Fantasy football draft-by-mail
July 29, 2013 2:32 PM Subscribe
Are there any web sites or software tools that can be used to facilitate a fantasy football draft where the team owners aren't online at the same time, and are too geographically widespread to participate in an in-person real-time draft?
I've been the commissioner of a fantasy football league with a group of college friends for over a decade now. In recent years, because we all have jobs and/or spouses and/or kids to tend to, it's become harder and harder to arrange a date and time when all twelve of us can get together for a few hours, even if it's just for an online draft, and getting all of us together in person for an offline draft is pretty much out of the question given the distances involved. What ends up happening is I set a date/time, and invariably half of the team owners can't make it, so they get auto-picks, which makes them sad, which means they're less likely to be active participants.
It occurs to me that what I would really like is a kind of "draft by mail" system where I can set up the league, hit "go", and give each team owner an email notification that it's their turn. They'd then have a reasonable amount of time (hours, not seconds or days) to make their pick, then it would move on to the next team. Their picks would ideally update on an online draft board that everyone can see. I don't think any of the major fantasy sports venues support this kind of high-latency offline draft mode, so it looks like I'd have to roll something myself.
An additional complicating factor is that our league uses auction drafting, so I'd have to handle bidding, budgets, etc.
I did find this software in a web search, and, taking a quick look at the trial version of the application, it looks like a decent start for facilitating the draft board. It allows you to import players, customize positions, etc. and purports to support auction drafts, all of which fit our needs. It even has a web interface, so theoretically people could see the draft results real time.
My concern (other than the price tag) is that it doesn't seem to actually handle the mechanics of remote drafting, email notifications, etc. so I'd have to buy the app, then write something myself (or find something else that I haven't found yet) to do handle the notifications, auction bidding stuff, etc.
I'm a capable Python developer, so I could probably string something together myself from scratch, but I don't think I can get it done in time for the start of the 2013 season, so I was hoping that there was something out there that could meet my needs as-is or with a little hacking. Maybe something more oriented toward other kinds of auctions could help? Perhaps I could hack up some other kind of open source turn-based web game? Anyone ever thought about anything like this?
I've been the commissioner of a fantasy football league with a group of college friends for over a decade now. In recent years, because we all have jobs and/or spouses and/or kids to tend to, it's become harder and harder to arrange a date and time when all twelve of us can get together for a few hours, even if it's just for an online draft, and getting all of us together in person for an offline draft is pretty much out of the question given the distances involved. What ends up happening is I set a date/time, and invariably half of the team owners can't make it, so they get auto-picks, which makes them sad, which means they're less likely to be active participants.
It occurs to me that what I would really like is a kind of "draft by mail" system where I can set up the league, hit "go", and give each team owner an email notification that it's their turn. They'd then have a reasonable amount of time (hours, not seconds or days) to make their pick, then it would move on to the next team. Their picks would ideally update on an online draft board that everyone can see. I don't think any of the major fantasy sports venues support this kind of high-latency offline draft mode, so it looks like I'd have to roll something myself.
An additional complicating factor is that our league uses auction drafting, so I'd have to handle bidding, budgets, etc.
I did find this software in a web search, and, taking a quick look at the trial version of the application, it looks like a decent start for facilitating the draft board. It allows you to import players, customize positions, etc. and purports to support auction drafts, all of which fit our needs. It even has a web interface, so theoretically people could see the draft results real time.
My concern (other than the price tag) is that it doesn't seem to actually handle the mechanics of remote drafting, email notifications, etc. so I'd have to buy the app, then write something myself (or find something else that I haven't found yet) to do handle the notifications, auction bidding stuff, etc.
I'm a capable Python developer, so I could probably string something together myself from scratch, but I don't think I can get it done in time for the start of the 2013 season, so I was hoping that there was something out there that could meet my needs as-is or with a little hacking. Maybe something more oriented toward other kinds of auctions could help? Perhaps I could hack up some other kind of open source turn-based web game? Anyone ever thought about anything like this?
Response by poster: That looks like a good start. It doesn't support auction drafts, and it's not open source, but maybe I could contact the authors to see if they'd be willing to give me access to the source code since it doesn't seem like they're doing much with it at the moment.
posted by tonycpsu at 2:56 PM on July 29, 2013
posted by tonycpsu at 2:56 PM on July 29, 2013
Best answer: I used MyFantasyLeague.com for many years. I didn't do auction drafts, but it looks like they're available. May be worth checking out.
posted by jdroth at 3:37 PM on July 29, 2013
posted by jdroth at 3:37 PM on July 29, 2013
Response by poster: Wow, myfantasyleague.com does look great! So many more options than ESPN or Yahoo.
It's not cheap to play, but they do offer a free trial through the preseason, so I should be able to at least use the free trial to do the draft and see if it's worth shelling out the $90 for the season.
posted by tonycpsu at 6:53 PM on July 29, 2013
It's not cheap to play, but they do offer a free trial through the preseason, so I should be able to at least use the free trial to do the draft and see if it's worth shelling out the $90 for the season.
posted by tonycpsu at 6:53 PM on July 29, 2013
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Lame_username at 2:39 PM on July 29, 2013 [1 favorite]