NFBC Message Boards

Thanks to everyone in the NFBC for a great start to the 2016 season. It's so great to see so many people participating in drafts this early in the season and to see drafts being held almost every night of the week. That's what we always wanted in the NFBC.

I promise to get even more active on the NFBC Message Boards going forward and we'll have some Live Chats very soon. I'd like to host those once a week with Tom, and I'll line up Todd and Shawn and some Rotowire guys soon as well. Let's get the Live Chats rolling!!

Before we do that, I thought I'd post my early-season thoughts. Feel free to comment or add to them. Here we go:

Draft Champions Leagues: The Draft Champions Leagues were initially set up as draft prep for people who were in our big money drafts. This was a great way for those folks to learn the player pool and that is still being done. But take a look at the signup lists and you're seeing a LOT of new names there. The Draft Champions Leagues are drawing a lot of new owners who likely are using these as prep for their own leagues, or to test out the NFBC for the first time. It's encouraging to see so many new members coming to the NFBC through the Draft Champions Leagues.

I'm glad that we've filled more than a handful of the fast DCs and those have gone very well thanks to our great moderators in Mike, KJ and Dan. But I'd love to see more of those 4-Hour DCs fill. If there's anything we can do there to spur on the faster DCs just let me know. And I'm glad we've filled two $1,000 DCs this year and if there's demand for one more just let us know.

The $400 DCs have a new prize structure this year and those have slowed a bit, but hopefully as we get closer to the season those will fill more regularly. The $3,000 league prize should be more appealing this year. I know that some folks liked the equal payouts that we had before, but with the overall prize pool in play for each format it does make sense to have similar league payouts as well. It makes it fair for everyone to compete for the overall prize pool in each price format.

NFBC Cutline Championship: We were looking for a way to host quick, fun drafts each night and I think the format has proved even more successful than we thought. These have been concluding in 2 hours and 5 minutes, sometimes 2 hours and 15 minutes, and some folks have said they are addictive. I mean, 10 good owners can whip through these 360 picks pretty quickly. We hope to keep selling these out one per night in February and then more than that in March, but so far so good. I'd love to hear the feedback from you folks who have participated in these Cutline drafts so far. What's your thoughts on these 10-team drafts?

We hope these are feeder contests as well. Hopefully this is an entry point for a lot of new people who want to draft with us in baseball and want a low maintenance league. The Cutline gets that done.

Rotowire Online Championship Plus: I'm convinced that as we get into March that these leagues will fill nicely. The $4,000 league prize for a $750 Online Championship Plus League makes a lot of sense and we look forward to hosting these in Las Vegas and New York. You can't beat a live draft for $750 and with any luck we'll be able to host some of these in Las Vegas in our private suites. Should be fun. And the $1,500 OC Plus has a $9,000 league prize and a shot at the $100,000 grand prize, so hopefully the bigger league prize is appealing. We loved the Primetime, but it just couldn't make it on its own. Hopefully the lure of the big league prizes and the $100,000 grand prize will take our 12-team format to new heights.

Starting Pitchers: We're definitely seeing a new trend in the NFBC this year. Last year you saw 11 of the first 50 picks being Starting Pitchers, and even in the FSTA Draft this year you had 11 of the first 50 picks as Starting Pitchers. But in the NFBC right now, 18 of the first 50 picks are Starting Pitchers. We've never seen so many yellow stickers so early in our drafts, but this is definitely a trend worth watching.

Youth Is Served: It's also great to see a great young prospect like Carlos Correa going so high in drafts this year. After winning AL Rookie of the Year in only 99 games last year, Correa is the "IT" guy to draft this year. His ADP is 6 in the NFBC and in our first 51 drafts he has yet to go lower than 15th. That's pretty cool. Kris Bryant, the NL Rookie of the Year in 2015, has an ADP of 9 and hasn't gone any lower than 16th so far. The young guns are really making a strong impression this year and it's making these early drafts very interesting.

