Draft Champions?

[JohnP]

4 hour clock with the proposed 8 hour stoppage is a thing of beauty and was the result of lots of discussion and debate. New software. New company. Let's start this contest with the 4 plus 8 stoppage being the norm! I think even those that want "slow" will see that this is great and perhaps is less stressful than the 8 with no stoppage.

[DOUGHBOYS]

GREG, PLEASE RE-CONSIDER.

Can you imagine the complaints you'll get when a fella takes almost eight hours to draft. Then the night time clock is used for another eight hours before completing his pick?
Almost 16 HOURS= No pick.
We would be worse off than before.
Eight hours was for sleep. That is taken care of by the night stoppage of the clock.
Four hours should be the standard, with one, two and eight hour drafts available for those wanting faster or slower drafts.

Edited to delete expletives

[Yah Mule]

I also thought that with the overnight pause, the 4-hour format would become the standard format this year. In this day and age, with desktops, laptops, tablets, smart phones, e-mail (and text?) alerts, etc., the 4-hour format should work for most, particularly with the overnight pause. In the past, it was marketed as the exception, not the norm, and I thought that was changing now that the NFBC has the capability to pause the clock overnight. No objections here if 8-hour drafts still are offered for those that prefer a slower pace and/or are frequently unavailable during daytime hours, but I hope that the 4-hour format will be the standard one offered, thereby ensuring that most folks migrate to it (which, in turn, hopefully will reduce the number of "slow draft" related complaints, arguments, "do not draft with" threads, etc.)

Mike

As he so often does, Mike has pretty much summed up my thoughts on this.

[Gekko]

If you offer an 8-hour the 4-hour will continue to suffer because there will be more novices in the 8-hours, thus the hardcore guys will play the 8's solely to avoid the toughest top-to-bottom leagues. I'd like to see a uniform offering for the national contest rather than the unbalanced leagues that this creates. Four hrs with a pause should be standard.

THIS.

why are there going to be 8 hour DC's when you can have 4 hour DC's with a paused clock at night?

[jvetter]

If you offer an 8-hour the 4-hour will continue to suffer because there will be more novices in the 8-hours, thus the hardcore guys will play the 8's solely to avoid the toughest top-to-bottom leagues. I'd like to see a uniform offering for the national contest rather than the unbalanced leagues that this creates. Four hrs with a pause should be standard.

+1

This is the main reason I haven't wanted to participate in the 4-hr DCs in the past.

[Ando]

Vote for uniform 4-hour drafts.

8 hour DC's are so 2010.

New company, new life, new vision. The time is now.

There is not a justifiable reason out there to keep some at 8 hours with the overnight pause. A long 8 hour draft in the past would take up to 28-30 days; with a night pause some of these could scare 6 weeks. Picture starting one of these on Christmas and finishing when pitchers and catchers report in mid-February. Can't have that. The vast majority deserve better.

[TakestheCake]

Unless i mis-read something. The 8 hr looks like it will not pause overnight, only the 4 hr would... I believe.

[Greg Ambrosius]

GREG, PLEASE RE-CONSIDER.

Can you imagine the complaints you'll get when a fella takes almost eight hours to draft. Then the night time clock is used for another eight hours before completing his pick?
Almost 16 HOURS= No pick.
We would be worse off than before.
Eight hours was for sleep. That is taken care of by the night stoppage of the clock.
Four hours should be the standard, with one, two and eight hour drafts available for those wanting faster or slower drafts.

Edited to delete expletives

Dan, I never said 8 hour drafts have the 8 hour Pause. Only 4 hour drafts do.

[Greg Ambrosius]

4 hour clock with the proposed 8 hour stoppage is a thing of beauty and was the result of lots of discussion and debate. New software. New company. Let's start this contest with the 4 plus 8 stoppage being the norm! I think even those that want "slow" will see that this is great and perhaps is less stressful than the 8 with no stoppage.

Sounds good to me. 4 hour draft to start works for me!! Here we go.

[DOUGHBOYS]

GREG, PLEASE RE-CONSIDER.

Can you imagine the complaints you'll get when a fella takes almost eight hours to draft. Then the night time clock is used for another eight hours before completing his pick?
Almost 16 HOURS= No pick.
We would be worse off than before.
Eight hours was for sleep. That is taken care of by the night stoppage of the clock.
Four hours should be the standard, with one, two and eight hour drafts available for those wanting faster or slower drafts.

Edited to delete expletives

Dan, I never said 8 hour drafts have the 8 hour Pause. Only 4 hour drafts do.

Greg, I have to admit that when posting this, I was in pain from the aftermath of a three hour dental procedure.
I know you'll do what is best.
Any update on DC's beginning?

[Greg Ambrosius]

We are in St. Louis right now looking at everything. All is getting closer to launch but still about two weeks away. Next year we will be able to launch earlier and do that every year going forward.

