When the Smoke Clears-For Next Year's Online Draft

[sethpoppel]

In prior years we have come to Vegas for the live drafts and Greg, Tom and crew do a GREAT job. The drafts and auctions are run as well as humanly possible and the only glitches usually relate to the people drafting or bidding who either are unprepared or start $25 players at $1 consistently even though prompted to often to "get real."



However, the online drafts this year could use a few specific improvements and I am sure that my list may have some additions from others.

1.) The Main Event online draft I participated in was grueling. It was not fun at all. 5 hours 30 minutes, no breaks and more screwups by the bidders than should have happened. Three immediate improvements could be:

a.) Much more advanced detailed information about the draft room, drafting procedures and some practice allowed so the drafters would not make as many mistakes and be more comfortable with the procedures and keystrokes. This should be distributed via e-mail to all participants at least one week in advance even if their specific league assignment has not been determined. It should be written for kindergarden and start off with screenshots accompanying the instructions.

b.) Consider the possibility of cutting some sets of the rounds down to 60 seconds (which is what the live drafts use) rather than 90. There is no excuse for using 90 seconds for your first pick. In the live draft you don't get it and when you are online (if you have someone with you or not) you can probably maneuver and decide just as fast if not faster then when you have to shuffle papers at a draft table with others or try and keep your discussions with your partner quiet etc. 30 seconds for 450 rounds would be a maximum potential savings of probably 1-2 hours and part of that time could then be used for:

c.) Bathroom breaks please....Maybe at after round 10 and after round 20 for 5 - 8 minutes???

2.) The Draft Prep can use a LOT of improvement.

a.) Creating your own draft lists from the default provided is very klugy and cumbersome if you are trying to array the 75 or 100 favorite players and get them "teed" up. Even with the up 50 etc.. There should be a search.

b.) If you are going to be in more than one draft you should have the ability to export the Draft Prep board you have created for one draft to another, if you wish to do that, rather than having to re-create it from scratch.

3.) We were using the flash draft software with a powerful computer, Firefox 4 browser and there were instances where we could not get a player, whom we knew still had not been drafted, to show up in the search. Specifically it was Jose Tabata and we entered everything correctly, knew he had not been drafted and had to go to the OF sort and scroll to find him since the search did not bring it up. I don't know if there is some bug there or not, as that was the only problem we had during the draft, aside from no break for 5 hours and 30 minutes.



This is posted for a constructive purpose and we genuinely appreciate all of the efforts made by Geoff, Greg and Tom midst the chaos of trying to pull off this monumental task so "when the smoke clears"...please consider these and any that many follow. Thank you!