Las Vegas: I really, really, really, really miss hosting NFBC drafts on the Opening Weekend of March Madness. I'm not sure how we got off that between the NCAA and MLB, but I sure hope it changes soon. There's nothing quite like having NFBC live drafts on Opening Weekend, followed by Sweet Sixteen. Yes, it's fun to be there for Sweet Sixteen and the Final Four Weekends, but we miss a lot of our live drafters who go to Las Vegas on the First Weekend and then can't hook up with us for the live drafts after that. We're losing live drafters that way and we miss that weekend as well. Maybe next year it will hook up better.

But honestly, I'm just happy to be back in Las Vegas and back at the Bellagio. I can't tell you how hard it was to get that deal done again. When the DFS situation broke in Nevada, the MGM lawyers had serious concerns about hosting any fantasy sports event. I can understand why, but through great dialogue and a little education from us we got it done. We also had to make some concessions, but it's all good. We're back at the beautiful Bellagio and we're going to have two great weekends of live drafts. We have some space concerns on the Second Weekend that we still have to work through, but we'll get it done and make things work. More on all of that and our Thursday NCAA Viewing Party (without an NCAA game) coming soon.

Speaking of Las Vegas, the Nevada Governor has asked the Legislature and the Gaming Control Board to look at the DFS industry and find a solution to make it viable in the state again. I thought this was very encouraging. Great story by Howard Stutz:

http://m.reviewjournal.com/opinion/colu ... rts-issues

Last year we added the NFBC Post-Season Contest and the Weekly Contest, and both were great launches. The Post-Season Contest was a late addition, but this year the Contest page is already live and I expect that one to really turn the corner this year. That was a fun contest. And we have a unique idea for the Weekly Contest this year that hopefully will play out. Stay tuned there. Now this year our newest addition is the Cutline Championship. Give that one a try if you haven't already because it's great prep for any NFBC league and it's low maintenance during the season. VERY LOW maintenance during the season, which we all like. Enjoy.

Okay, give me some feedback on your early off-season impressions on anything baseball related. I'd love to see some feedback on the NFBC contests, the draft results and even on the MLB itself. It's time to rev up the baseball talk. Thanks all and continued good luck in all your drafts.

I was always a first weekend guy. The opening weekend of the NCAA tourney was amazing when combined with the first weekend of NFBC drafts. What's disappointing is we may never see that again. It's 2-3 weeks off now. I hate it.

Would love to see you guys figure out and run a weekly, week-long contest similar to DFS, but more like the CDM salary cap or maybe with the same scoring as the Cutline, or hell even just do a Rotisserie scoring and you can run it either like a satellite league with 15 owners or whatever with a $100/150 entry fee and compete for prizes. To me it would be a perfect compliment to the season long contest but without a total crapshoot feel of daily and without the the tournament feel to it. We have DFS, Shandler tried month-long, but nobody has tried weekly, which, to me, is the perfect time-frame for a DFS-type contest. Would rather keep my money here and compete against people here that I "know," or at least feel like I know. Make it happen, boys!

COZ

I was wondering if the NFBC has ever considered half season leagues. You could draft the last couple of weeks of June and begin the leagues on July 1st. That would produce a schedule of roughly 83-84 games. It would conform nicely to a tournament format.

Pros:

1) Players having a bad season can either reverse their fortunes or pitchfork some more money into the flames.

2) Players having a good season can try to ride their luck or wind up like the whale in Casino who they wouldn't let fly back to Japan until he lost his money back.

3) You can take one more crack at landing that player you never quite managed to get before the season.

4) Good prep for October Draft Champion leagues.

Cons:

0) Can't think of any.

I know we start ramping up for football in June, but this would be a nice diversion for those who aren't as passionate about fantasy football or just stink at it.

The Cutline drafts have been everything I hoped they would be and more. Quick and easy. You can jump into a league on short notice as your home/work schedule allows. And just plain fun early in the year.

