Ok, I mentioned this back in September, and now we're getting pretty close to needing to make some decisions here.
To recap, I'm wanting to create an awesome fantasy league that would be taken a little more seriously than most leagues.
- I want to rent out a conference room in a hotel somewhere in Cincinnati.
- I want the draft to be auction style.
- Price of the league will be something like $150, although that's still to be determined. High enough so that people will take it seriously and probably view it as their "main" league.
- Website will be maintained with league news and message board (seperate from whatever fantasy site we go with).
- A date for the draft
- Location for the draft
- Member sign up
- Scoring system
I'm tentatively saying February 24th for the draft date. If too many people have a problem with that it can be changed, but it probably needs to be a Saturday in late February or very early March. For now we'll consider it the 24th.
As far as a Cincinnati hotel I'll make some calls tomorrow, but suggestions are welcome. We're looking for a meeting room that would hold 15-20 people, probably with a U shaped table. Something like this if I'm reading the key correctly.
As far as signing up, simply post here. First 7 - 9 sign ups get in. Please don't sign up if you have any sort of problem with using a large chunk of a Saturday for the draft. Unfortunately, not attending the draft simply isn't an option for the type of league I'm hoping this will be. Also don't sign up if you don't have the time to commit to a fairly hard core league. I'm not asking for anything crazy, but if you'd mind someone calling you on a random Tuesday night to propose a trade then this league probably isn't for you. If you can't look at your lineup more than every couple of weeks then this league probably isn't for you. Nothing wrong with that, and RR will have at least one, probably two or three casual free leagues through Yahoo once the season gets closer. Those are a good time too, this is just a little more advanced.
Scoring system is something that can be worked out over the next month, but I'm thinking a basic 5x5 roto or points based system would be fine. Potentially we could move to something more advanced the second year, but the first year it might be best to not try to reinvent the wheel since there will be quite a few other issues to work out I'm sure.
Quick note on the league fee. It's going to go towards the conference room, possibly paying an individual to run the auction, and towards prizes. Everything will go back into the league.
The way I look at the fee, $150 is fairly cheap for the amount of entertainment a well run league would provide over the course of a summer. And this will be an extremely well run league with a lot of interaction so join up! Post in the thread and I'll send out an email and we'll go from there. Also feel free to bring up any issues/ideas in the thread.
Thanks!