think we have a chance to take this format to new heights with a huge grand prize. But I LOVE the start to the NFFC Cutline Championship right now, so thanks for the signups so far.

All of these drafts are also giving us great Average Draft Positions -- in fact, they are the talk of the industry. Every SiriusXM Fantasy Sports host uses the NFFC's ADPs and even in news updates they are used to show that player's fantasy value. We will program these to splice and dice the data more regularly to give everyone more precise ADP data very soon. This is going to be fun.

But the real fun is drafting and NFFC owners are so busy drafting that they don't have time to post much on the Message Boards anymore. C'mon, it's okay to talk about player values on here. Tom and I are ready to dive in fulltime here. Let's keep it going and we'll keep providing regular draft results. We have drafts EVERY DAY now going forward and it's exactly the way we like it. In 10 years, we've gone from two dozen leagues to hundreds and hundreds of drafts. The technology has progressed so far during that time that in some ways it's hurt the live regional drafts, but the market dictates what it wants and we make it happen. Thanks for leading us in this direction.

It's all about Drafting, Drafting, Drafting. Ahhhhhhhhh, what a relief that is. I DO NOT miss the old days at all. Welcome to the NFFC. Welcome to the NFFC Message Boards and welcome to the new age of daily online drafting. Now, let's get ready for the next draft.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Tonight's NFFC Cutline Championship was done in exactly 2 hours. 26 rounds, 10 teams in an efficient 120 minutes. I'm pleasantly surprised by how smoothly these leagues have become and everyone seems to leave happy!! I think the "cutline" portion of this contest is really going to be a lot of fun because in the post-season even teams from the Wild Card portion can still fight back into the Championship Round and win the $50,000 grand prize. We're loving the early support of this format and honestly the tweaks that our users gave us to make this easier to manage in the season have made all the difference in the world here. I've heard many comments about how they love the 3 FAAB periods, deeper drafts and of course the cutline portion of the playoff format. Good stuff.

And tonight on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio it was amazing how many 10-team league questions we got. We know millions of people play in 10-team leagues on Yahoo and ESPN, but the amount of 10-team keeper leagues surprised Tom and myself. This 10-team NFFC Cutline Championship has the potential to be an even greater recruiting tool to the NFFC than the Online Championship was. I'm diggin' it.

Also, these NFFC Friday Night Draft Champions Express Leagues -- bowling nights our guys call them -- have become FANtastic evenings for a great group of owners. Tonight's 35-round DC was finished in an efficient 3 hours again. That's 420 players in 180 minutes and it's all fun, fun, fun. I love these. This week we'll start putting the Friday night DC Express Leagues live on Registration and we'll start adding Sunday night DC Express Leagues at 9 pm ET. I think there's enough demand for two of these per week now that August is right around the corner and we'll start adding these earlier to Registration so that folks can actually get signed up and locked in earlier.

The Online Championships are also getting done more efficiently this year, in around 2:15 or 2:30. We now have 70 seconds per pick for these leagues and 60 seconds per pick for the DC Express Leagues. They seem to have moved things along more quickly and yet nobody is timing out. Once we get the Draft Prep Tool installed, it will make everyone's draft list even more efficient. We all can't wait to make that live.

How have the online drafts been going so far for you? Is the 26 rounds okay for the Cutline Championship? In the DC Express League, we talked about 35 rounds for the DC vs. 32 or 30 and there was a split between all three. All interesting choices and something to consider for 2014, but right now we like the deep 35 rounds because after all that's what DCs are for!!

Anyway, it was a pleasure monitoring our three different online formats tonight and all three went so smoothly it was easy to watch. And fun. Keep it up all. August is going to be a BUSY month, but it's a joy to see so many people having so much fun online and competing hard for big prizes. This is what it's all about: THE DRAFTS. Good luck all and thanks for any feedback on the formats.

[Jim Christie]

Greg, the online championship draft tonight was as smooth as can be; I have really enjoyed the Cutline drafts and 26 rounds just right and only 3 faab periods mean you better have a good drafting strategy
Great stuff on the show tonight; has training camp started??

[Greg Ambrosius]

Another NFFC Cutline Championship this afternoon finished in under two hours. Great job today. The neat thing about this format is that when you get 10 owners who know what they are doing, these babies can really fly. I'm so happy with how these Cutline drafts are going so far. GREAT JOB EVERYONE.

[Diesel]

Hi Greg...I'm not sure if I'm missing something, but I don't have the option to start or sit any of my players in Cutline1....It has the submit lineup option, but I can't start or sit anyone. Can't change anything.

Thanks.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Hi Greg...I'm not sure if I'm missing something, but I don't have the option to start or sit any of my players in Cutline1....It has the submit lineup option, but I can't start or sit anyone. Can't change anything.

Thanks.

Yeah, that becomes active I think the week before the opener. I'll double check on that, but starting lineups don't get added until I think that Monday before the first games. Hope that helps.