OC Domer Fantasy Football Season III. Are You In?

The OC Domer Fantasy Football League is ready to begin it's third season. Who will dethrone last year's champion, the Nevada Mustangs? I have several slots available in the league for anyone who would like to play, and my goal is to get enough players to run a ten team league (split into Blue & Gold divisions).

The league is set up at ESPN.com. It is an auto-pick league, since there is no way I can coordinate a live draft for a group of ten virtual people who could be located anywhere in the world. The auto-draft is set for the early morning hours of September 2nd, which is the Wednesday after the third week of pre-season games. That will give everyone a chance to see plenty of action before ranking players for the draft. Of course, with an auto-pick league you can (and should) make any adjustment you like to the default ESPN player rankings, which will allow the computer to draft your team based upon your preferences.

Some folks aren't keen on the auto-draft, as it can be quirky. However, ESPN has made some improvements that will make the auto-draft better. The first big improvement is that each owner can specify, if they want to, which position they want the computer to draft in each round. Thus, if you want, you can tell the computer to draft a QB in round 1, running backs in rounds 2 and 3, and a kicker in round 4 (and so forth). If you don't specify what position you want in each round, the computer will draft the highest rated player available in each round regardless of position as long as roster limits aren't exceeded. The second change is that each owner can specify (if he or she chooses) the maximum number of players at each position that they want on their roster. Thus, you can specify that you want no more than 3 QBs and no more than 4 running backs, etc... This will fix the problem of teams being way out of balance by position, especially on the bench, after the draft. I think both of these changes are excellent improvements and should greatly minimize the auto-draft issues we have seen in previous seasons.

League scoring is tweaked a little bit from the traditional to suit my tastes, so be sure to take it into account when preparing for the draft.

If you played last year in the OC Domer before and want to do it again, or if you have just been looking for a league to play in with a bunch of relative newbies (myself included), send me an e-mail (my e-mail address is in my "profile" linked to the right) and I'll have one of the league invites sent to you. My only request is that if you are a member of the league you commit to managing your team in good faith for the full season. The owner who just packs it in halfway through the season and stops managing his team screws it up for everyone.

(NOTE: If your first reaction to the above post is that I really MUST run a live draft instead of the auto-draft, then you are way too into it for this league!)