Draft date is Friday, Aug. 29th for the Auction Leagues and Draft Champions Leagues. The main event is Saturday, Aug. 30th and the Ultimate League is Sunday, Aug. 31st. I may even add another event for Sunday, Aug. 31st, a Super NFFC that would have the same format as the NFFC Ultimate League but at $2,500 per team and total points in the Championship Round. Stay tuned.
One change is that we're moving from Tampa to Orlando in 2008. We have space at the Holiday Inn Orlando International Drive Resort and have rooms secured at $99 per night. Hopefully we can draw 3-4 leagues in Orlando this year. We are again back at the Flamingo Las Vegas, but will be moving to the Sheraton Hotel & Towers in New York (811 7th Ave. at 52nd Street). We are definitely returning to Chicago this year, but we haven't secured a hotel yet as the Oakbrook Marriott and Donald E. Stephens Convention Center are both booked for Labor Day weekend. We're still struggling to find a suitable home in the Windy City, but we'll get it done.
Cost of entry remains the same at $1,300 per team, and we'll offer $1,300 and $650 Auction Leagues and Draft Champions Leagues. The satellite leagues are similar, although we are increasing the $100 leagues to $125 and paying out a free NFFC main event entry in the winner-take-all leagues and paying $100 to the second place finisher. The higher fee covers our costs better and still gives us room to pay off a little to second place. Call these the Winner-Take-Almost All Leagues!!
As for rules changes, I'm contemplating those now and will update those soon. The only ones I see are:
1. Scoring Changes Deadline from Wednesday at noon CST to Thursday at 6 p.m. EST.
2. INTs for QBs from -1 to -2, with a possible sliding scale.
Cuts and allowable pickups will still be done the same way as in the past, with Tom and I making the tough calls. While there were some tough calls in 2007, in the end everyone who was cut was eventually allowed to be picked up in their leagues and the leagues played out well and the overall championship was played out as it should have been. Tom and I will take the onus of making these tough decisions again in 2008.
3. Since this will be our fifth season of the NFFC, I'm going to provide a special NFFC hat to any owner who has been with us from the beginning and a participant in all five NFFC events. It will be a hat that will stand out with an NFFC Charter Member logo on the front, the NFFC logo on the back and your team name stitched into one side. We started 2004 with 224 teams and I'm forever grateful to those owners who were with us from the beginning and have helped us grow through the years. We wouldn't be here today without your help and I want to honor you this year and in future milestone years.
4. I am budgeting for a modest increase for the main event for many reasons as we'll shoot for 378 teams after hitting 364 last year. I am increasing third place in each league from $1,000 to $1,250 so that we'll pay out $5,000, $2,500 and $1,250 to our top three finishers in each league and we'll continue with the league playoff format in Weeks 14-16 if teams split the h2h and total points titles.
Unless I missed something, let's get the ball rolling for 2008. No credit cards will be charged until Aug. 1, 2008, so you can sign up with ease now and get your name on the early-bird signup list. I'll keep track of this list on the Message Boards and we'll update as we go until we're sold out. NFBC V is going to be our best year yet, so come and join us for the fun. Thanks all and just click on the Register Link to get in or shoot me an e-mail at [email protected] and I can do the dirty work for you. See ya in 2008.
