NFFC Rules Changes Proposed For 2018; Let's Discuss

[Greg Ambrosius]

THANK YOU everyone for a fantastic 2017 season. It was a great, great season and we crowned some great champions in 2017. We also awarded over $3.3 million in 2017, a record for the NFFC.

But we know that 2018 is going to be our biggest and best season ever in the NFFC. It will be the 15th season of the NFFC, so let's get things rolling starting right now. There's no time to sit around.

We have an acquisition that we will be announcing in the next week that will have a big impact on the NFFC in 2018. This partnership will bring a record number of fantasy football players to our site and will expand our drafts in the biggest way possible. We are VERY EXCITED about this.

But we are also VERY EXCITED about the growth of the NFFC's contests, so let's fine-tune them now and get the site up earlier than ever before. We will have Draft Champions Leagues before the NFL Draft this year, so let's get the rules finalized now.

We have a couple of proposed rules changes to discuss with you. Give us your feedback on these points:

Possible Rules Changes In 2018:
1. FAAB Before Week 1: We feel that it's important with all of the earlier drafts in our contests to open FAAB before Week 1. In 2018, we plan on allowing FAAB to all leagues drafted before Wednesday, Sept. 5th at 10 pm ET to make FAAB pickups on Wednesday and Friday night. Leagues that draft after that won't have FAAB available until Wednesday, Sept. 12th. Thoughts?

2. Team Kicker for NFFC Draft Champions Leagues?: This one is open for debate among NFFC members. We can program this at SportsHub Technologies, so let's discuss. If we do allow Team Kicker JUST FOR DC LEAGUES, it would be safer for owners who draft earlier before teams cut individual kickers or we have injuries to individual kickers. It also might allow us to reduce DC drafts by a round or two because owners feel safer about backing up Kickers with 1 or 2 backup Team Kickers rather than back up their first kicker with 3-4 "names of kickers". This would be a drastic change for the DCs, but let us know what you think of this change.

3. Less Than 35 Rounds For Draft Champions Leagues: Is 35 the right number for Draft Champions Leagues? That is 420 players, but how many of those last 3-5 rounds made a difference? Let's discuss and come up with the right number for our $150, $400 and $1,000 leagues involved with the Draft Champions National Championship.

4. Change 8 Hour Draft Champions to 4 Hours: We made this change in baseball and it is allowing DCs to move along better. We also start the DCs 1 hour after the league fills and announce draft spots after leagues fill. Look for this change to definitely come in 2018. Also, in the Cutline Championship we'll offer 4-Hour style drafts there as well. Now you can have nightly Cutline drafts and multi-day drafts.

5. NFFC Cutline Championship: How do we grow this contest? The idea of only 3 FAAB periods was set up to make this contest easier and the 10-team format allows for deeper drafts and better weekly lineups. But are the weekly lineup calls a drag on this contest?

We have kicked around a drastic change that could be interesting. Maybe it's for a separate thread, but here's the thought process:

The NFFC Cutline Championship would remain a 10-team, 26-round draft. We'd use it as an optimal scoring setup for the first 9 weeks of the regular-season and still have only 3 FAAB periods on a Friday of those weeks. This would make it an even less time-consuming contest and the best teams would make it into the Championship Rounds. Then during those money rounds where your best teams have advanced, we'll let each owner make the lineup decisions in Weeks 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16. The computer can't help you now that you've made it this far, but at least the weekly decisions weren't needed early on and you can easily draft and run more teams. If they're good by Week 10, okay, now the hard work is done and you'll ENJOY setting these starting lineups in the money rounds.

Should we look at the playoff rounds to fine-tune them as well? We start out with 3 weeks of competiton for the playoffs and then one week for each Cutline after that. Should we go Weeks 10-11, and then 12-13 instead? Lots to discuss here.

Anything else? Rosters? Scoring? Every national championship went down to the very end, so we like the league makeups and different formats. We didn't see anything else, but the floor is open to all customers. Let's hear from you.

Thanks all and Happy New Year!! Let's make 2018 the best it can be.

[boutrous11]

strictly a draft champions player here, speaking for 2 of us (dagoposse is the other)...

2. I'd vote to stick w/ kickers the way they were. dagoposse votes to get rid of kickers altogether!

3. We both like as many rounds as possible. difference between 30 and 35 isn't huge, but I like having more chances to hit a late round gem. I believe I picked Arian Foster one year past round 30...

4. Definitely want the clock to stay at 8 hours. Offer more 4 hour leagues, but I like having more time on the clock personally. (W/ 4 hour leagues, would the clock freeze at night?)

other: love me some auctions. heard you may be offering them? my vote there would be 25-30 roster spots (only because of the length of the auction), $200 to spend. 12 teams. draft champions.

[BigBlueNation]

I'll make it simple

1) Yes
2) No
3) 30
4) 4 hour with the clock paused at night (similar to nfbc drafts)

[got heeem]

In the right order get rid of kickers.add a SW then your 30 rds would be fine.

[got heeem]

your DC Leagues would set a new standard with the no kicker DC Leagues.The only thing as a players point of view is I must get x amount of kickers, with no kickers the draft becomes straight knowledge of players.Could go 30 rds all drafts.

[BillyWaz]

I'm in consensus so far on #'s 1-4.

As for #5, I think making it a DC for 9 weeks (with 3 weeks of FAAB), and then no FAAB but setting lineups in weeks 10-16 is BRILLIANT! (I can tell you I would definitely do more!)

[Route C]

I'm in consensus so far on #'s 1-4.

As for #5, I think making it a DC for 9 weeks (with 3 weeks of FAAB), and then no FAAB but setting lineups in weeks 10-16 is BRILLIANT! (I can tell you I would definitely do more!)

Totally agree here. Cutline rule change really is BRILLIANT as Billy said. I know several of us owners were discussing eliminating cutlines next year because of the additional roster management time. This is a great concept because if you draft a bad team ( which I'm an expert at) you only have a draft and 3 FAAB periods of time invested.

I like the concept of team kicker. Either that or combine the K/ DST position. However a big change like that may be best served through a few stand alone satellites on an experimental basis. Play them out and get feedback at the end of next year is a safe way to gauge if it's a player approved rule change.

DC's I like 35. That isn't a lot when you see 10 IR players on your roster at the end of the year. Although I'll admit those teams are prob not in contention at that point.

[Route C]

Also 4 hour DC's with a clock stop at night please

[boutrous11]

Hey Greg, you should send out a survey through google or survey monkey to gauge everyone's thoughts.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Also 4 hour DC's with a clock stop at night please

We have installed this format in baseball and it's working well. We have an 8-hour Pause from 1 am ET to 9 am ET, but you can still make picks during that time. We'll likely shorten that once we get multi-round auto installed. For NFFC, we will have Multi-Round Ques installed and ready to go along with owner's average pick times.

We are going to make the DCs smoother and more enjoyable. More news on that coming this week.