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League Manager Commissioner's Guide
Overview:
This guide is intended to help Fantasy League commissioners set up their leagues
on the Homegrown Sports website. The document covers all of the steps
necessary to setup and run your league from Homegrown Sports. If you have
questions, or find topics that are not addressed, please send an email to john@homegrownsports.com
with your suggestions.
What to do first:
There are a number of items that need to be setup before your league is
ready for the season. This includes setting up your scoring system,
entering a schedule (if necessary), and customizing the league setting so
that the site functions by the rules used in your league.
First, login to your league
and take a look towards the top of the screen. You will see a menu bar
called the "Commissioner’s Control Bar". These menu choices
are only visible to people logging in as commissioner and give you access
to screens and controls that other teams in the league will not be able to
use. On the left side of the screen, you'll see more menu choices. These
choices are available to all players and allow both you, as a commissioner,
and the team owners to control your individual teams. Take a moment and
click on each link in both the Commissioner Bar and the Player Menu just to
familiarize yourself with what the screens contain
and what the available options are.
Included on the commissioner
menu bar is a menu choice called “Check League”. This choice is
very useful prior to the season to check your setup. Clicking the menu
choice will show you a list of tasks that need to be completed, and whether
you have completed them. The list is “stop light” color coded
so that completed tasks display in green, optional incomplete tasks show in
yellow, and mandatory required incomplete tasks show in red. You can return
to this screen at any time to check the setup of your league.
League
Settings:
All of the configurable items about how you league works are accessed from
the SETTINGS menu choice on the Commissioner bar. The SETTINGS screen
allows you to set a number of items:
- The number of teams in your league
- The number of NFL players allowed on each team
- The number of weeks your season lasts.
- The number of weeks in your regular season (for those
leagues with playoffs).
- The settings for your draft including draft type, date and
time, and draft requirements.
- The number and name (up to 4) of any divisions in your
league.
- The available positions and starting lineup requirements
you use.
- Whether your league uses Injured Reserve and how many
players can be kept on reserve at one time.
- The last week to allow trades in your league.
- The last week to allow free agency in your league.
- How trades are handled regarding league fees.
- Whether the commissioner must approve trades.
- Whether you are using a keeper league.
- Your free agency options.
- Whether NFL players may exist on more than one team.
We'll go through each of these individually. Notice that each setting (or
set of settings) has its own Update button. You must use the appropriate
button for each section of the screen. Be sure to update each section as
you make changes...
Max teams in League / Max Players per Team -
These controls allow you to set both the number of teams and the number of
players allowed on a team in your league. Once your league reaches the
total number of teams you will not be able to accept anymore teams. You can
change the setting by altering the number in the input (the default is 10)
to another number. The number of players per team determines the maximum
size of a team's roster. Team owners will not be allowed to pickup more
players than the number set on this screen. To raise or lower the limit,
alter the number in the input box and click the Update settings button.
Notice, these two settings are controlled by a single update button. You
may change both, or either, of these settings and use the Update Settings
button to save your changes.
Number of Weeks in a Season – This setting allows you to tell the system
when to stop calculating points and win/loss records. This number should
include your playoff weeks. The default value is 17 weeks (the length of
the NFL regular season) but can be changed as you see fit. The site will
score through the NFL playoffs and Super Bowl if you raise this number to 21.
Number of Weeks in the
Regular Season – This setting
allows you to tell the site what weeks should be broken out between regular
season and playoff standings in various reports.
Draft Type –
This option set the type of draft you will using
for your league. There are three methods of drafting: Onlive
Live Drafts, Offline Drafts, and Online Automatic Drafts. Refer to the
section of this document called Drafting Players for a complete description
of the draft types and how they are used.
Draft Date and Time
– sets the date and time for an Online Live or Online Automatic
draft. This option is not used for Offline drafts.
Seconds Between Picks – sets the number of seconds a team has to make their selection
when using the Online Live Drafts. This option is not used Offline Drafts
or Online Automatic Drafts.
Max to Draft Positions – this option sets a maximum number of players
you can draft at a given position when using the Online Live Drafts. This
option is not used Offline Drafts or Online Automatic Drafts.
Note: If you set max to draft caps it is recommended that
the total add up to your Max Players per Team setting. This prevents
unexpected results when the computer drafts for people who did not attend
the draft.
Number of Divisions - Your league may have
up to 4 divisions. Divisions are used in the League Summary report to show
winning percentage by division. Select a number of divisions and use the
Update Setting button to save your changes.
