New Countdown Link Is Live

[Tom Kessenich]

We just added a new Countdown link and page to our NFBC site which will enable you to be one click away from seeing how many spots are available in each league. You'll see the Countdown Box in the upper right hand corner of the NFBC site (nfbc.stats.com). That will display a featured product which will change as necessary. If you click Sign Up Now that will take you to the registration page where you can sign up for whatever league you want to join. If you click League Countdowns that will take you to the page below:

http://nfbc.stats.com/baseball/contest_capacity.asp

That will give you a look at how many spots remain for all of our NFBC leagues with the Main Event as the default landing page. There is a pulldown menu on that page where you can search by game to see how many spots are available. So if you want to see the Online Championship list, for example, you would select that game and it will take you to this page:

http://nfbc.stats.com/baseball/contest_ ... oduct=1087

We hope everyone will take advantage of this great new tool on the site to find out what leagues are available and how many spots are left. Thanks to our great tech team for working so hard to build this for us. Now all we need from all of you is to keep signing up for events.

[Likewhat17]

Very nice feature! Are you sure the numbers are right though. The countdown link shows that there are 2 spots left for the Chicago Main Event, but the signup thread shows 29 names listed there, meaning only 1 left?

[Tom Kessenich]

Very nice feature! Are you sure the numbers are right though. The countdown link shows that there are 2 spots left for the Chicago Main Event, but the signup thread shows 29 names listed there, meaning only 1 left?

That likely means someone has given us a verbal commitment to the event and wants their spot secured but we're still waiting to receive 100% confirmation so they can sign up.

[Zazie]

I have a similar question to the one you responded to above, Tom. Let me pick a different example -- the 3/31 Chicago XII contest shows 11 contestants (by name) on the signup thread for XII. But the countdown link shows 9 people in and 3 vacancies. As far as I know, nobody's been charged for that league, so I don't know why there would be only 9 showing up on the countdown page.

So my question is: what does it mean that there are 11 contestants listed by name on the signup thread? Should we not be looking at the signup threads anymore? Or is there a software problem that needs fixed in this new Countdown feature?

[Tom Kessenich]

The answer is the same. We have people who have verbally committed to leagues but haven't officially signed up. That's especially true with the NFBC XII since we have some work to do with that one. The Signup Thread remains a good guide to use but the Countdown page will show the numbers for those who have officially registered for any of our games.

[Tom Kessenich]

One thing we should explain for the online leagues is that once a league sells out the countdown resets to 0. So if an Online Championship league, for example, reaches 12 signups that date/time will reset to 0, meaning a new league can be formed. The same applies to all Satellite leagues.