xkcd

by **Adacore** » Mon Aug 08, 2011 11:09 am UTC

As discussed over in the NFL thread in N&A, I thought we could start an XKCD Fantasy Football league. So, sign up by expressing your interest in this thread.

Fantasy football is great fun, and you really don't need to be an NFL expert to play. The first time I played in fantasy I'd never even seen an NFL game, and I got through to the championship game, so don't be worried about signing up if you're not a fanatical NFL devotee.

There are a few things like scoring system, roster limits and draft that we'll have to sort out once we've got the players sorted out, but for now I just need people to make up the league. If you have any other comments on what you'd like to see, feel free to discuss them here, though.

I think we really need a minimum of 8 players for a viable league, and things will probably start to get tricky with more than 14, so I'll limit it to that many for now unless consensus is that more would be ok.

Draft is Saturday at 9:30am PST, 11:30am CST, 1:30pm EST, 5:30pm GMT and 2:30am KST

XKCD Fantasy 2011 Managers & Teams:

1. Adacore [commissioner] - Adacorian Aardwolves (1)
2. kernelpanic - Octopus (7)
3. bentheimmigrant - FaiGles (3)
4. jakovasaur - Jakovasaur (2)
5. xX17GHDUDE17Xx - xX17GHDUDE17Xx (6)
6. Dark567 - Dark567 (5)
7. emceng - Bletchley Park (8)
8. Lorenz - Lorenz (4)
9. infina - The Rack (9)
10. Heisenberg (10)

XKCD Fantasy League @ NFL.com

by **kernelpanic** » Mon Aug 08, 2011 2:46 pm UTC

I'll join, please.
Also, I think that the standard roster is too limited, maybe adding a WR/RB flex option?

by **bentheimmigrant** » Mon Aug 08, 2011 3:02 pm UTC

I'm in. How do we want to work the draft? Seems to me timezones could make things a bit difficult. They offer a thing where you rank your top players, but it's not clever enough to stop picking a position after it's full, so people can end up with like 8 RBs.

by **kernelpanic** » Mon Aug 08, 2011 3:36 pm UTC

We could do the draft a Sunday morning, about 12 pm CST, so people in Europe are doing it at 6 pm, and people in the US west coast at 10 am, so reasonably comfortable hours for those involved.

by **bentheimmigrant** » Mon Aug 08, 2011 4:17 pm UTC

And in Korea?

by **kernelpanic** » Mon Aug 08, 2011 4:42 pm UTC

Oh, didn't notice. That's a problem. Maybe 6 am PST, so 8 am CST, 2 pm GMT and 11pm KST? So it's uncomfortable for people at the extremes, but not at a wild hour like 3 am.

by **jakovasaur** » Mon Aug 08, 2011 5:41 pm UTC

Yup, I can play, and that sounds like a good draft time to me.

by **bentheimmigrant** » Mon Aug 08, 2011 7:53 pm UTC

kernelpanic wrote:Oh, didn't notice. That's a problem. Maybe 6 am PST, so 8 am CST, 2 pm GMT and 11pm KST? So it's uncomfortable for people at the extremes, but not at a wild hour like 3 am.

Being in the middle is handy.

Do those times work for everyone? Adacore - if you're a night owl we could always shift later for the folks in PST.

What day works best? Personally, Saturday would be easiest, but I'm sure I can manage just about any day. Maybe once we have everyone signed up we can set up a doodle survey.

by **Adacore** » Mon Aug 08, 2011 11:03 pm UTC

The draft time would depend on the day for me. If we do the draft on a Friday or Saturday then I can (and probably will) be up until the small hours. My suggestion, then, is Saturday at 9am PST, 11am CST, 1pm EST, 5pm GMT and 2am KST - thoughts? What about the date? The sensible option would be the 3rd September, I guess, as it's the last Saturday before the season kicks off, but that's Labor Day weekend in the US so I'm not sure everyone will be around?

It might be possible to set up the roster limits such that it enforces a sensible (or at least not completely ridiculous) draft strategy, but that would probably severely stifle the choices for people who can make the live draft. I have played on sites in the past which allow amazing customization options for autopilot in the draft, but I was planning on using something considerably simpler and easier for this league.

I agree on the addition of a flex RB/WR(/TE) position.

by **kernelpanic** » Tue Aug 09, 2011 12:15 am UTC

The league (NFL.com) I've managed for the last 2 years and worked very well allows you to have any combination of bench players for flexibility - For example, last year I had Peyton Manning, so I didn't need a backup QB, but had very bad WRs, so I had lots of benches to at least gain some points. The roster positions I have are: 1 QB, 2 RB, 3 WR, 1 TE, 1 K, 1 DST, 1 WR/RB/TE, and 7 benches. The scoring system we use is custom, there is a lot of emphasis on passing/receiving, but it's well balanced with rushing, which tends to have too much importance in standard scoring. There are also some (not many) points awarded for kick return yards and TDs in both DST and backfield players.