One thing that I hadn't thought of is that they are a perfect prep for the Rotowire Championships and other 12-team leagues. That's because the player pool is the same size (360 players drafted).

The draft software has been working perfectly. The only programing glitch I see is that when you click on contests from these message boards, the Cutline contests don't show up yet. But an easy fix there, I'm sure...

Yah Mule wrote:I was wondering if the NFBC has ever considered half season leagues. You could draft the last couple of weeks of June and begin the leagues on July 1st. That would produce a schedule of roughly 83-84 games. It would conform nicely to a tournament format.

Pros:

1) Players having a bad season can either reverse their fortunes or pitchfork some more money into the flames.

2) Players having a good season can try to ride their luck or wind up like the whale in Casino who they wouldn't let fly back to Japan until he lost his money back.

3) You can take one more crack at landing that player you never quite managed to get before the season.

4) Good prep for October Draft Champion leagues.

Cons:

0) Can't think of any.

I know we start ramping up for football in June, but this would be a nice diversion for those who aren't as passionate about fantasy football or just stink at it.

Jim,
These were tried for a couple of years. We also had the 'Don Mathis format'. A league in which all first half numbers counted on players drafted.
I tried a couple of these leagues.
The con for these leagues is that a lot of us probably draft too many teams for our own good.
Reality is, WE LOVE DRAFTING
Once the season begins, the work begins.
We're setting lineups and we're tracking every player for faab purposes.
Sunday's become very tedious.
It's also at that time when owners are putting time into their winning teams and paying less attention to their struggling teams. Adding another team becomes a burden for these drafters.
Plus, it would also not carry an Overall carrot. The prize less than other drafted teams are going for.
There was a time when stand alone satelite leagues were king of pre-season leagues at the NFBC.
Now, the ease of no faab worries with DC's have dethroned those satelites.
A second half year sounds really good at this time of year, but when we reach that point of the year, it just seems like too much work.
This is just my view point, others may disagree.

DOUGHBOYS wrote:

Yah Mule wrote:I was wondering if the NFBC has ever considered half season leagues. You could draft the last couple of weeks of June and begin the leagues on July 1st. That would produce a schedule of roughly 83-84 games. It would conform nicely to a tournament format.

Pros:

1) Players having a bad season can either reverse their fortunes or pitchfork some more money into the flames.

2) Players having a good season can try to ride their luck or wind up like the whale in Casino who they wouldn't let fly back to Japan until he lost his money back.

3) You can take one more crack at landing that player you never quite managed to get before the season.

4) Good prep for October Draft Champion leagues.

Cons:

0) Can't think of any.

I know we start ramping up for football in June, but this would be a nice diversion for those who aren't as passionate about fantasy football or just stink at it.

Jim,
These were tried for a couple of years. We also had the 'Don Mathis format'. A league in which all first half numbers counted on players drafted.
I tried a couple of these leagues.
The con for these leagues is that a lot of us probably draft too many teams for our own good.
Reality is, WE LOVE DRAFTING
Once the season begins, the work begins.
We're setting lineups and we're tracking every player for faab purposes.
Sunday's become very tedious.
It's also at that time when owners are putting time into their winning teams and paying less attention to their struggling teams. Adding another team becomes a burden for these drafters.
Plus, it would also not carry an Overall carrot. The prize less than other drafted teams are going for.
There was a time when stand alone satelite leagues were king of pre-season leagues at the NFBC.
Now, the ease of no faab worries with DC's have dethroned those satelites.
A second half year sounds really good at this time of year, but when we reach that point of the year, it just seems like too much work.
This is just my view point, others may disagree.

I figured there was precedent. I think the only way a league like this works is if the players drafted started from scratch. Everybody wants first half Todd Frazier on their roster.

I also think some kind of smaller tournament is possible. They run an overall prize for the winner of the post season contest. It would be a matter of creating the right product.

Anyway, I'm not lobbying for these leagues. I already have a slate of teams so full I should be researching a good 12-step program.