Division Names (optional) – You may name your divisions if you choose to.
Position Settings - The position
settings are divided into three separate groups: Active Positions, Starting
Criteria, RB+WR+TE Max, Max Individual Defensive Starters. The
checkboxes in the Active Positions column determine which positions show up
throughout the site. A position must be marked as active in order for a
team in your league to pickup/start/draft a player of that position ( i.e. if you don’t use Tight Ends, then you
should uncheck the Tight Ends checkbox ). The Starting Criteria column
determines the minimum and maximum number of players that a team can start
at the position. These numbers are used in conjunction with the RB+WR+TE
Max value to determine a valid starting lineup.
Here's an example: In your league you start 2 RB's
and 3 WR/TE where a WR and Tight End are treated as the same position. Your
setting would be
· RB min=0 max=2
· WR min=0 max=3
· TE min=0 max=3RB+WR+TE Max = 5
The Max Individual Defensive
Starters option works in the same way that RB+WR+TE Max works but for all
IDP positions (DE,DT,LB,CB,S ). It allows you to
have flex positions for IDP players.
In general you want to leave your minimum values set to 0. There is usually
no reason why a team MUST start a certain position, just
that they don’t go over the max. Setting a minimum value can
create a situation in which a team in your league can not submit a lineup.
For instance, if a team trades players and or add/drops players that leave
them with only 1 RB, and you have your minimum set to 2 RB's,
then there is no way for that team to submit a valid lineup.
Injured Reserve Options – This section allows you to control whether or
not teams in your league are allowed to place players on IR. You may also
specify the max number of players allowed on IR at any
given time. A player must be listed as “out” or
“doubtful” on the injury report to qualify for IR.
Transaction Time Frame
Settings – Each week on Tuesday mornings
the site is advanced to the next “football week”. At this time
any screens that were turned off due to a deadline (see the Deadlines
section of this document) will be turned back on automatically. You may
tell the site that you do not wish to have
Screens turned back on after a
certain week by setting the “Last Week to turn Trades on”
and “Last Week to turn Pickups on” to the appropriate
value. If you site does not allow either trading or
pickups, these options can be set to a value of 1 and those screens
will never be turned back on.
Combine Trade Fees into One
Transaction – For those leagues
that keep track of league transaction fees, you can set the Transaction Fee
Report to count all players in a trade as one single fee or you can have
each player in the trade be applied a fee.
Commissioner Must Approve
Trades – Setting this option to
yes makes all trades between teams be marked as “pending commissioner
approval” until the commissioner either approves or rejects them.
Feature Settings - Feature settings are
those that set the "type" of a particular feature.
Use Keepers turns the keeper league settings on. Handling keepers players in the league is very straight forward.
At the end of each season, normally sometime in February, the site is
advanced to the next “football year”. At this point, those
leagues that have the Use Keepers option set to yes will have their
Current rosters carried over
to the new season. Those leagues that have Use Keepers set to No, have their rosters cleared each season.
Change Pickup Type determines the process by which teams in your league
are awarded new players and takes effect immediately. You have three
options:
- Real Time - When a team requests to pickup a player, that player
immediately goes on their roster. When a player is dropped, that
player is immediately available for other teams to pickup. Players are
awarded on a first come, first served basis.
- Lists – Lists style is a "round by round"
type of pickup. Teams make a list of the players they would like to
pickup, in the order that they want them. At some designated time
either the commissioner, or the system, divvies out the players to
each team.
- Blind Bid – Blind bid add/drops work like an auction.
Team owners enter the player they would like to add, how much they are
willing to pay, and who they would drop if they were awarded that
player. At the deadline, the computer awards the players to the
highest bidding team. An annual cap of allocated money can be set.
You will notice that there is
an additional pickup type called “Auto” when setting up your
league deadlines. The Auto style is exactly the same as the Lists style except
that the computer makes the determination of which player is a awarded to each team, rather than the commissioner
controlling that function. Because the automatic assignment of players
happens at a specific time (deadline), this functionality is set on the
Deadlines screen.
Automatic Pickup Options (Auto
and Blind Bid types) have some additional options that effect how the
computer automatically awards the pickups:
- Number of Rounds – For the Auto method, this option
tells the computer how many round to go through, or in other terms,
the maximum number of players a team can add in a given week. For
Blind Bids, this option sets the maximum number of players that a team
can win bidding on in a given week.