As for the draft, I think NFL.com's autopilot is good enough that you don't get only useless players, but there is an advantage for people who can arrive in time, specially in later rounds.

I agree with the time and date, but if people have plans for labor day then we could do it the 27th.

by **xX17GHDUDE17Xx** » Tue Aug 09, 2011 1:32 am UTC

I'll sign up but I've never been in a fantasy league before so I'll need some kind of run-down for the rules/scoring and stuff. Saturday would be good for me, any time for a draft. So... yeah.

by **kernelpanic** » Wed Aug 10, 2011 1:27 am UTC

xX17GHDUDE17Xx wrote:I'll sign up but I've never been in a fantasy league before so I'll need some kind of run-down for the rules/scoring and stuff. Saturday would be good for me, any time for a draft. So... yeah.

The point is that you have a team of unique players (no one else on the league have any of them) who score points depending on how well they did in their real life game. You go against another team, and whoever scores more points wins. There is a special position, DST, which is a whole defense, for example you might have the Bears DST as a player in your team. The scoring is usually 1 point every set number of yards for passing/receiving/rushing, 6 points for TD, 3 points for FG, -3 points for INT, among others. The basic strategy is to put the players who you think will be better against the real-life team they're playing against, so if your RBs are Adrian Peterson and Beanie Wells, it might be obvious you should put AP. But wait! AP is going against the Steelers, and Wells is going against the Bills, so it's a harder decision, I would go with Wells in this case. There are other more complicated strategies, for example if you and your opponent have lots of players in the same team, depending on whether you think they'll win or not you bench them or you let them play.

by **xX17GHDUDE17Xx** » Wed Aug 10, 2011 1:36 am UTC

So one week it will be say my picked players against against kernel's and whoever allots the most points gets a "win"? I thought you simply allotted as many points as possible and the top 8 or so points scorers advanced to have more picks in the playoffs. Maybe I just made that up, who knows

by **kernelpanic** » Wed Aug 10, 2011 6:26 pm UTC

xX17GHDUDE17Xx wrote:So one week it will be say my picked players against against kernel's and whoever allots the most points gets a "win"? I thought you simply allotted as many points as possible and the top 8 or so points scorers advanced to have more picks in the playoffs. Maybe I just made that up, who knows

You just made that up.

by **Adacore** » Wed Aug 10, 2011 11:38 pm UTC

We need at least three more players, ideally at least five more, to get this show on the road. I may try and recruit some people this week.

A quick fantasy football primer for people who don't necessarily even know anything about american football:

As I said before, you really don't need to know much - or indeed anything at all - about american football / NFL to play fantasy. The first season I played, I didn't know any of the rules, had never seen any american football games or heard of any players except OJ, and I still placed second in a 12-team league. A little bit of reading up on fantasy play can go a long way, though - my favoured source is CBSSports.com, but I think I'm unusual there: most people prefer other sites.

At the start of the season, you draft a team of players; each player can only be owned once in the league. You will want a starting lineup with a good Quarterback (QB), two running backs (RB), two wide receivers (WRs), a tight end (TE), kicker (K) and defense/special team (DST). You don't really need to know what these players actually do in order to play fantasy - you just need to know that you get points for your players (a) moving the ball a given number of yards down the field and (b) scoring points for their teams.

Selecting which NFL players to use sounds pretty daunting, but actually isn't too hard to get started on - there are dozens of sites which carry fantasy football news, and most of them regularly publish ranked lists at every position for fantasy play.

Each week, your team will be matched up against one of the other teams in the league in a head-to-head format, whoever scores the most points that week wins. Towards the end of the season, when each team has played every other team once (or possibly twice, for 8 team leagues), the teams with the best win-loss record over the season go into a playoff bracket, with the bracket winner being the champion.

by **Dark567** » Thu Aug 11, 2011 12:01 am UTC

Oh, I want in!

by **xX17GHDUDE17Xx** » Sat Aug 13, 2011 8:44 am UTC

Shamelessly bumping (as if that ever helps).

If we don't get at least 2 more people to sign up, I'm quitting xkcd.

by **emceng** » Tue Aug 16, 2011 1:45 pm UTC

I'd be down for this, though since they blocked sports websites at work I am much less invested in the NFL in general.

by **Lorenz** » Tue Aug 16, 2011 3:37 pm UTC

Sign me in. I may have trouble being online on draft day though, regardless of when it is.

Dark Souls Challenge · by **Mishrak** » Tue Aug 16, 2011 4:08 pm UTC

I'll play. Just make sure draft day is on a weekend!

by **_infina_** » Tue Aug 16, 2011 5:52 pm UTC

I'll try to do this.

by **Adacore** » Wed Aug 17, 2011 2:53 am UTC

Well that brings us up to 10, which is enough for a league

Only 4 spots left now. How long do people think we should keep the signups open? If we're doing a live draft on the 3rd September I guess there's no real urgency, and I don't think anyone has objected to that date yet.

by **kernelpanic** » Wed Aug 17, 2011 3:13 pm UTC

Adacore wrote:Well that brings us up to 10, which is enough for a league

Only 4 spots left now. How long do people think we should keep the signups open? If we're doing a live draft on the 3rd September I guess there's no real urgency, and I don't think anyone has objected to that date yet.