We agree that pushing the 4 hour DC's right away is the way to go. We will talk about offering mostly or only those to start the season. Let's make those the norm in the NFBC. Thanks all.

[2COR5:17]

Great news on the 4-hour DC. Greg, please just switch me over to the 4-hour for that first draft.Thanks!

[Darik B]

UPDATE: A decision has been made. Just wanted to update everyone with Greg on way home on a plane. Moving forward, 4-Hour DC's WILL BE the standard. Starting tomorrow morning, that will be the case.

We believe this to be the absolute right way to go, and is probably long overdue...happy drafting (soon), guys!

Darik

We are in St. Louis right now looking at everything. All is getting closer to launch but still about two weeks away. Next year we will be able to launch earlier and do that every year going forward.

We agree that pushing the 4 hour DC's right away is the way to go. We will talk about offering mostly or only those to start the season. Let's make those the norm in the NFBC. Thanks all.

[Southern Comfort]

Great news. If we get drafting within the next couple weeks we can have that draft done by early december

[Darik B]

Yes, no doubt about it...

Great news. If we get drafting within the next couple weeks we can have that draft done by early december

[Greg Ambrosius]

To Darik's point, we did decide yesterday along with the programmers to debut the 2018 drafting season with just the 4-Hour Draft Champions option (along with the Express drafts). This will have an 8-hour Pause between 1 am ET and 9 am ET, although you will still be able to make picks during that time. We do believe this will move the DCs along a little better while still allowing everyone a chance to get a good 8 hours of sleep per night. The clock will pick up where it left off at 9 am ET, so if there was 2:42 left on your clock, it would start up at 2:42 left to make a pick starting at 9 am ET. Hopefully the person who was on the clock would then make that next pick or would have already made that next pick to keep things moving along.

Anyone who is at work during the day or who won't have access to a computer for 8 hours at a time can easily put multiple players in their Que and have at least one player picked. It seems like this is very doable for everyone competing in this contest/format. The 8-Hour Draft Champions product has been produced and could always be revived, but let's see if the flow works for this first before contemplating that re-emergence.

We did add an introductory Draft Champions format in football this year -- the NFFC 25's -- that were private leagues in a 12-team format. We are considering this entry-level format at $50 per team with just league prizes to the Top 2 finishers as a way to bring in new players. In football we had almost 3,000 teams and welcomed in over 600 first-time players, so let us get this game plan in place before announcing our plans with an introductory baseball product. But we have every intention of growing our customer base and we've found that private DCs at a low price and nightly drafts was a winning formula in football. We'll figure it out shortly in baseball and let you know.

As for the new site and the draft room, everything passed with flying colors yesterday. We are excited to get drafts rolling. Our draft room is being used across the company products this year, everything from the NFBC to CDM to Fanball Daily Drafts and more, so we have a few more tweaks to make and color schemes to add before launching. We are definitely close and hope to start before Thanksgiving as in years past. But every year after this the turnover to the next season will be much, much quicker as everything will be in place for drafts right after the World Series.

Thanks for your patience everyone. We will start announcing our 2018 schedule and products very shortly. And better yet, we'll be drafting shortly. Welcome to NFBC 15, which will be our best season ever.

[VeniVidiVici]

Please add me to the first DC.
Thanks, Marty Rancilio

[papa's nine]

please enter me in the first available 4 hour draft. thanks. love the way the new setup sounds.

[papa's nine]

will there be auctions this year? if not please enter me in the first private auction draft.

[Southern Comfort]

Probably have enough owners to run TWO intro DC Leagues.

Looking forward to having my picks heavily scrutinized lol

[steveymer]

You can put me down for an early DC, too.

[LasVegasBlvd]

Gentleman... please sign me up for an early draft as well.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Gentleman... please sign me up for an early draft as well.

I hope I've kept up on the requests to be in the first couple of drafts, so check out the list below. If you want to be added just post here or email me at [email protected].

We will need everyone to sign up Online once the site is live, so I can't guarantee that the list below will all be in the first league. We now have Identification software and age/location verifier software for all members on our new site. This is all part of the new DFS state regulations and we are doing everything we can to be compliant. I will start a separate thread this morning to explain all of that and that initial procedure when signing up, but once you are verified you won't ever have to worry about that again. Let's get everyone registered on the new site and ready to go. Thanks all.

Here's the list of owners requesting to draft once the site is live:

Bill McRae
Steve Clarke
Todd Macey
James Wilson
Michael DeCavalcante
David Miller
Jon Stadtmueller
Gregg Doyle
Robert Dlogizama
Marty Rancilio
Martin Lowy
Mario Malgeri
Steve Meyer
Kyle Estes
Nickolaus Sackett
capper3
Dave Taylor
Chris Latka
Brian Magnani
Michael Price

[capper3]

Count me in for the first DC!

[davetniagarafalls]

Please include me as well in an early DC. Thanks, Dave Taylor