Doritos Tacos & Talking About the NFBC...Yum

[DOUGHBOYS]

I have a friend who asked about the NFBC. He has listened, while I have gone on and on about how it is the Major Leagues of Fantasy Baseball. Anyway, he called and asked if we could have meet somewhere and we could talk about Fantasy Baseball.
Yikes!
Talk about fantasy baseball! Being the dutiful friend I am, yesterday, we agreed on lunch.

I defy somebody to make a better taco then one with a Doritos shell, so we met at Taco Bell. In between bites of my tacos, he explained that he thought he was ready for a step up in competition. Our home league had dissolved a few years after I had left for the NFBC. He had gone on to play in Yahoo and CBS leagues, but did not like the trading aspect. He also did not like Hollow victories. That is what I call winning a league where everybody else is unknown. Possibly, he could have won his league against 14 year olds who found better things to do shortly after baseball season started.

He asked me to sell him on the NFBC.
I said I would give him the bad news first.
From a technology side, the NFBC lags. Live scoring, faab, instant rosters, it seems anything that has anything to do with technology requires patience on the players part. I told him that we had a tiff on the forums about the default rankings in online draft rooms and that I woke up the next morning thinking how silly that all was when there were so many other important things that need to be fixed or replaced.
I told him that fixes were incredibly slow and sometimes over promised. At the same time, I said that they had our best interests at heart, but still technically challenged. And told him that even on our home pages there is a banner ad prompting us to join the NFFC for a Playoffs challenge! An event two months gone now! I told him, they are losing money through this 'non ad', so it really isn't about money, it just seems to be a slowness in addressing tech issues.
I relayed that the NFBC is working on a new draft room and that I was actually rooting AGAINST it coming out this year.
He asked why.
I told him that soooo many things may go wrong and that the timing was so bad. If they had introduced it early in the drafting season, they probably would have been applauded.
Now, it becomes something new that drafters have to navigate at a bad time.

So, bad news out of the way, addressing the good news is a lot more fun.
Customer service is the best. If there is a problem, it won't last long.
The NFBC is hands on. If liking the personal touch, it is for you. Greg and Tom seem to always be at hand. If you want anything or have a question to ask, they'll answer it faster than a I ate that last taco.
CBS and Yahoo may be tech advanced over the NFBC but as far as real people and real help, there is nobody better than the NFBC.
They are also open to new ideas. I told him about the auctions/snakes and the advancement of 12 teams and even those PITA 10 team leagues.
I told him that no trading leagues were the way to go. That being a used car salesman does not fit in fantasy. He suggested that 'real GM's' are that way in real baseball. I disagreed. Baseball has changed. It is not a manner of one GM trying to get the best of another GM now. More so, it is about money and the moving of less money or more money to another team than it is about players.

I moved on to the myriad of different leagues. The different price points. The Overall opportunities. That there is at least a draft a day filling up if liking to go that route.
Then, I paused. But, if really wanting to enjoy the NFBC at its fullest, he'd have to go to a Live Event. There is really nothing like it. In Las Vegas, rooms and rooms of drafters. Every person fluent in speaking fantasy baseball.
It is like Shoeless Joe Jackson asking if this is Heaven and instead of being told it was Iowa, he was told it was the NFBC.
He responded, "Aren't you going a little overboard?"
I told him I really wasn't and that he would just have to experience the whole thing.
I told him for all the short comings that come from the NFBC tech side, no stone is left unturned in pleasing drafters when it comes to the live drafts.

And last, the players.
The players are the best. Simply, the best. There are millions of home league, yahoo, CBS, or other Champions.
Who cares?
Nobody really.
Most of those Championships were won by folks who didn't know others in the league, or were the best 'trader'.
Hollow victories.
There are no hollow victories in the NFBC. Even in the $150 Draft Championships, most of these unknown drafters are trying to make a mark. Trying to win a league there so they can use that money to test how good they are in even stiffer leagues the next year.
I told him how I consider Yahoo, CBS, and home leagues as the minor leagues.
Draft Championships are a step up. A little like spring training games. They mean a lot for some players. For others, it is working on timing.
The Big Drafts are in March. If not being able to attend a live event, we can do the same things online, except for auctions.
Despite the tech lag, these drafts usually run very smoothly.

The players, themselves, are what make the NFBC. There are 'experts', the writers who write what you read. There are 'sharks', the players who feed off new players or rookies. There are the quiet assassins, the players who win every year and make no noise about it. There are loud mouths like me, who get on the Message Boards. And there are players, good players, who just compete.
All these players have one thing in common.
They KNOW Fantasy Baseball. They know it like you THINK you know it. When they see a Roto World blurb about a star getting hurt, they don't think about the star. They think about who moves up the ladder even in AA or AAA in the minors.
These players are the best.