- Pickup Order – For the Auto method this determines
the order with which teams get to select their players. You can tell
the computer to use either Year to Date(YTD)
points or Winning Percentage as the method to order the teams. Either
the lowest scoring team or the team with the worst winning percentage
will go first, followed by the next worst, etc… For the Blind
Bidding type, this option controls the method used to break a tie if
multiple teams bid the same amount on the same player.
- Blind Bid Season Limit – This is a cap on the total
amount of money a team has to spend on blind bids over the course of
the season.
The commissioner and the teams can see the results of an Auto Pickup or
Blind Bid league from the Transaction History Report on the reports page.
Setting
up your Scoring System:
The scoring system is probably the most customizable aspect of the league
manager system. Because it's so customizable, it's also the part that
you're most likely to have trouble getting just right. Don’t worry,
it's not too bad, and hopefully the explanations below will be a big
help...
A scoring system is defined as a set of "scoring plays". A
scoring play is defined as a "Scoring Type" by a "Player
Position" using a particular "Scoring Method". Very simply,
think of a scoring play as "a way to earn points". Anything that
happens in the NFL and your teams get points for it is a scoring play. An
example of a scoring play would be "A receiving touchdown by a wide
receiver for 6 points", where "receiving touchdown" is the
score type, "Wide receiver" is the player position, and "for
6 points" is the scoring method.
For each scoring play that you enter into the system you set all three of
these parameters:
· Score Types - Score
types are pretty straight forward. Take a look at the list of score types
available from the drop down list. These are things that happen in the NFL
that you can get points for.
· Player Position - again,
pretty straight forward. You must choose a player position to assign your
scoring play to. You must enter one for each position that can gets points for this scoring play. As an example, if a
RB, a WR, and a QB all get 6 points for a passing touchdown, you must enter
three scoring plays, once for each of the positions. You can select more
than one position for each score type you enter by using checking more than
one box. The score type will automatically be applied to all of the positions.
· Scoring Method - Scoring
methods allow you to set up how the points are assigned.
There are four scoring methods to choose from. Not all scoring methods can
be used for all score types.
At the top of the scoring
screen is link to the Scoring Allowability table.
This table shows you which scoring methods can be used for which score
types:
Method 1 - Flat Method - Flat scoring method is
used to assign points to score types where you get a set amount of points
for each score type. For instance, 6 points for a touchdown, or 1 point for
a sack. Every time a player of the specified positions gets one of these
score types, they get the points. Remember the number of scores for Flat
method is always one (i.e. entering flat method of 6 points for Passing TD
by a QB means "give six points for each 1 passing TD")
Flat method is for
scoring plays only. You can not use Flat method scoring for yardage
bonuses.
Method 2 - Range - Range method is used for score types
that come in ranges (measured in yards). For instance, 6 points for a
rushing TD by a RB from 0 - 9 yds, 7 points for a
rushing TD by a RB from 10 - 19 yds, etc... You
must enter a separate scoring play for each range that gets different point
values.
Another common use for the Range Method is for yardage bonuses that are
assigned in ranges. For instance, a RB gets 1 pt for 50 yds
rushing, 3 points for 100 yds rushing, and 5
points for 125 yds rushing. This would be three
separate scoring plays:
· "Rushing Yards" by a
"Running Back" using "Method 2 - From 50 - 99 = 1 pt"
· "Rushing Yards" by a
"Running Back" using "Method 2 - From 100 - 124 = 3 pt"
· "Rushing Yards" by a "Running Back" using
"Method 2 - From 125 -9 99 = 5 pt"
Method 3 - Increment - Increment method is
used for yardage bonuses only. It means you get X points for every Y yards
gained. Every time the yardage is met, you get another set of points. For
example, a RB in your league gets 1 point for every 10 yards rushing. You
would set up a scoring play of "Rushing Yards" for a
"Running Back" using "Increment Method = 1pt for each 10 yds".
Method 4 - Base + Increment - Base +
Increment method is used to set a base value and them allow incremental
scoring in addition to the base. In a way, it is a combination of Flat +
Increment. An example would be "A RB gets 3 points for getting 50 yds rushing, then gets an
additional 1 point for each 10 yds after that,
but no more than 8 total points".
Important note: It’s
not unusual to find errors in your scoring system after the season has
started. Often times there are rare plays that point out things you may
have missed. Don’t worry! The scoring for your league can be rerun by
request at any time during the season. If you find errors in your scoring,
send an email to john@homegrownsports.com and explain, by
example, which player received the incorrect number of points and ask to
have the points recalculated.
