Team Gannon Update!

Doug Atkins · Post by **Doug Atkins** » Mon Apr 19, 2010 9:12 am

Guys, I just checked out Team Gannon's lineup for Week 4......he has Brian Roberts and Jermaine Dye active......Greg, can I transfer leagues?

Gekko · Post by **Gekko** » Mon Apr 19, 2010 9:16 am

league integrity down shitter

Tom Kessenich · Post by **Tom Kessenich** » Mon Apr 19, 2010 9:18 am

The roster has been adjusted. No integrity issues to be concerned about here.

Finkel · Post by **Finkel** » Mon Apr 19, 2010 9:20 am

That's Awesome!! what a joke

Gekko · Post by **Gekko** » Mon Apr 19, 2010 9:23 am

Originally posted by Tom Kessenich:

The roster has been adjusted. No integrity issues to be concerned about here.

Finkel · Post by **Finkel** » Mon Apr 19, 2010 9:26 am

Originally posted by Tom Kessenich:

The roster has been adjusted. No integrity issues to be concerned about here.

Dirt Dogs · Post by **Dirt Dogs** » Mon Apr 19, 2010 9:29 am

I think Gannon should stick to throwing interceptions instead of fantasy baseball. Thanks but no thanks for a return in 2011.

Scott Boras · Post by **Scott Boras** » Mon Apr 19, 2010 10:16 am

In addition to Roberts and Dye (who have since been benched), Aaron Rowand is also still active on this team. Despite obvious needs, this team has not spent a single dollar in FAAB.

Question for Greg/Tom: Do you have plans to allow someone to manage this team or is the plan to allow a dead team from the get go essentially creating a 14 team league? How bout we let Crazy Like a Fox get his feet wet?

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Mon Apr 19, 2010 10:39 am

Originally posted by Scott Boras:

In addition to Roberts and Dye (who have since been benched), Aaron Rowand is also still active on this team. Despite obvious needs, this team has not spent a single dollar in FAAB.

Question for Greg/Tom: Do you have plans to allow someone to manage this team or is the plan to allow a dead team from the get go essentially creating a 14 team league? How bout we let Crazy Like a Fox get his feet wet? Hunter drafted this team and is running it with Rich. I'm not sure if he struggled to get into the site or not initially, but thanks to Chest calling him out we gave him the log-in info again and he's rolling. He's a good kid and worked both auction leagues in Las Vegas on Friday, the Saturday Super Draft League and I think one Double Play on Sunday. He knows his baseball and will be fine with this team.

sportsbettingman · Post by **sportsbettingman** » Mon Apr 19, 2010 10:54 am

This is a perfect example of the message boards being relied upon for any and all error reporting vs. pro actively not having such a reliance on the MB.

All these errors go unchecked otherwise.

That top level player that Greg mentioned must have just been too busy to run the league this week and last week and the week before.

The entire programming of this contest could have literally began AFTER the second weekend worth of live drafts...and depending on who you hired...could be in roughly the same or in better shape right now. Talk about throwing the programmers into the fire, and talk about using the customer as beta testers. Wow. Some kind of new business plan.

Which came first...a poor product, or an angry message board?

The most vicious threads here deal with real issues...not fabricated. The perceived bending-to-breaking of official rules. Reliance/trust issues with basic sorting of players, to transparency issues of seeing failed bids, etc. Calculation issues, etc. Far too many errors to mention...ALL CAUGHT by the customer, rather than by the IT crew (from India

)

Tom and Greg have shown a little true colors these first few weeks...actually becoming defensive and lashing back. I actually prefer that to the predictable corp-speak drivel I read and re-read ad nauseam. I could write Greg's responses and give him a week off I've re-read them so much.

Sure...folks may quit on their teams at some point late in the season...but hiring a personality who could care less about this contest and actually effecting a main event league with a no-show player is pretty bad stuff that went unchecked until today.

The honesty was never there, and Fanball and all of their employee's decided it best to launch "off the cuff" and deal with all the pain that THEY KNEW would come.

It makes sense in the long run. Bear the pain involved as a needed path toward building a better product that they would own and allow customization and assist in profits down the line.

I understand why they would not want to be honest from the beginning, as they could have lost customers and the like...but to raise your nose at the message board posters for doing exactly what you knew they would do seems silly.

You knew the product was not ready.

You knew there would be a backlash.

Suck it up and move on.

Trying to make us feel guilty for ranting or raging or releasing some pent up frustration on the MB is wrong. Some will act like mature adults. Some will have a short fuse. Some will be witty and funny. Some will brown nose.

The worst is over.

It just fires me up when you insinuate that you never saw ALL OF THIS coming.

