An Awesome Week In Fantasy Sports

Sunday's Ford 400 was the last race of the real and fantasy NASCAR season for 2011. My team had been stuck in 5th place in my league for a few weeks but still in striking range of a top 3 spot.

Fortunately, I switched my lineup Sunday morning and started Carl Edwards. That move earned me enough points to take 3rd place for the season! The league competition was tough this year. After 36 weeks of racing, the difference between 3rd and 4th place was only 10 points!

Then both of my fantasy football teams won their games. It's always a good week when that happens. Even better with an upset win over a higher ranked team. As a bonus, I had the highest point total of the week in a league that awards for that. First time this season I've gotten it.

One more thing to be thankful for this week.

Fantasy Golf: Missing the Cut

It seems every major pro sport has a fantasy equivalent now. Football and baseball are the most well known but basketball, hockey, auto racing and even golf all have their own fantasy game. Fantasy Golf? Yup.

I've played fantasy football and fantasy NASCAR for years. For some crazy reason I decided to try fantasy golf this year. My reason was to see if I could use a similar strategy as I do in fantasy NASCAR, which has a similar format, to win in fantasy golf. (I need a better hobby)

I enjoy playing real golf but can't watch more than 5 minutes of it on TV. Golf news doesn't interest me and I don't follow the tour. For example, I'm such a PGA dunce that I didn't know the season had already started when I registered (did you know the tour starts in January?) and I had missed the first 4 tournaments! Fortunately there's not a draft and new players can join at any time.

But I like a challenge so I stuck with it. Despite earning 0 points for those first 4 tourneys and not following the sport at all (not easy given the news media's obsession with Tiger this year) I still finished the season in the top 37% of all Yahoo! fantasy golf teams!

That's not great but better than I expected. I'm guessing the bottom 50% probably quit updating their roster during the season.

In fantasy golf you should check your roster the day before and every day during a tournament. Every golfer doesn't play in every tournament so you have to make sure they're entered that week. Even then they might chicken out at the last minute...I got burned by a couple late withdrawals. Some of your starters might miss the cut before the final two days so make sure you at least check then...and hopefully your back up made the cut.

At the start of the season I picked my roster based on Yahoo's so called expert picks. They sucked. This caused some grief because I wanted to use the same strategy that works for me in fantasy NASCAR. That is to use the expert picks to fill my roster, then adjust as needed based on my knowledge and player starts remaining. I had to abandon that strategy after 4 or 5 weeks of lousy scores.

Next I switched to starting the scoring leaders who were entered that week. That worked a little better. By the middle of the season I realized that the biggest thing costing me points (other than not following professional golf) was players missing the cut...and me missing that they had missed the cut because I didn't check my roster Saturday morning.

So I looked at the ratio of a player's starts to their missed cuts (MC). If a player had 12 starts and 1 MC, he'd get the start over a guy with 11 starts and 3 MCs...even if player #2 had a higher average score. Since I didn't check my roster every day during a tournament, it was more valuable for me to have players with a higher likelihood of playing and scoring something versus a high scorer with a habit of missing cuts and scoring zero.

This approach worked well for me in the 2nd half of the season, my weekly scores got more consistent and I climbed in the rankings. If you follow golf regularly and are willing to dedicate the time to check your roster frequently then I don't recommend this strategy for you. But if you're someone with only a slight interest in golf that got roped into a fantasy league with your buddies, it could be worth a try.

Will I continue playing fantasy golf? No. This season was an experiment. None of my friends play it and I'm not interested in following the PGA tour. So there's nothing to justify the time cost...I'd much rather spend that time with my family or doing something productive.

But if you're into golf and fantasy sports...give fantasy golf a shot.

Lessons From My First Fantasy Football Auction Draft

After 7 years playing fantasy football I finally did an auction draft last week. My 14 team work league made the switch this season. It was a lot of fun and kept my attention more than a traditional serpentine draft.

In an auction draft you're always on. I had to consider each player on the block, manage my budget, make bids, plan my next nomination, evaluate my team's needs and try to figure out the strategies of other coaches. That's a lot to process but it was exciting and made the draft more strategic.

Here's a summary of what I did right and wrong in my first auction draft...

My Auction Draft Mistakes:

• Overpaid for my kicker and defense. I let myself get caught up in a run on kickers and spent $4.
• Got burned a couple times trying to drive up prices. This is how I overpaid for my D...thought I could get another coach to outbid me one last time. Not.
• Didn't bid high enough on stud players early in the draft and finished the draft with $10 unspent. That money would've done me more good going after top players I wanted earlier.
• Did very little player research and barely followed NFL news over the summer. It's tough to value players, identify sleepers and avoid problem players that way.