Adding Teams to your League:
At some point you’ll
need to invite the other team owners to join your league. This can be done
in one of two ways: using the Invite menu choice from the Commissioner bar,
or manually creating teams in your league and sending out the username and
passwords that were created.
The Invite menu choice lets
you send emails to potential teams owners. You enter the name and email
address of the people you would like to invite and the site will send them
an email inviting them to play in your league. In the email the invitee
receives are links that allow them to either accept or decline your
invitation. If they accept, they are brought to the site and register
directly into your league. If they decline, you’ll get an email
saying that they chose not to play.
Owners who accept your
invitation are placed into your league with a status of “Awaiting Commissioner
Approval”. This prevents players from being able to sign up for your
league without confirmation from the commissioner. When an owner accepts
and signs up for your league, you will receive an email notification of the
event and need to confirm their team. You can confirm their entry into your
league by either clicking on the link in the email confirmation or my going
to the League Information menu choice on the left side of the screen.
Alternately, teams can be
created directly by the commissioner using the Add Teams menu choice. Teams
that are created with Add Teams are assigned a random username and
password. This information can be sent to a new team owner and they can log
into the site. Once they login, they should go to the My Information menu
choice where they can update their personal information and select a
different username and password.
IMPORTANT: You do not need to
use both methods when making your teams. If you created the teams via Add
Teams (or during the signup process) you do NOT need to use the Invite
feature and vice versa.
A list of all of the teams in
your league and their contact information is available on the league
information screen. You can view this screen by selecting the League menu
choice from the player menu choices on the left side of the screen.
Commissioners are able to view additional information about the teams in
the league including the username and password of each team owner. This
information is useful in the event that the commissioner needs to login as
a player in the league for some reason.
Commissioner may also Edit
team information from the League Information screen. Editing a team allows the
commissioner to change all the personal settings of the team owner
including the team name, username and password, email address, etc…
In addition, any teams that
are awaiting acceptance into your league can be seen on the League
Information screen below the list of active teams.
Deleting Teams:
One of the primary advantages
of using Homegrown Sports to run your league is the emphasis on multiple
season play. Statistics for your league and NFL players are kept year after
year. This allows you to see how players and teams perform using YOUR
scoring system. For this reason, deleting teams from your league is not
recommended.
As an alternative, you may
with to “replace” team owners with new owners. This is easily
done by giving the old teams username and password
to the new owner and allowing them to update their team and personal
information from the site. In this way, all historical data will remain
intact.
If you do need to remove a
team from your league, you can do this from the League Information screen.
There is a delete next to teach team that will permanently remove that team
from the system.
Setting up your Schedule:
If you play in a league that has head-to-head competition, then you'll need
to create a schedule for your league. To create a schedule, use the
Schedule menu choice from the yellow commissioner bar. Creating a schedule
involves two steps: Dividing your teams into divisions, and creating the
weekly matchups.
Assigning Divisions: The top of the Schedule screen displays a list
of all the teams in your league and has a drop down menu choice that allows
you to select which division this team belongs to. Remember, you can change
the number of divisions from the Settings menu choice. In order for a teams to be scored in head to head games, they
must be assigned to a division.
Entering matchups: Once, your teams are
assigned to divisions you can enter individual matchups
on the bottom half of the Schedule screen. Simply enter the week and the
two teams that will play. If your league has playoffs, you can mark a matchup as a playoff game by checking the Playoff box.
Games designated as playoff games will be broken out in a separate
standings box on the League Ranking report (i.e. you'll see regular season
standings and playoff standings in two separate tables).
Bye Weeks: When entering playoff schedules you may want to use
the “Bye” week designation to give teams a game off during the
playoffs (this works for the regular season as well). One subtle thing to
remember is whether or not you want a team with a Bye to accumulate points
towards the yearly totals. A team that is scheduled for a Bye week DOES get
points recorded for them against the YTD totals (assuming they start
players) but DOES not get a win/loss/tie in the standings. If you
don’t want a team to get points or win/loss/tie adjustments you can
simply not include them in the schedule for that week.
Auto-Creating a Schedule: The site has a number of schedule templates that can be
used to automatically create a schedule for you league. Templates are
broken out by the number of teams in your league, the number of divisions
and the number of weeks in your regular season. From the Schedule screen
select the schedule template link to see if there are templates available
that match your league’s setup. You must be sure you have all of the
teams signed up and have them entered into divisions before you can use a
schedule template.