Your transparency to your customer base was lacking to say the least.

...and I'm sober.

Scott Boras · Post by **Scott Boras** » Mon Apr 19, 2010 11:18 am

Lance, I have nothing but respect for Greg and Tom. That said I have a really hard time finding anything I disagree with in your post. The Gannon thing really pisses me off. 1) This is baseball. Who cares about a retired quarterback? Bring Koufax in and I have a lot more leniency. 2) Setting up the special Gannon dinner and pony show took away from time and resources that should have been dedicated to the launch of the new site and system. Wrong priorities and time poorly spent. 3) IF his team was comped, not only is it unfair to the other 434 teams, it eliminates any motivation he may have had to compete. If he never looks at his team again (and so far he has not), what does he lose? Word is he didn't even draft his team! His league has some killers in it. At least 4 by my count. These guys could win it all in a 15 team league (2 of them already did), let along a 14 team league. Seriously, what was Ryan thinking with this?

Gekko · Post by **Gekko** » Mon Apr 19, 2010 11:22 am

Originally posted by Scott Boras:

Lance, I have nothing but respect for Greg and Tom. That said I have a really hard time finding anything I disagree with in your post. The Gannon thing really pisses me off. 1) This is baseball. Who cares about a retired quarterback? Bring Koufax in and I have a lot more leniency. 2) Setting up the special Gannon dinner and pony show took away from time and resources that should have been dedicated to the launch of the new site and system. Wrong priorities and time poorly spent. 3) IF his team was comped, not only is it unfair to the other 434 teams, it eliminates any motivation he may have had to compete. If he never looks at his team again (and so far he has not), what does he lose? Word is he didn't even draft his team! His league has some killers in it. At least 4 by my count. These guys could win it all in a 15 team league (2 of them already did), let along a 14 team league. Seriously, what was Ryan thinking with this?

think of all the programming hours that went into the "drafting software" THAT NO ONE WANTED THIS YEAR. all those hours could have been used on the back-end. saving a couple thousand by not using MDC cost the nfbc much, much more than that. what do i know, i'm just a dumb water boy, certainly not fanball management material

[ April 19, 2010, 05:23 PM: Message edited by: Gekko ]

Plymouth · Post by **Plymouth** » Mon Apr 19, 2010 11:24 am

Very true Sportsbettingman, a excellent post. You can look at this fiasco one of two ways, either Ryan and the rest of the Fanball gang knew exactly what was coming and they basically lied to everyone or they are just totally inept and do not have a clue how to run high stakes fantasy games and what it takes under the covers to support them. Either way, the NFBC is off to a slow start and is still in the recovery room while participants are still holding their breath hoping for the best. Greg is upset with things and I can understand that, he is stuck right in the middle. I feel bad for Greg but I have to say, "you must have seen this coming".

Apparently Fanball believed they could pull this off with smoke and mirrors and they got caught big time with their pants down and now they are trying to get things on the straight and narrow but as I have said numerous times before, get a frickin process in place to address these issues, enhancements, and start communicating so that we can see what is left to be fixed. Worry about fixing what should be working first and then you can look at enhancements.

Oh...... enough already, this just gets me more worked up each day.

Dirt Dogs · Post by **Dirt Dogs** » Mon Apr 19, 2010 11:30 am

If this is his main event team I'd hate to see what his other teams rosters look like...

He paid his money so he can manage the team how he chooses but i just cant fathom the idea that we are in the 3rd week and he hasnt made a single FA move and had (has) all these guy in his starting lineup.

I think Ron Shandler drafting in NY was a bigger treat to the NFBC than Gannon. At least he is a professional in our field.

Tom Kessenich · Post by **Tom Kessenich** » Mon Apr 19, 2010 11:31 am

Lance, I'm sorry if you think we're "lashing back" but the truth is we're being hammered at all corners and this was going on long before the event began. I could tell you some stories but I won't. What I will say is that we all own up to the mistakes that have been made. Has that really been lost on people here? Have we not made ourselves accountable and tried to fix the problems we encountered? I would say we certainly have.

If Greg and I are frustrated about anything it's the fact that EVERYTHING now has become fair game to launch another full-out assault on us, regardless of whether the criticisms have merit or not. As Greg and I have said repeatedly, we had issues with STATS too but I don't recall so many posts lashing out at us personally, attacking us on the phone and by email and the level of anger and hostility being directed at us as has been the case so far this season. I'm not running scared from legitimate criticisms and that should be clear to anyone who knows my history with this event and the NFFC. But when every perceived mistake - whether real or imagined (and trust me folks, there have been plenty of imagined mistakes) means another thread calling for the end of Fanball and the NFBC as we know it, that simply wears us down.

