Fantasy Football...

The new NFL season is almost upon us. And more importantly the fantasy football season is about to start. For some people it has already begun. I had not planned on playing this season to give myself a break. I also play fantasy baseball and after that long season I felt I needed to take some time off. So, naturally I am going to be in two leagues this year for football. The one is in a free league where we do an automated draft. This will be the first time I will try one of these. You rank your players by position and then say what position you want to draft each round. The computer will then randomly pick a draft order and when it is your pick it will choose your highest rated player at that position each round. I am interested to see what kind of team I get out of this. In a live draft your strategy changes based on what the owners in front of you pick. Being flexible is the key to a strong draft. In automated one you set your strategy and are unable to change it once the draft starts. That is kind of scary to me. The other league I am in will have a live draft. We are hoping to at least do the first half of it in person and then if we need to we will finish it up online. It should be a lot of fun. I have the 5th pick in that draft. Right in the middle. Not a bad place to be since we so a snake draft so I will never have to wait that long in between picks. I have gone last before and after the turn when you get your two picks it is a long time (18 picks in a 10 team league) before you pick again. I am still not sure who I will take with my first pick. Obviously what players are chosen in the first four picks will decide things. Still, I have a pretty good idea of who will be available at my slot. It should be interesting. You cannot mess up your first choice and expect to compete. Now if we can only settle on a date for the draft...