Official GWJFFL 2008 Interest and Setup Thread

*Legion* wrote:

But I would expect some no-shows come draft day from the first two leagues. Especially with such early sign-ups.

Very nearly happened to me, I'm just now getting back into it.

Have we decided on Fleaflicker and have info to sign up yet? I wasn't seeing it.

Edit: NM, just read the August To Do portion. I vote Yahoo for selfish reasons (since I already am in a league there), but Fleaflicker is fine, especially if my vote will help end controversy and let us sign up earlier.

I nominate Yahoo for consideration.

I'm not sure what features it may lack vs. FleaFlicker, but the 7 or so leagues I've player in there have been very enjoyable. The user interface is very easy to navigate. The stats are easy to sort. And, there are some nice add-ons for hard core FF players.

Since FleaFlicker doesn't have the "blind bids" that seems to be so popular, are there any other GOOD sites that do have it - NFL.com, ESPN.com, EA.com, etc.

Dan Kelly wrote:

I nominate Yahoo for consideration.

We originally used Yahoo. We left because of the lack of a usable (to our standards) free agency system.

With the exception of waiver (as in just-barely-released) players, free agency was a who-gets-to-the-PC-first land grab. Absolutely horrible. It was even possible to pick up players during games (to have on your roster for the following week).

FleaFlicker lets us treat all free agents as being on "waivers", meaning they can only be picked up through a claim process - giving everyone a chance to make claims. It's not blind bid, but it still makes all free agency run through a claim process.

Since FleaFlicker doesn't have the "blind bids" that seems to be so popular, are there any other GOOD sites that do have it - NFL.com, ESPN.com, EA.com, etc.

To answer this question... none. It's a feature of every good premium league, but only AOL, thanks to being powered by Fanball, had it for free last year.

FleaFlicker is going to add it. We're just rattling the cage to help move it up the priority list. (So are plenty of others who were on AOL last year)

So, did I miss it or what are we looking at for draft day?

BlackSheep wrote:

So, did I miss it or what are we looking at for draft day?

I'm not seeing a whole lot of discussion on the matter. I guess I'll just have to make an executive decision...

Grumpicus wrote:
BlackSheep wrote:

So, did I miss it or what are we looking at for draft day?

I'm not seeing a whole lot of discussion on the matter. I guess I'll just have to make an executive decision...

As long as its not squarely on the Labor Day weekend, I think I'm good for most anything.

I'll chime in. I would prefer that the draft NOT be on Aug. 28. My money league drafts that evening.

Please avoid 8/25 if possible.

Any time between 8/18 and 8/26 or after Labor Day should work for me.

Please, not during PAX.

I can make whatever provided we have a solid date soon.

Tues - Sun after 9Pm EST will work for me

Fantasy Football is about attention to detail. If you can't be bothered to read this whole post, there's a list of alternates ready to step in to manage a team. (Note: This was written before anyone replied - I'm just setting expectations. Just call me Grumpy. ;-))

Grumpicus wrote:
*Legion* wrote:

But I would expect some no-shows come draft day from the first two leagues. Especially with such early sign-ups.

Good point. Keep an eye out for a roll call on the week of the 17th to make sure everyone is still committed. Anyone who doesn't check in between the 17th and 23rd will get a PM from me. I'll figure out subsequent steps if and when they are necessary.

As promised, it's time for a roll call to make sure that everyone is still in. When you check in, please put the following 6 dates in order of preference. If you don't want to do all 6, please provide at least your top 3, in order.

  • Tues, 8/26
  • Wed, 8/27
  • Sat, 8/30
  • Sun, 8/31
  • Mon, 9/1
  • Tues, 9/2

Also, please give some indication as to roughly what time in the evening you would be available for drafting. Provide as much or as little information as you like. For example, you can be as generic as "Any night after 9pm" or you may want to provide specific details for each of the above 6 options; the choice is yours.

I'll be keeping track of check-ins and draft day voting over on the spreadsheet if you want to follow along.