Drafting
Players:
There are three ways to draft players using the League Manager software:
Online Live Drafts, Offline Drafts, and Online Automatic Drafts. Each type
is detailed below:
Online Live Drafts
– Online Live drafts are a real time, interactive draft where each
team owners logs into their team and accesses the draft application to make
their selections. The draft happens in real time with each owner making
their selections as their turn on the clock comes up. A link to the
drafting application appears on the league’s home page 15 minutes before
the draft starts. Team owners can also pre-rank players before the draft if
they will not be able to attend and the drafting application will use their
rankings when deciding what players to pick for the absent team.
To setup a Live Online draft,
open the Settings screen and select the Live Online Draft type. You will
also need to set the draft date and time (available draft dates will be
listed in the drop down box. Draft spots fill up quickly so it’s best
to reserve your draft time as early as possible), as well as the number of
seconds to give each player to make their selection. The maximum amount of
time between draft picks is 300 seconds (5 minutes).
You can set the draft order
for your draft by filling in the number of the draft spot next to each
team. The team with the number 1 will draft first, 2 second, and so on. Online
drafts are serpentine in nature (first to last, last to first). If you do
not set a draft order the computer will select a random draft order at the
start of the draft.
For those leagues that have
Franchised Players/Keepers, you can load the kept players onto the Draft
Board prior to the draft. Use the Draft Board menu choice on the
commissioner control menu to add the kept players into the appropriate team’s
draft board. It is important to
remember that the players should be added to the draft board and NOT the
rosters. The contents of the draft board will be copied over to the
rosters after the draft is complete. There should be no players on any team’s
roster until the draft begins in order to avoid duplication of those
players when the draft board is copied over.
Tip: It is very
useful for your team owners to have a chance to see the draft application
and play around with it before your real draft. We highly recommend having
your owners take part in a Mock Draft on the site. There are free mock
drafts running on the site daily and they use the exact same drafting
application as the one used for private leagues. Participating in the mocks
will allow you and your team members to practice drafting, see how the
system works, and make sure there are no connection problems before your
actual draft takes place.
Off-line Draft: - Off-line drafts are the default way to draft from
the site. Basically off-line drafts occur without access to the system.
Your league meets, chats, instant messages,
conference calls, etc.... and decides upon the players that were drafted.
After your draft, the commissioner goes to the site and adds the drafted
players onto each team. To enter a teams drafted players,
select the appropriate team name from the list at the top of the draft
screen and hit 'Go'. Next add the players one by one from the drop down
below the team selection control. For each player you can enter their
overall draft position, their price (for auction or keeper leagues), and
the round they were taken. Enter the players one by one until all the teams
are filled.
When you have entered all the drafted players, you are ready to
"Finish" the draft using the Finish Draft Button at the bottom of
the screen.
IMPORTANT: There is a difference between assigning players to teams on
the draft page and actually placing the players on the teams' rosters. When
you are entering players on the draft screen, you are NOT entering them onto
a team's roster. You are filling out a draft board. It isn’t until
you have finished entering all the drafted player
that you use the Finish Draft button to actually copy the draft board onto
the week one rosters. This allows you to enter drafted players as you have
time. You need not enter them all in the same session and you can go back
at any time and change them. Remember, every time you press the Finish
Draft button you are erasing the old week one rosters and replacing them
with the current state of the draft board.
Online Automatic Draft: - On-line drafting is an automated draft
where the teams in your league rank their players in the order they want
them, and the system goes through and dishes out the players. On-line
automatic drafts require a special setup and you will need to request that
an on-line automatic draft be setup for your league.
Online automatic drafts have some limitations:
· Currently there is no support for
individual defensive player drafting
· You must specify a max number of players for each position
to draft, and the total must add up to the total number of players on each
team.
To request an on-line draft, send email to john@homegrownsports.com with
your request.
League
Deadlines:
The system supports three types of League deadlines: trade deadline, pickup
deadline, and starting lineup deadline. At the start of a deadline the
screen for that deadline gets turned on, at the end of a deadline, the screen
is turned off and unavailable to your team owners. This allows you to
control when your team owners can make transactions within your league.
Trade
Deadline: The trades screen is turned
off at the time of the deadline. Any pending trades are marked as
"Missed Trade Deadline" by the system and removed.
Pickup
Deadline: The add/drop screen is
turned off at the time of deadline. If your league uses either the Auto or
the Blind Bid method of pickups, the automated process to resolve your
pickups will run at this time.
Starting
Lineup Deadline: The start/bench
screen is turned off at this time. Teams can no longer change their
lineups. For the most part, all leagues should have this deadline set. By
default your league is created with a starting lineups deadline of 1:00pm
eastern time on Sundays.