How about until the 31st of August? That way, there's time to create the league and people to sign up without problems.

What site will the league be on? I've used NFL, CBSSports and a couple of others, and I think that NFL leagues have the best interface for managing the league and for users.

by **bentheimmigrant** » Wed Aug 17, 2011 3:36 pm UTC

The other league I'm in is NFL.com, I like the interface, and it'll be convenient, so that's my vote.

by **xX17GHDUDE17Xx** » Wed Aug 17, 2011 10:24 pm UTC

I'll vote for NFL just 'cuz Kernel seems to know what he's talking about

*scurries away to mark down September 3*

by **Adacore** » Thu Aug 18, 2011 1:01 am UTC

Ok, we'll use the NFL site unless someone has strong objections. I think I'll put the signup deadline a little earlier - say the 26th August - in case we have any problems getting people registered and into the league.

by **Adacore** » Fri Aug 26, 2011 12:11 am UTC

Bump for last chance to sign up!

I'll create the league on NFL.com tomorrow, sized for however many players we have, then send everyone invites to join. EDIT: So, I slightly forgot to do this. I'll do it this evening.

by **bentheimmigrant** » Mon Aug 29, 2011 10:11 am UTC

Which evening is this evening?

by **Adacore** » Mon Aug 29, 2011 10:13 am UTC

Right about now, my time.

by **Adacore** » Mon Aug 29, 2011 10:38 am UTC

The league is up, I'll send out a PM to all y'all who signed up: send me an email address and I can invite you to the league. I left most of the scoring settings fairly standard, expanded flex to include TE as well as WR/RB and increased the bench size to 8, since there are only 10 of us. It can still be changed up until the first game, so if anyone has suggestions/objections/ideas feel free to discuss them here.

by **emceng** » Tue Aug 30, 2011 4:30 pm UTC

Do we have thee draft scheduled yet? I guess I don't know when the season actually starts, but drafting next weekend probably won't work for me. Not sure what I'm doing over Labor Day, but hopefully less sitting inside at my computer, and more having fun with people.

by **Lorenz** » Tue Aug 30, 2011 4:46 pm UTC

Looks like it's set for this saturday

by **xX17GHDUDE17Xx** » Tue Aug 30, 2011 6:42 pm UTC

Just making sure I have this right... Draft is at 1 pm eastern time, noon central, 11 mountain, etc.?

by **Lorenz** » Tue Aug 30, 2011 7:37 pm UTC

I believe that's correct.

Do we know who we're missing?

by **kernelpanic** » Tue Aug 30, 2011 8:47 pm UTC

Signed in. I'm Octopus.

by **Lorenz** » Tue Aug 30, 2011 8:50 pm UTC

I'm... Lorenz

Is it possible to move the draft hour by half an hour before or afterwards? I have another draft at that same time.

by **Adacore** » Tue Aug 30, 2011 11:02 pm UTC

I can move the draft half an hour or an hour in either direction, if people want - later is probably better than earlier for me, and I imagine most of you too? I'm not sure I'll be able to move it to a different day, though. The season starts on September 8th, and I've got work so can't draft at a sensible time for the rest of y'all on Sunday/Monday (which is still Labor Day Weekend anyway), and I think other people will have problems drafting on Tuesday/Wednesday.

If you like, emceng, I might be able to draft for you - I don't know how/if that works on NFL.com, but it was possible in the last league I played in on another site. I don't know how good the autodraft system is, but if you set up your draft rankings you could scrape through with that - I've never seen autodraft build a good team, though.

Finally - some of you have already, but it would be good to get team names in this thread! I'll put the team names in the OP once I have them. I don't know who the final player who hasn't yet signed up is (because I can't tell who is signed up from the team names alone), and I need to send them a reminder or find a replacement by Saturday if they're not signed up soon.

by **xX17GHDUDE17Xx** » Wed Aug 31, 2011 3:58 am UTC

Long as it's over by 530-ish central time I'm good.

by **Lorenz** » Wed Aug 31, 2011 4:09 am UTC

If you like, emceng, I might be able to draft for you - I don't know how/if that works on NFL.com, but it was possible in the last league I played in on another site. I don't know how good the autodraft system is, but if you set up your draft rankings you could scrape through with that - I've never seen autodraft build a good team, though.

The autodraft on NFL.com is actually quite good. I was on a 14 team league last year that I had to autodraft, without even setting up personal rankings and my team was very good. I ended up going to the finals. With personal rankings you can do even better.

by **bentheimmigrant** » Wed Aug 31, 2011 9:40 am UTC

Lorenz wrote:With personal rankings you can do even better.

That's making quite an assumption about our personal ranking skills.

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