Originally posted by fandango:
Greg, you deserve a long vacation after tonight!
Thanks for all your hard work, here's to you! (gulp) Thanks Scott. I will take you up on that offer this week.
Here's a final thanks from me, Tom and the rest of the NFBC gang to everyone involved in the NFBC Online Championship. You were prompt, you were well behaved, you were well prepared, your computers worked well, and I think we all had fun. Here are the final numbers:
** 50 drafts in eight days, ranging anywhere from 2 hours and 35 minutes to 4 hours and 30 minutes. For the most part, all drafts were done in about 3 hours and 15 minutes. Three hours was a good pace and many were in that ballpark, but more in the 3:15 range.
** 598 of 600 owners were in the draft room on time, give or take a handful who struggled to get in the draft room and needed a little MDC.com assistance. We had some owners who came in at the last minute after Tom, me or Scott called them to get them in, but really for the most part everyone was prompt (the stress level on our part is through the roof when 1 or 2 owners per league still aren't there with a minute to go).
** 599 owners showed up. One was late yesterday morning and I had no patience to wait around. I sold that team before his second pick and I'm glad I did because he never showed up. I don't know what happened, but all 600 were paid in full beforehand so we were ready to move on. This team was bought by an NFBC veteran and he ran it for all 30 picks.
** I don't know how many owners are in the Combined Standings, but I'll know that this week. STATS will set it up for us and we'll test it all week before making the Combined Standings live at the start of Week 2. I'll post the number of teams in the Combined Standings combination once I get that from STATS. I know we'll need to hook up some teams after the fact, so don't fret as I'm sure we still have more work to do.
We learned a lot from this 12-team national championship format and the first thing is this: It's a winner. I think the future of the NFBC Online Championship is VERY bright and we can build on this first year's success. But I will say one thing: I am not going to make this so big in the future that the odds of winning are unreachable.
No, next year I think I will shoot for 600 teams and a $40,000 grand prize and stick with that. I'd take the first 600 teams and keep the odds of winning it all reachable. Possibly $50,000 and 750 teams, but we'll see. I would take the first signups in this competition and move on.
If there's demand for more teams, then we could create a second contest with a much lesser grand prize ($10,000 or $20,000), but we'll see. No need to get too big because it's a lot of work doing all of these drafts during an eight-day window. But next year it will definitely be first-come, first-serve to get into the Online Championship and we won't go too big because honestly that doesn't do anything for me...or for the players who want a realistic shot at winning it all.
Okay, that's enough for today. Tom and I thank EVERYONE who participated and we wish you good luck. It was a great debut and now the best is yet to come. 26 weeks of BASEBALL!!! Bring it on.