Finally, the deadline for choosing a site is coming up (8/20). I created a test site over on Yahoo to test if free agency is still a Tuesday morning mad scramble and it is, so we definitely won't be signing up there. Right now, it's going to be FleaFlicker by default but you've still got time to give your input.

Thanks.

Edit: So I'm doing my part, too... and I created a test league at EA Sports and they do have blind bidding (along with Madden 2009 integration :)). Just FYI.

Grumpicus wrote:

Edit: So I'm doing my part, too... and I created a test league at EA Sports and they do have blind bidding (along with Madden 2009 integration :)). Just FYI.

Do they have online, live drafts? The little that I saw about it did not indicate live drafts - only that you could upload your league in a spreadsheet or something.

Dan Kelly wrote:
Grumpicus wrote:

Edit: So I'm doing my part, too... and I created a test league at EA Sports and they do have blind bidding (along with Madden 2009 integration :)). Just FYI.

Do they have online, live drafts? The little that I saw about it did not indicate live drafts - only that you could upload your league in a spreadsheet or something.

Yes. It sounds like you're talking about the Madden 2009 fantasy team draft option... which is in-game and not the same as the Ea.com Fantasy Football site.

# Sun, 8/31
# Mon, 9/1
# Tues, 9/2
Those are my top 3. Anytime basically after 3pm.

The more I dig into it, the more it's looking very likely that I'm just going to pull the trigger and make ea.com the official site this year. The biggest limitation I've found so far is that the most prime time slots for a live draft have been taken. (They obviously want to limit the number of simultaneous drafts for performance and stability.) Right now, I've reserved Tues, 9/2/2008 at 10:00pm and 10:30pm ET for the two leagues, but those can be rescheduled within the limits of what times remain available.

Anyway, if you want me to get the site to send you your official invite, PM me your email address and I'll set you up.

Grumpicus wrote:

Right now, I've reserved Tues, 9/2/2008 at 10:00pm and 10:30pm ET for the two leagues, but those can be rescheduled within the limits of what times remain available.

Any way you can push it back an hour?

Grumpicus wrote:
trowan wrote:
Grumpicus wrote:

Right now, I've reserved Tues, 9/2/2008 at 10:00pm and 10:30pm ET for the two leagues, but those can be rescheduled within the limits of what times remain available.

Any way you can push it back an hour?

At the moment, it's possible but that may start to get pretty late for the East Coast folks. I'll take everyone's needs into consideration and try to schedule things to meet as many criteria as possible. Also note that not only are the other times available but other days as well. For now, these are just placeholders.

Sorry, I meant make it an hour earlier (9:00 / 9:30).

trowan wrote:
Grumpicus wrote:

Right now, I've reserved Tues, 9/2/2008 at 10:00pm and 10:30pm ET for the two leagues, but those can be rescheduled within the limits of what times remain available.

Any way you can push it back an hour?

At the moment, it's possible but that may start to get pretty late for the East Coast folks. I'll take everyone's needs into consideration and try to schedule things to meet as many criteria as possible. Also note that not only are the other times available but other days as well. For now, these are just placeholders.

trowan wrote:

Sorry, I meant make it an hour earlier (9:00 / 9:30).

As of right now, these are the time slots available for the dates listed above (8/26 to 9/2, excluding Thursday and Friday due to being game days). An hour earlier would have been my #1 choice. Unfortunately, it's not an option on 9/1 or 9/2.

Edit: Looking at that list, it looks like 10:00pm isn't an option anymore... for leagues that don't already have it reserved, that is.

Any day but Saturday is good for me. Preferably starting in the evening sometime between 8 and 10 pm.

If possible I would prefer NOT to use EA, just because I don't like to support EA Sports.

LeapingGnome wrote:

If possible I would prefer NOT to use EA, just because I don't like to support EA Sports.

I'm open to suggestions of viable alternatives. As of right now, it's the only one that I know that has an active bidding system.

I never thought someone would champion blind bidding more than I do!

