Questions About The NFBC Main Event

[Greg Ambrosius]

I'll take the lead here today and ask and answer some questions that I'm hearing from our members recently. I'll continue to update this thread as new questions arise. Here you go:



When is the deadline to set our KDS preferences for the main event?



Let's set a deadline of Wednesday, March 11th at noon CST to set your KDS preferences for the main event. We'll grab those preferences that day and put them in an Excel document for us to use once we randomly select the leagues the next day or two after that. Our hope is that we can sell this out early so that we can get your leagues set up and your draft spots to you before the weekend prior to the next weekend's draft. It might not work out that way, but that's the plan.



So everyone should set their KDS preferences now and tweak them as we get closer to the deadline. KDS is s service to you, the player, so please take advantage of it. More than 75% of the main event participants set their KDS last year and you should use this as part of your Draft Day strategy, too.



How do I set my KDS preferences?



Here's what you need to do:



Go to your MY TEAMS page and click on your team link (Team Ambrosius, for instance)



Then click on MY SETTINGS in the upper right-hand corner



Then pull down to DRAFT PREFERENCES



There you'll see 1-15 in order. Put in the order that you'd like from top to bottom, your preferred draft spot. So if you were pulled first out of the hat, what spot would you most like to draft from. If it's one, then leave 1 first. If it's 5, then put five at the top and then list the rest in order. You need 15 unique numbers ranked from most preferred to least preferred.



We do this so that hopefully you get a draft spot you're comfortable with. In the past, the average draft preference per person is around 4.8, which means everyone gets their fourth or fifth preference. In some leagues, 5 or 6 owners will get their first preference. And if you're the last one selected in that league, you could still get your 15th preference. But at least this process helps us alleviate that to some point.



Do I have to set my KDS preferences?



No and if you don't it will stay at 1-15 in that order. You will get the highest possible pick when it's your turn to choose. But some folks like to move down or move in the middle for strategical reasons, so KDS works well for those owners.



Can I use a laptop at the live draft?



Of course and I'd say that more than 50 percent of our teams will have a laptop. You just need a strong battery with your laptop because we do not allow plug-ins during the draft. You can charge up your battery during the breaks by using any outlet in the facility that works, but you can't use the plug-in during the draft.



Some people ask why we do this. For one, we can't guarantee that every draft will be next to an outlet in every city. Each draft room is set up differently and we can't guarantee an outlet next to everyone. Then we have no idea how many owners would use the outlet and how many power strips we'd need for each one. Plus there could be liability issues if something happened to the laptop if someone tripped over a cord or someone unplugged one owners' cord, etc. Instead, the onus is on each owner to run whatever equipment they bring to the live draft.



How are the leagues formed?



All leagues in all cities are first randomly selected after all entries are finalized. So if we get 150 teams in Las Vegas, we'll wait until we have all 150 teams in and paid for and then we'll put all of the names into a computer program on www.random.org. We mix up the names 10 times and what comes out is an order of 1-150. We make 1-15 League 1 in that order, 16-30 League 2 in that order, 31-45 League 3 in that order all the way to 136-150 League 10.



Then we go into every single owner's KDS preferences list and seed them appropriately. That takes a few hours for all four cities, but it's time well spent. We do that for each city and the main event is set.



How will I know what my draft pick is?



We will send out an e-mail letting everyone know when we'll announce the draft picks and the leagues. We'll first post them on our Message Boards league-by-league, city-by-city for the main event and draw some interest to the boards. It usually takes 30-45 minutes for me to post all four cities and we have some fun with it as I make a few cities wait longer than others for their draft spots. Then we send out an e-mail to all participants with the leagues and draft orders. In fact, we'll do it every day leading up to Draft Day so you know for sure what league you are in.



Can I bring food and drink to the draft?



Sure, bring whatever you need to get you through a 4 1/2 hour draft. We'll have a bar in each city and even buy the first round of drinks and we'll have some coffee and light snacks to help a little. But you should eat before you get to the draft and then plan on eating afterwards because we're here to host a national draft, not make sure you've had enough to eat and drink. You're all big enough to take care of that part; we'll just make sure you draft well.



Will there be a big draft board for each league?



Yes, each league will have a six-foot draft board right out in front. The league will be set up in a square-U with teams 1-5 down the left side, teams 6-10 down the bottom and teams 11-15 up the right hand side. The big draft board will be front and center with color-coded stickers by position for all to see.



We'll also have three facilitators per league: One to manage the draft clock and announce the picks, one to put stickers on the big board and one to put stickers on the small board that we take back to the office with us.



There are two spots available for each team and if you did have a third member of your team we could allow that person in the draft room, but he'd have to sit five feet back of the other members. We realize that in today's economy more teams may have a third member and we'll find a way to get that team in the room, but we don't have space right at the table for that person.



If you have other questions, post them here. Thanks all.



[ February 25, 2009, 09:37 AM: Message edited by: Greg Ambrosius ]

[King of Queens]

NFFC?

[Greg Ambrosius]

Originally posted by King of Queens:

NFFC? Multi-tasking today. Loading up the NFFC links now while hopefully getting Registration live today for football. Busy on all fronts, as you can imagine.