First Round of Duties: Registration and Draft Order

It's been a long off-season for the Baltimore Fantasy Football Gurus (BFFG). The 2010 fantasy football season is near! I can hardly wait to enjoy my favorite spectator sport and feel like part of the action.

I've already started recruitment. Four others have joined me. Three more teams are needed to make the league's minimum of 8. I feel confident that I will always gather enough teams to make the league minimum. The goal is to achieve the maximum amount of teams, which is 16.

Sixteen teams is the target. This is the ideal number because it mimics one half of the real NFL. With 16 teams I can divide the league into 4 divisions of 4 teams each. Each division winner wins a playoff berth. The top 2 division winners are awarded first round byes. And there would be 2 wild card teams, which can come from any of the 4 divisions.

Once I have all the teams registered the next commissioner duty is to set the draft order. Last year I blogged about a special method to handle the draft order. The idea was to have this year's draft order be determined by the final standings from last season. I came up with this idea in hopes to entice teams to stay involved in the league even though they my have little to no chance in making the playoffs. For instance, the first team cut from the top 6 would have first pick. Then the remainder of the picks would follow sequentially to the last place team. Next, the playoff teams would follow in reverse order of their standings, similar to how the real NFL determines it's draft order. Finally new teams would follow the defending champion in order of who registers first. Sound confusing? Maybe it is, just a little.

Some of the team owners from last year said they would rather have the draft order be determined randomly. Their argument was that since we were not doing a keeper league nothing should carry over to the next season. Therefore, in order to truly start from scratch, the draft order should be random. Despite my efforts to debate my magical plan, I'm starting to think they were right.

So I'm thinking of going with a random draft order every year. Why not? The draft order really doesn't matter all that much anyway. Case in point, the BFFG defending champion had the last pick in last year's draft. So maybe I don't need a complicated scheme to determine the draft anyway.

There's another deciding factor for switching to a random draft order. The team owner who should have the first pick says he can't join this year due to other personal obligations. Huh. And there are others from last year who also say they're out. I'm actually looking at many new team owners. So it's probably for the better. I plan to inform the team owners that the draft order will be random. Hopefully all will agree. I'm sure I'll hear a few say, "I told ya."