As we enter the third year of our beloved Fantasy Football league, we kicked off the season as we always do with our pre-season coaches meeting. Considering we now have 12 teams in the league living in 7 different cities, we once again took advantage of the only cool aspect of Google+ and convened via Hangout to select draft order, discuss rule/scoring changes, and determine how to handle the playoffs.

Draft Order

First order of business at the 2013 pre-season coaches meeting was selecting the draft order. As is tradition, the draft order is randomly selected each year. As is also tradition, my draft pick is once again very near the bottom of the list. Below is the official  order for the 2013 draft:

1. Alex Merola

2. Katie Roberson (soon to be Katie Burke!)

3. Max Henderson

4. Andrew Burke

5. Nick Ridella

6. Ross Lawrence

7. Matt Robertiello

8. Zach Ells

9. Eric Kurtz

10. TJ Dufour

11. Brett Snyder

12. Bill Gropp (welcome to the league, Bill…)

 

Voting Rules

To recap, voting rules for our league are as follows:

Pre-season, all legacy members of the league will be given one full vote; all new members of the league will be given a half vote. Majority vote is required for any changes to go into effect. Once the season kicks off, all league members will be given one full vote.

Yahoo! vs. ESPN

I imagine this is a pretty hotly contested debate in a number of fantasy leagues, not even considering folks like my dad who are still suffering through CBSSports. We’ve been using Yahoo! for the past two years and although it has its faults, at least these faults are familiar. We had two (and only two) very vocal league members adamant that a change to ESPN was what everyone wanted so we put it to a vote. Yahoo! won out by a vote of 6-2.

I’m sure it’s too much to hope that the ESPN faithful will stop complaining, but the league has spoken.

Scoring

Each year, we review the scoring setting from the previous year and vote on any edits to this process. The following reflects all current scoring changes for the league:

Player Points for Return TDs: For the past two years, any offensive player who scores a touchdown on special teams was given 6 points in addition to the DEF/ST receiving 6 points. Moving forward, only the DEF/ST will receive points for return touchdowns

Can’t Cut List: Can’t Cut List will be disabled; any player may be dropped at any time during the season.

Max Acquisitions: After considerable debate and a very close vote, we elected to maintain the existing cap of 3 acquisitions per week.

Trading Draft Picks: Value of having a live draft with everyone in attendance is the excitement of having more time available to make mid-draft trades, either of picks or of already drafted players. Any draft-day trade will be put up for league review and will require a majority of those present (excluding the teams involved in the trade) to overturn any proposed trade. For the 2013 draft, as Max will not physically be in attendance, this will be a 5-person majority to veto any trade offer.

Midseason Trades: Midseason trades will not be subject to the same veto rules as draft-day trades. Midseason trades will be automatically approved; however, both trading parties will have 24 hours to back out of any trade once it has been accepted. The premise here is that the league cannot veto a trade but rather has an opportunity to convince either of the trading parties that they are getting swindled, bamboozled, hoodwinked, extorted, duped, defrauded, shafted, scammed, or falling victim of a classic flimflam.

Field Goals: Last year, we devalued all “chip shot” field goals (those less than 20 yards) to 2 points. This year, all field goals under 50 yards will receive 3 points and all field goals 50 yards or more will be worth 4 points.

Playoffs

Although we have 2 additional teams this year, we will maintain last years structure of 6 teams making the playoffs, with the #1 and #2 seeds receiving first round byes. The losers bracket will also have 6 teams but the scoring will be done manually as the goals for the losers bracket are to avoid last place. That said, the #11 and #12 seeds will receive first round byes and seeds 7-10 will have an opportunity to “win out” of the losers bracket in the first round.

Team Names

Reminder: all team names must be finalized by 11:59 EST on Sunday, August 25th. Team names will be required for final draft day preparations so any changes/updates to your name must be locked in by then.

Let the Games Begin!

Lady and gentlemen of the league, our rules have been established and our draft order decided. The trophy and draft board are in production and our transportation to Mississippi has been finalized. I’d like to take a moment to give a final shout out to the future Mr. and Mrs. Burke for hosting the draft the weekend of their nuptials and wish you all the best of luck in your preparations. I will see you all on August 30th at 10am!