So I guess if this is what you guys want the boards to be, that's fine. You guys win. We've had threads in the past for both of our events talking about "dead" teams and what should be done about them. Perhaps you missed those threads but I can guarantee you they existed but at no point was our "integrity" being questioned or did it all mean the NFBC (or NFFC) was in dire straits.

Well now we have a team that wasn't managed for just a couple of weeks and it means the end is near and Fanball sucks and what the hell was Ryan thinking and so on and so forth. We corrected the issue TODAY. Should we have responded sooner? We probably should have but it's not an easy task to individually manage all of the teams in our event. But we should have responded sooner and we apologize for that. Now there's no issue.

Hell, maybe Greg and I are defensive. If we are, it's because we've been everyone's punching bag for the past several months. We're both big boys and we can take it but I will say that no matter what's going on we're doing everything we can to make this event better and that's where our focus remains.

Scott Boras · Post by **Scott Boras** » Mon Apr 19, 2010 11:36 am

Originally posted by Tom Kessenich:

Lance, I'm sorry if you think we're "lashing back" but the truth is we're being hammered at all corners and this was going on long before the event began. I could tell you some stories but I won't. What I will say is that we all own up to the mistakes that have been made. Has that really been lost on people here? Have we not made ourselves accountable and tried to fix the problems we encountered? I would say we certainly have.

If Greg and I are frustrated about anything it's the fact that EVERYTHING now has become fair game to launch another full-out assault on us, regardless of whether the criticisms have merit or not. As Greg and I have said repeatedly, we had issues with STATS too but I don't recall so many posts lashing out at us personally, attacking us on the phone and by email and the level of anger and hostility being directed at us as has been the case so far this season. I'm not running scared from legitimate criticisms and that should be clear to anyone who knows my history with this event and the NFFC. But when every perceived mistake - whether real or imagined (and trust me folks, there have been plenty of imagined mistakes) means another thread calling for the end of Fanball and the NFBC as we know it, that simply wears us down.

So I guess if this is what you guys want the boards to be, that's fine. You guys win. We've had threads in the past for both of our events talking about "dead" teams and what should be done about them. Perhaps you missed those threads but I can guarantee you they existed but at no point was our "integrity" being questioned or did it all mean the NFBC (or NFFC) was in dire straits.

Well now we have a team that wasn't managed for just a couple of weeks and it means the end is near and Fanball sucks and what the hell was Ryan thinking and so on and so forth. We corrected the issue TODAY. Should we have responded sooner? We probably should have but it's not an easy task to individually manage all of the teams in our event. But we should have responded sooner and we apologize for that. Now there's no issue.

Hell, maybe Greg and I are defensive. If we are, it's because we've been everyone's punching bag for the past several months. We're both big boys and we can take it but I will say that no matter what's going on we're doing everything we can to make this event better and that's where our focus remains. Were dead teams in the past abandoned by quasi-celebrities promoted by fanball? Did fanball sponsor the dead team in question?

Tom Kessenich · Post by **Tom Kessenich** » Mon Apr 19, 2010 11:40 am

I do not know who individually ran those dead teams but unfortunately they are a reality with any fantasy league. It's going to happen. That doesn't make it right and it's certainly not something any of us want, but the reality is we're not going to govern how people choose to manage their team and I would hope everyone can understand the reasons why. Again, we should have taken a closer look at this team but we assumed the person running it had the log-in information and was all set to go. That wasn't the case but he has it now and will be making moves going forward. Again, I see this as a non-issue going forward because the issue has been addressed and resolved.

Gekko · Post by **Gekko** » Mon Apr 19, 2010 11:41 am

tom - i think this is being brought out because it's only week 3 and he was a dead team until u stepped in

Tom Kessenich · Post by **Tom Kessenich** » Mon Apr 19, 2010 11:43 am

Originally posted by Gekko:

tom - i think this is being brought out because it's only week 3 and he was a dead team until u stepped in And that's fine, Mark. Again I acknowledged we probably should have looked into this sooner but as I said we assumed the person running the team had the log-in information. It wasn't until today that we found out he didn't. Our mistake there. But he has it now and the issue has been resolved.

Dirt Dogs · Post by **Dirt Dogs** » Tue Apr 20, 2010 3:53 am

I'm sorry to kick a dead dog on this issue, but one would think if he didnt have his "log in" information he would of called you ASAFP!! I'm not mad at anybody or fanball. I just cant figure out why these people are even in the league then. Dont tell me he didnt have his login information. He obviously dosent give care. Do you think any of us would just sit back and let three weeks pass until you or greg emailed us our logon information and just thought that having Jermaine Dye in our lineup was a good idea.