He looked at me and said, "You know how I play, am I good enough?"
I put my third taco down, stood up and said "BINGO!"
Exactly the right question. And he won't know till he goes to 'spring training'.
I told him if he wins a Draft Championship to re-invest that money next year into a large event or even six or more seven DC's.
That he would not regret it.
We finished lunch and he promised to enter.
I told him that when he does, fantasy baseball will never be the same for him.
And, we all know, that is the truth.

[Roy's Outlaws]

Hey Dan, Get him not only into a DC, but should also advance his learning curve by getting him into a small satellite league so that he learns how to use FABB. just a though

[DOUGHBOYS]

Hey Dan, Get him not only into a DC, but should also advance his learning curve by getting him into a small satellite league so that he learns how to use FABB. just a though

Good idea, Roy. I'll give him a call.

[Bronx Yankees]

Actually, if he is just making the move to the NFBC now, I'd probably recommend doing a satellite league over a DC league. Same lower price point, but unless he has been preparing or really knows his stuff, a 30-rounder might be easier than a 50-rounder. If he does a 12-team satellite, the draft will 360 players deep, or less than half as deep as a DC league. On the other hand, if he has a relatively strong grasp of the player pool, and is willing to do some research during the course of a DC draft, he may prefer to do a draft over two weeks, give or take, than in a single night. The DC drafts do give you plenty of time to think about your team and next moves, and also would give him a chance to chat with some fellow NFBCers. Really different experiences for someone stepping up. It probably is worth talking about each and seeing what works best for him or, even better, why not jump all the way and do one of each?

Good luck to your friend. It might be interesting to keep us posted on him and how his reactions to "serious" fantasy baseball NFBC style.

Mike

[Yah Mule]

I played @ CBS for over ten years. The website is beautiful and highly functional. The customer service is actively hostile to any suggestions to improve their game. The overall level of competition improves as you get into the $500 and $1000 leagues as you might expect and I recognize familiar names from the past here all the time. Trading is way more trouble than its worth for numerous reasons, but mainly because the league commissioners are essentially entry level employees who know nothing about baseball and become easily drunk with their limited amount of power. The other big difference is in the way players are acquired during the season. Leagues with free agents that are just floating free reward the players who are most committed to connectivity, not the best fantasy players. FAAB adds another element of strategy every week.

I also recommend your friend play in some satellite leagues and that he jump straight into the 15 team leagues. My first season in NFBC, I tried 15, 12 and 10 team leagues to get used to the slightly different formats. I had mixed results. Last year, I concentrated almost totally on 15 team leagues and was much more successful. I especially like the way FAAB functions in a 15 team league.

My biggest reason for playing here are Greg and Tom. These guys love fantasy sports as much as anybody else here and that makes all the difference to me. CBS was full of loopholes in the rules that some players liked to exploit. They would ignore requests to tighten things up through dismissive emails that became quickly and progressively more terse. This left you with the option of watching other players gain an unfair advantage or using the same kinds of borderline tactics to keep pace. I don't care to win leagues by bending the rules. It doesn't feel right and its not why I play this game.

I have a good friend who still plays @ CBS and he'll probably stay there for budgetary reasons. The lowest priced $125 satellite league (times four or five teams) is still a bit more than he wants to spend on roto every season. I might buy him a team for Christmas next year and try to get him hooked. The first one is always free, right?

[fozzie]

Bumping this to say thanks for a great post that keeps resonating with me.

I'm new to the NFBC this year. I stumbled across it not long after my deep league fell apart, and I decided to take a chance on a cheap DC team. I read all the limited info I could gather on DCs, put together a plan and headed into the draft. I really enjoyed the pace of our draft and the chatting with other owners in the league, and I felt pretty good about the team I ended up with. So I signed up for another DC a couple weeks later. Same feeling afterward. Now that we're into the season, the limitations are taking hold (so many fliers who have become wasted picks), but I can see myself becoming a regular DC player.

The competition has been tough. I'm up against owners such as Heberlig, Upchurch, Jeckewicz, Wells and Hinkelman, names that I didn't know at the time but now I recognize and respect. And yet -- as you've said in this and other posts, going against against a handful of the best is one thing. Against a league full of the best is another. But there's that entry fee: That would be one hell of a bet on nothing more than a hunch that I could hang.

I liked your idea of putting any proceeds from the DC team toward an ME seat. Then Roy's Outlaws came along with the perfect solution -- try a 15-team satellite in addition to a DC. Since satellites follow the same rules as an ME, playing one would serve as a true test of whether I could adapt to the NFBC rules, which were a little different than anything I'd played before. I plunked down my money, ending up in a league with some guy named Kenyon. While I didn't have the best draft, I've grabbed a few free agents who really helped. At midseason, I'm competitive, although setting my roster is always a real nail-biter.

I don't yet have my own answer to the question that your friend asked, Am I good enough? But I'm more confident than I was in February, in part because you took the time to lay out some good advice to a newbie. And for that, I say, thanks, Dan.

Scott

[DOUGHBOYS]

Thank you, Scott.
It's particularly gratifying to me that a post helped somebody new to the NFBC.
Good luck on the rest of your year.

Dan