Things I Did Right In The Auction:

• Mostly stuck to my strategy. The FantasyGuru draft kit on Yahoo's "Draft Central" tab provided good auction strategy advice.
• Did a mock auction draft the day before. This helped me learn the mechanics of the online draft tool so that I could focus on my strategy during the draft. Definitely do a mock draft before doing your first auction draft.
• Nominated some players that I wasn't interested in to determine value and get money off the table.
• Looked for other coaches' strategies during the draft. This wasn't easy to do with 13 other teams so I focused only on the guys I knew had experience with auction drafts. They were usually the ones nominating backups and kickers early in the draft.

One downside to the auction format is that the draft can take longer. Snake drafts in this league have taken 90 minutes to 2 hours in years past. The auction draft ran about 3 hours before the last teams were done. Some coaches were done in under 2 hours...it took me 2 hours and 15 minutes to fill my roster.

Overall I liked the auction draft format better than a snake draft. It was fun and I drafted a decent team despite my rookie mistakes. What do you think...is an auction draft or snake draft better?

My Fantasy Football Draft Day Nightmare

Serving as a league commissioner is usually an easy job...not this year. I'm the commish for a fantasy football league that me and two friends started years ago. We rotate the commish job each season and this year it's my turn again. There's usually 8-10 returning players with some new additions each year. We always do an online draft since everyone's all over the country.

Being a responsible fantasy league commissioner, I set up the league in Yahoo back in mid July, scheduled a good draft date/time near the end of pre-season and sent out the invites. About a week from the draft we had 8 teams registered. I started sending emails and making calls to get us up to 12 teams. Two days before the draft we had 11 and one of the other league founders had #12 lined up.

On draft night I logged in 45 minutes early and #12 still hadn't signed up. Tried calling the guy who recruited him but couldn't reach him. Meanwhile I'm planning to boot #11 if we're not at twelve teams right before draft time. Last thing we want is an odd number of teams and have to deal with bye weeks...that's no fun for anyone.

Then the real trouble starts. Refreshed my browser 29 minutes to draft and see a message from Yahoo that the league was switched to an "Auto Pick" draft format (where the computer picks players for all teams) because we didn't have an even number of teams. Crap!

I quickly kicked out team #11 to get us down to even teams. #11 is a long time league member, and I hated doing that, but he dragged his feet and signed up last. I thought that if the league had an even number of teams and I set the draft type back to Online, we'd get our original draft time back. Sounds reasonable and it's how I would've designed the system.

But that's not how Yahoo works. It let me switch to Online draft mode but forced me to pick a new draft date and time! And it wouldn't let me pick any draft times that night! Are you kidding me?!

All this time I'm trying to keep folks updated via the league message board, get one of the other league founders on the phone and fire off a quick email to Yahoo support. And I called #11 to explain why he was booted.

One guy suggested creating a league in another system and trying to draft there. The members who replied on the message board all wanted to do the draft that night so I told him to go ahead. He set up a league in ESPN and got us a draft time two hours later. We had everyone who was online sign up for an ESPN account and create a team.

There was some discussion about still trying to get 12 teams. Unfortunately, the format that the dummy draft league was created under only allows 10 teams using ESPN standard scoring. The scoring wasn't an issue because I would load the draft picks back into Yahoo but we couldn't change league size. I decided to stick with 10 teams. Getting a hold of everyone again to join yet another league and try to get #11 back plus a 12th team in time to meet ESPN's league size cutoff (1 hour before draft) was too much chaos.

One league member wasn't available online so I registered a team for him and sent him the login info. Since he wasn't online for the original draft time and Yahoo would've picked his team, it would be ok for the ESPN system to auto draft his team. I forgot to consider that he might have pre-ranked his players in Yahoo.

That guy ended up getting on in time for the draft but couldn't get ESPN's draft tool to work on his computer so he got an auto pick team. Another team couldn't get the draft tool to work either but he had someone else log in for him and told them who to pick over the phone.

It was a mess but we got through it and the league had a successful draft. I'm very thankful that the league members were flexible and patient enough to roll with the changes.

Turns out the guy whose team had been auto picked by ESPN knew he wasn't going to make the Yahoo draft and spent a lot of time pre-ranking players. He wasn't happy and has a legitimate gripe. Unfortunately there wasn't much else we could've done without rescheduling the draft to another night which didn't work for most people.

Afterward I manually loaded all of the draft picks into our original Yahoo league. That was a lot of fun.