I think what I like most about FleaFlicker is that it makes ongoing year-to-year leagues fairly painless, and it maintains league history. They've also added a section to their Help menu that lists upcoming features and their ETA. Blind bidding won't make it this year, but they expect it for next season.

(Is anyone else getting "invisible buttons" on EA's page, where the center of the button doesn't appear?)

(EDIT: I was about to complain about missing scoring features on EA's site, but it turns out they're there, you just have to notice the invisible button for adding them )

I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary in about an hour of poking around.

Since I have pretty much decided to keep Madden this year, going EA might be interesting. Not sure if its fantasy offerings include using the game for making moves and trades and such, but I'm interested to see what it is they are offering besides doing the draft (which I find pointless, who wants to require Madden for the FFL?). I imagine I would still use my computer to do 99% of anything league related, but options are good.

So I give a slight nod to EA, but mostly out of curiosity. Flea Flicker sounds fine as well.

Dates Preferred:
#1 Tues 8/26
#2 Wed 8/27
#3 Tues 9/02

Grumpicus wrote:

I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary in about an hour of poking around.

You can see here:

IMAGE(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3187/2771748625_91358b528f_o.jpg)

The "Go" button under the drop-down doesn't appear (this on FF3 on XP, same on FF2 and FF3 on OS X), every similar orange button is missing its "middle" just the same. It didn't resize my logo as it said it would. Some of the UI things are strange. The Commish Tools page shows duplicate entries for each menu area, but only one of the two actually have the menu items in them. There's a bunch of little UI errors like that all over, at least as they show on my FF browsers.

Also worth noting is that things like apostrophes and asterisks are disallowed from team names. You'll note that every team with the possessive 's (aka Gaald's Phantom Pack) just has a blank where the apostrophe goes. There will be no (blank)'s (blankity) (blank), and sadly, there will be no *Legion*, just Legion.

I'm sure most of the things that are clearly errors will be fixed, and I've certainly used far, far worse in the past. If posed the direct question, I'd say that I prefer FleaFlicker's too-spartan league pages to EA's more fully featured but somewhat clumsy pages. But I'm on board with using whatever most people want to use. If it's EA, I'll certainly appreciate the live draft flexibility and the blind bidding.

Grumpicus wrote:

Fantasy Football is about attention to detail. If you can't be bothered to read this whole post, there's a list of alternates ready to step in to manage a team. (Note: This was written before anyone replied - I'm just setting expectations. Just call me Grumpy. ;-))

Grumpicus wrote:
*Legion* wrote:

But I would expect some no-shows come draft day from the first two leagues. Especially with such early sign-ups.

Good point. Keep an eye out for a roll call on the week of the 17th to make sure everyone is still committed. Anyone who doesn't check in between the 17th and 23rd will get a PM from me. I'll figure out subsequent steps if and when they are necessary.

As promised, it's time for a roll call to make sure that everyone is still in. When you check in, please put the following 6 dates in order of preference. If you don't want to do all 6, please provide at least your top 3, in order.

  • Tues, 8/26
  • Wed, 8/27
  • Sat, 8/30
  • Sun, 8/31
  • Mon, 9/1
  • Tues, 9/2

Also, please give some indication as to roughly what time in the evening you would be available for drafting. Provide as much or as little information as you like. For example, you can be as generic as "Any night after 9pm" or you may want to provide specific details for each of the above 6 options; the choice is yours.

I'll be keeping track of check-ins and draft day voting over on the spreadsheet if you want to follow along.

Finally, the deadline for choosing a site is coming up (8/20). I created a test site over on Yahoo to test if free agency is still a Tuesday morning mad scramble and it is, so we definitely won't be signing up there. Right now, it's going to be FleaFlicker by default but you've still got time to give your input.

Thanks.

Edit: So I'm doing my part, too... and I created a test league at EA Sports and they do have blind bidding (along with Madden 2009 integration :)). Just FYI.

8/26
8/27
9/1

after 8 PM CST.

9/1
9/2
8/31

after 9pm CDT