Fantasy Football Draft Night

The fantasy football league you play in totally sucks compared to the one I play in. I mean, I'm sure you have fun with it and all, but compared to my league, your league is like fantasy football Jr. Or fantasy fantasy football. While your league is run by Yahoo, my league is run by a bartender named Dave that may or may not be a savant. In your league, whoever gets the first pick chooses LT. In my league, whoever was willing to spend almost 40% of his cap space got LT. At $38, LT was kind of a stupid pick in my league (In contrast, Frank Gore went for $25, Steve Jackson went for $26 and Brian Westbrook went for $23).

I won't explain my league in too much detail because the rule book is an inch thick and Dave may want to patent it. But it basically breaks down to three rounds of drafting. In the first round, the top 25 players (based on how they scored in our league in the previous season) are put up for auction. These are basically unrestricted free agents. You can bid as much as you want for these guys, so long as you stay under your $100 salary cap and leave enough to pay 19 other players $2.40 each.

[This year Michael Vick went up for auction because of his numbers from last year. I bid the league minimum for him and got him. It sounds stupid, but I can hold him over for next year when he comes back as an all-pro dog-killin wide receiver.]

After that round, all the remaining players are drafted, kinda like in your little baby league. But after the first four rounds of drafting, each team can try to steal two players that were drafted by other teams by making an offer on them. If you want to keep a player that you drafted that another team made an offer on, you have to match that offer. If you spent too much in the auction, you might lose your high draft picks, like my brother did. So these players are basically restricted free agents. After this it's just a regular draft to fill out your roster.

We play 16 games in the first 13 real games of the season due to double indemnity weeks in which you play both a head-to-head match as well as an at large match in which the top half of each conference gets a win and the bottom half gets a loss. The last three weeks of the real season are our playoffs and the [redacted].

[By the way, the draft took place at Copper's Pub in the Country Springs Hotel just off 94, one of the places where Dave tends bar. Copper's is a pretty great place to watch a game or draft a fantasy football team. Dave and some of the other bar patrons are sort of retarded in that they would rather watch pre-season football then real baseball when our team is in a pennant race, but I'll let that slide. What's cool about Copper's is the beer club. Coppers has 100 different beers in a bottle, good ones too. You can get this little card and check them off as you go. When you finish the card, you get your name up on the "Hall of Foam" plaque and a free night in an "executive suite" at the hotel. I think I'm going to be watching a lot of football at Copper's this fall.]

At the end of the 5 hours of drafting, my team shaped up alright. I had held over Willis McGahee ($10) from last year and got Ahman Green ($8) and Julius Jones ($10) [I had to put Jones on injury reserve to save cap room for now. I'll have to make some moves to take him off]for running backs. I got Carson Palmer for a song ($15) in the auction and drafted Brett Favre ($3) for my backup QB. I have Marvin Harrison ($17.50), Larry Fitzgerald ($3) and Hines Ward ($8) at receiver, Shockey ($3) at tight end, and some rando defensive players. I think it's a solid team and I should fair alright.