Thursday, March 20th Is Deadline For 30-Minute Draft Champions

[Greg Ambrosius]

All of our NFBC leagues that have Extended drafts will have cutoff dates when we will no longer fill them. I'll use this thread to update those deadlines so that everyone can plan their schedules over these final 6+ weeks.

The first one that we need to call out is the Rotowire Online Championship, which this year had Extended drafts for the very first time. This format has been a nice success as we've had 20+ leagues formed in this format since December and more and more people are getting a chance to battle for the $150,000 grand prize thanks to the Extended format.

But all good things must come to an end. We don't want to get people tied up in Extended drafts during the busy month of March, so we are putting a deadline of Thursday, February 27th on Extended drafts. We aren't going to fill any Rotowire OC Extended drafts after that point, giving everyone four full weeks to concentrate on our daily and nightly drafts. Plan accordingly.

We also can announce our tentative Draft Champions league deadlines right now as well. They will be similar to past years. Most of our DC leagues are cruising along pretty well and most leagues are getting done in 21 days or less. Reducing the clock in half for the 4-Hour and 2-Hour leagues starting in Round 31 also helps move things along.

So with that in mind, we will keep Registration open for the NFBC $150, $400 and $1,000 Draft Champions leagues through Thursday, March 6th. That will give everyone 21 days to complete their drafts and we shouldn't have any problems during those final days before Opening Day. If we have any slow moving leagues, Tom or Geoff will aggressively move the clock forward until everyone is done before the first pitch on Thursday, March 27th. Plan accordingly and if you're in a slow league you could get put down to 1 minute per pick on the last day.

We also will set deadlines for the other formats for this contest. Here's the new schedule for each format, so plan accordingly:

NFBC $150, $400 and $1,000 4-Hour Draft Champions: We will take signups through Thursday, March 6th and try to start all of these leagues on that day.

NFBC $150 & $400 2-Hour Draft Champions: We will take signups through Thursday, March 13th and try to start all of these leagues on that day. That would give everyone 13+ days to complete their 50 rounds, which is more than enough time since we lower the clock to 1 hour starting in Round 31. Plan accordingly.

NFBC $150 & $400 1-Hour and 30-Minute Draft Champions: We will take signups through Tuesday, March 18th and try to start all of these leagues on that day. That would give everyone 8+ days to complete their 50 rounds, which seems doable. Plan accordingly.

Draft Champions Express Leagues: These are scheduled more frequently starting in early March when we will have them every night of the week. We may not fill every single one, but DC Express leagues will be available every night soon.

We'll announce deadlines for the Cutline, Best Ball Championship and Stand Alone leagues soon as well.

Hope this helps. Plan accordingly and thanks for making all of our Extended formats so successful and fun. Stay vigilant in the draft room and make your picks in a timely fashion. Thanks all and good luck.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Yesterday was the deadline for the Rotowire Online Championship Extended drafts and we filled multiple leagues on that final day. Thanks to everyone who participated in our first year of Rotowire OC Extended drafts as we filled 44 leagues that way!!! Nice job everyone.

We had 24 4-Hour leagues, 17 2-hour leagues and 3 1-hour leagues. Good luck to everyone. Now it's time for a full month of daily and nightly Rotowire OC drafts as we will finish this year with 200+ leagues.

Now it's time to do the countdown for the Draft Champions Extended drafts. We have another week to go for the 4-Hour DCs and then we will shut them off. We will keep Registration open for the NFBC $150, $400 and $1,000 Draft Champions leagues through Thursday, March 6th. That will give everyone 21 days to complete their drafts and we shouldn't have any problems during those final days before Opening Day. If we have any slow moving leagues, Tom or Geoff will aggressively move the clock forward until everyone is done before the first pitch on Thursday, March 27th. Plan accordingly and if you're in a slow league you could get put down to 1 minute per pick on the last day.

We also will set deadlines for the other formats for this contest. Here's the new schedule for each format, so plan accordingly:

NFBC $150, $400 and $1,000 4-Hour Draft Champions: We will take signups through Thursday, March 6th and try to start all of these leagues on that day.

NFBC $150 & $400 2-Hour Draft Champions: We will take signups through Thursday, March 13th and try to start all of these leagues on that day. That would give everyone 13+ days to complete their 50 rounds, which is more than enough time since we lower the clock to 1 hour starting in Round 31. Plan accordingly.

NFBC $150 & $400 1-Hour and 30-Minute Draft Champions: We will take signups through Tuesday, March 18th and try to start all of these leagues on that day. That would give everyone 8+ days to complete their 50 rounds, which seems doable. Plan accordingly.

Draft Champions Express Leagues: These are now scheduled more frequently and we will have them every night of the week. We may not fill every single one, but DC Express leagues will be available every night going forward.

The deadlines for the 4-Hour Cutline, Best Ball Championship and Stand Alone leagues will be Tuesday, March 11th, so plan accordingly. The 2-Hour formats will be on Monday, March 17th.

Hope this helps. Plan accordingly and thanks for making all of our Extended formats so successful and fun. Stay vigilant in the draft room and make your picks in a timely fashion. Thanks all and good luck.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Just a reminder that today is the FINAL DAY to get into an NFBC $150 or $400 Draft Champions league. Our goal is to start each of those no later than today so that you have 21 full days to complete your drafts. If any of these drag on too long, we will reduce the time per pick, even down to 1 minute if needed to finish it on the final day.

Plan accordingly as we have at least one more $150 4-Hour league ready to fill. Thanks all and good luck.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Just a reminder that tomorrow is the last day for the NFBC $150 and $400 Draft Champions leagues. I think we'll fill one more $150 league and then shut off the 2-Hour option and it may be tough to get one more $400 2-Hour DC in.

We will keep the 1-Hour time frame through the weekend and cut them off next Tuesday. Then it's all about the daily and nightly Express drafts. Thanks for a great Extended season of drafts and get in soon before the 2-Hour option goes away. Thanks all and enjoy.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Okay, the 2-Hour Draft Champions leagues have ended as we filled up a couple more $150 leagues on Thursday. We now have just 1-Hour and Express Leagues left for this 50-round format. Here's the details again:

NFBC $150 & $400 1-Hour and 30-Minute Draft Champions: We will take signups through Tuesday, March 18th and try to start all of these leagues on that day. That would give everyone 8+ days to complete their 50 rounds, which seems doable. Plan accordingly.

Thanks all and good luck.

[Greg Ambrosius]

The last NFBC 1-Hour Draft Champions league just filled up and we have taken that format off Registration. Thanks all as we had 41 1-Hour DC leagues this year.

You may be interested to know that the 2-Hour format was the most popular format this year with 109 NFBC $150 DC leagues, with the 4-Hour format finishing with 102 NFBC $150 DC leagues. It's great to see people gravitating more towards the quicker DC leagues. It's almost hard to remember (and painful as well) a time when we had 8-Hour Draft Champions leagues!!!

Okay, we added a 30-Minute per pick format for the NFBC $150 Draft Champions leagues and will keep that on through Thursday night. We believe that you can finish 50 rounds in 7-8 days at 30 minutes per pick, so jump into that format if you'd like. We won't start any leagues later than Thursday, so plan accordingly.

And then we have DC Express leagues every night through Wednesday, March 26th. We also have $400 DC Express leagues at 8 pm ET on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights. Good luck everyone and enjoy.