So what did I learn from this draft fiasco?
1. Make sure all league members register in advance. This was my responsibility as commish and I dropped the ball. Mainly because I don't like hounding people. Give your league a deadline to register well ahead of the draft and hold to it.
2. Know your system's rules on league size and draft type. We always have an even number of teams so I didn't pay attention to these when creating the league. Yahoo supported odd number leagues in the past via bye weeks and I assumed it wouldn't complain if we had an odd number right before draft time. Well, they changed that rule this season and I got caught by surprise because I didn't do my homework.
3. Have alternate contact info for league members. Having a list of phone numbers or IM IDs for everyone might've helped me get folks re-organized quicker. If we had a league IM chat going, it definitely would've helped.
4. The commish has to make decisions quickly. There wasn't a clear solution. Rescheduling to another night this close to the season opener wasn't feasible. After a reasonable amount of input from the league it's up to the commish to make the call.
5. Don't count on Yahoo's fantasy sports support! The only support is an email link which I didn't expect much from. I got an auto reply email saying that I'd get a reply in 24 hours. No response until 54 hours later and they couldn't do anything for me. ESPN on the other hand has a toll free number which one guy called and got a live person and an answer right away.

It was a lousy situation but I'm good with the decisions made that night. We got the draft done and the season can begin. Here's hoping for a trouble free fantasy season!

Fantasy NASCAR Mid-Season Update

Yesterday's Coke Zero 400 was the 18th race of the NASCAR season and the end of the season's first half. My fantasy NASCAR team finished the first half in the 85th percentile of all Yahoo! teams. Overall rank is 50,219 which means there are approximately 335,000 fantasy NASCAR teams playing in Yahoo! this year.

Within my league, I've been stuck in 6th place (out of 12) for weeks. Everyone ahead of me is in the 92nd percentile or better (1st place is in the 99th percentile). I'm only 51 points out of 4th place in the league. That gap could be made up in a single week. My team is doing well and the hope for a championship is still alive so I'm psyched about the 2nd half.

Yeah, I know, 85th percentile overall and 6th place in my league don't sound so great. Here's the kicker...I barely follow NASCAR at all. I've watched maybe 30 minutes of racing this season and I'm still leaving serious fans in the dust. This isn't the first time I've done it...my team has finished in the top 3 of my league the last two seasons. And I play with some hardcore NASCAR fans.

How do I do it? Luck...and I pay attention to my team. Fantasy NASCAR could be the easiest fantasy sport to play. There are many variables that can change the outcome of a race. You never know when a wreck or car trouble is going to take out a driver. Skim through Yahoo's weekly previews, pay attention to your driver starts and you'll do fine.

Looking ahead to the 2nd half, I have some challenges. I used up my last start for Junior this week and only have 1 left for Kyle Busch who has been on fire this year. The times I started him were usually when he didn't win. I'll try to use that last start wisely. They're the top two drivers in the B class. Hopefully a lot of other fantasy teams have maxed out their starts for those guys.

In the C class, I have 2 starts left for Brian Vickers who is the top C racer. I've been spreading out the A class starts so I'm in good shape there. I need to make up a 312 point gap to win the league championship and 18 races to do it. That's just over 17 points a race, definitely doable.

Good luck in your 2nd half!

A Fantasy Team Name And A Dream

With fantasy football season here, it's time to start thinking of good team and league names. The right team name could mark you as a fantasy pro in your league. The wrong name will make you the league laughing stock.

It seems my best ideas for a name happen while I'm driving, walking the dog, taking a shower or some other activity where I'm not near the computer or a pen and paper. Then I sit down to register my team and my memory fails me...along with all creative powers to think up a new one. That empty Team Name field just stares at me. C'mon, how tough can it be to think up a good name?

So I compiled a list of cool fantasy team name ideas that I use to help trigger the creative brain cells when needed. I found some good name generator sites and added those to the list for times when I need a name right now.

Remember that most fantasy sites allow you to change your team name whenever you want. I've seen teams change their name weekly. You'll want to keep your league names consistent to avoid confusion.

How do you think up your team names?

Fantasy Football Commissioner 101

Every fantasy football season brings a new crop of rookie commissioners. Many of them don't have a clue what they're supposed to do.

That was me 5 years ago. My very first season playing fantasy football I got talked into serving as the commissioner. Fortunately the season went well, but I had a few "crap, what am I supposed to do now?" moments.

I've learned a lot since then both by being a commissioner and by playing in leagues with different commissioners and observing what worked and didn't work for them.

Here are my top 3 keys for success as a commish:

1. Plan early - Register your league, pick a draft date, set up the rules and get your invites out. The earlier you do this, the better. It will give you more time to deal with rule change requests and finding replacement players if needed. If you're doing an online draft, you'll have a better shot at getting a good time slot.
   
2. Communicate with your league - Make sure they know how to sign up, when the draft is, what the rules are and when their entry fee is due.
   
3. Be fair and consistent - As the commish, it's your responsibility to see that issues are resolved fairly and impartially. Not everyone will like your decisions but if they see that you're objective, they'll respect that and want to stay active in your league and play again next year.
   

Those 3 will give you the foundation to get the league running smoothly. Check out my full set of fantasy football commissioner tips to learn more.

Have a great season!