HAHAHA, this is just simply too funny thats all.

can I buy his team for $250 off him?

Scott Boras · Post by **Scott Boras** » Tue Apr 20, 2010 4:59 am

Originally posted by Dirt Dogs:

I'm sorry to kick a dead dog on this issue, but one would think if he didnt have his "log in" information he would of called you ASAFP!! I'm not mad at anybody or fanball. I just cant figure out why these people are even in the league then. Dont tell me he didnt have his login information. He obviously dosent give care. Do you think any of us would just sit back and let three weeks pass until you or greg emailed us our logon information and just thought that having Jermaine Dye in our lineup was a good idea.

HAHAHA, this is just simply too funny thats all.

can I buy his team for $250 off him? Mike, Gannon's appearance was purely promotional. At first I thought he was a fantasy guy, like Meat Loaf, and thought it was pretty cool. When I learned he didn't draft his team and no one had touched it since draft day, it suddenly became not so cool. Apparently the guy who drafted the team is going to run it. Time will tell, and we'll be watching.

Thunder · Post by **Thunder** » Tue Apr 20, 2010 5:03 am

maybe being a new player to high stakes and FAAB, is there any possibility the team in question was outbid in the FAAB for players he needed? just a thought.

[ April 20, 2010, 11:05 AM: Message edited by: Kentucky Reign ]

Scott Boras · Post by **Scott Boras** » Tue Apr 20, 2010 5:11 am

Originally posted by Kentucky Reign:

maybe being a new player to high stakes and FAAB, is there any possibility the team in question was outbid in the FAAB for players he needed? just a thought. With Jermaine Dye, Brian Roberts, and Aaron Rowand all in his starting lineup from day one? The answer is no, it is not possible. This team has holes, and while it's entirely possible they got blanked the first couple weeks in FAAB, to not get a single conditional bid for 3 straight weeks is unrealistic at this level, even with a learning curve.

Greg and Tom also both acknowledged some miscommunication and that the individual responsible for this team had misplaced his username and password.

Navel Lint · Post by **Navel Lint** » Sun Apr 25, 2010 3:02 am

Originally posted by sportsbettingman:

This is a perfect example of the message boards being relied upon for any and all error reporting vs. pro actively not having such a reliance on the MB.

All these errors go unchecked otherwise.

That top level player that Greg mentioned must have just been too busy to run the league this week and last week and the week before.

The entire programming of this contest could have literally began AFTER the second weekend worth of live drafts...and depending on who you hired...could be in roughly the same or in better shape right now. Talk about throwing the programmers into the fire, and talk about using the customer as beta testers. Wow. Some kind of new business plan.

Which came first...a poor product, or an angry message board?

The most vicious threads here deal with real issues...not fabricated. The perceived bending-to-breaking of official rules. Reliance/trust issues with basic sorting of players, to transparency issues of seeing failed bids, etc. Calculation issues, etc. Far too many errors to mention...ALL CAUGHT by the customer, rather than by the IT crew (from India

)

Tom and Greg have shown a little true colors these first few weeks...actually becoming defensive and lashing back. I actually prefer that to the predictable corp-speak drivel I read and re-read ad nauseam. I could write Greg's responses and give him a week off I've re-read them so much.

Sure...folks may quit on their teams at some point late in the season...but hiring a personality who could care less about this contest and actually effecting a main event league with a no-show player is pretty bad stuff that went unchecked until today.

The honesty was never there, and Fanball and all of their employee's decided it best to launch "off the cuff" and deal with all the pain that THEY KNEW would come.

It makes sense in the long run. Bear the pain involved as a needed path toward building a better product that they would own and allow customization and assist in profits down the line.

I understand why they would not want to be honest from the beginning, as they could have lost customers and the like...but to raise your nose at the message board posters for doing exactly what you knew they would do seems silly.

You knew the product was not ready.

You knew there would be a backlash.

Suck it up and move on.

Trying to make us feel guilty for ranting or raging or releasing some pent up frustration on the MB is wrong. Some will act like mature adults. Some will have a short fuse. Some will be witty and funny. Some will brown nose.

The worst is over.

It just fires me up when you insinuate that you never saw ALL OF THIS coming.

Your transparency to your customer base was lacking to say the least.

...and I'm sober. Is this the deleted post ???? :rolleyes:

[ April 25, 2010, 09:03 AM: Message edited by: Navel Lint ]

Gekko · Post by **Gekko** » Sun Apr 25, 2010 3:09 am

lance got tricked by there being two gannon threads. classic!!! booze musta played a part in yesterday's post.

lance - get the apology post ready and this one probably deserves a phone call apology as well