Deadlines
are in Eastern Time so be careful to enter the appropriate value. Any
screen that was turned off from a League deadline will be turned back on
when the week advances to the next week's games (Tuesday morning... usually
by 10:00am Eastern).
Note: One thing to remember before the season starts….
Because the week does not “advance” during the preseason
(it’s always week 1 to the site regardless of the calendar week)
there is no trigger to make your transaction screen get turned back on if
you have a deadline set. You may want to wait to setup your deadlines until
the first week of the NFL season so that you don’t have to keep
turning the screens back on each week when your deadlines pass. Remember,
you can turn all transaction screens on or off, as you see fit, from the
Deadlines screen.
You, as the commissioner, can also turn any of the deadline screens
(add/drop, trades, and start/bench) on/off as you see fit by clicking on
the appropriate deadline at the top of the deadlines screen.
Starting
Lineups:
Teams in the league start their lineups using the Start/Bench screen. As a
commissioner you have the ability to alter (or enter for them) a teams
starting players by using the Rosters screen. Simply click on start/bench
next to each players name to change their starting designation.
Keep in mind, the Rosters screen does not enforce the starting lineup
requirements that you set on the setting screen (see the Settings
section of this guide for more details). The screen will allow the
commissioner to start what would be an invalid lineup, so take care when
using the screen.
Early Games and Locking Teams:
The
site contains functionality to handle the situation of early games by using
something called “Locking”. Once a team is locked, any player
on that NFL team can not change their starting designation. NFL players on
locked teams can not be dropped.
At
the start of an early game, the site will automatically lock the two teams
playing in the game. Be sure to make your team owners aware that they must
decide on the early players by game time. Once the teams are locked, any
NFL players on those teams are then set. The rest of the team may be moved between
starters and bench up until the Lineups deadline (by default, 1:00pm
eastern time) at which time the Start/Bench screen is disabled.
All
NFL teams are automatically unlocked when the week advances on Tuesday
mornings. The website will automatically lock and game that is played
before Sunday. Late Sunday games and Monday games are not locked
automatically. If you want players to be able to change late Sunday game
players, you must manually lock those teams via the Lock Teams menu choice.
Adding and Dropping Players:
Players
can be added and dropped from teams in a number of ways. To set the
controls for how your league handles add/drop please be
sure to read the Settings section of this document.
Real
time –. When a team owner
requests to add a player, that player is immediately placed on their
roster. When a team owner drops a player, the player is immediately
available for another team to pickup.
Lists
Style Pickups – Lists style
pickups work on a weekly deadline. Team owners build a list of the players
they want to add and a list of the players they want to drop. At the Pickup
deadline set in the system, the site will turn off the pickup screen,
effectively “locking in” the teams
pickup lists.
Auto Style Pickups – Auto style works the same as the Lists method
accept the computer will automatically assign the requested players to team
at the deadline.
Blind Bid – Blind Bidding style allows team owners to
enter the players they would like and a bid amount they are willing to pay
for them. At the deadline the computer will award the players to the
highest bidding team.
Details about using the Lists Method:
Commissioner
can manually figure out how the add/drops should go by using the Pickup
Admin screen to see each team’s list of players and then using the
Rosters screen to divvy out the players as they see fit.
Details
about using the Auto Method –
The auto pickup program works as follows:
-
The program first
determines the appropriate pickup order. This is done by getting the list
of teams and ordering them based on either YTD points or YTD winning
percentage, lowest to highest. The commissioner can choose which order to
use from the Settings screen. The player “last” in the order
gets first pick and it moves up the list from there. The pickups are not
serpentine style. The number of rounds of pickups can also be set by the
commissioner on the Settings screen.
-
Next, the program
processes the current teams selection. The first
step is to check to see whether the team has space on their team for a new
player. It uses the total number of players currently on the roster
compared to the Max Players Per Team settings for
the league. If the player is under their player limit, they are awarded the
highest available player on their add list WITHOUT dropping any players.
-
If the total
number of players on the team matches the team limit, the first player on
their drop list is dropped and then first available player on their add
list is added. If the team is over their limit (due to an uneven trade),
their drop list is processed until they are down to the place where they
can then add a new player.
-
It’s
important to understand that the Add List and Drop list are two separate
entities and are not tied together in any way. Also, the order that you
place people on the list is the order that you want them processed.
-
The
“Don’t pick same position” checkbox tells the program
that you do not want to pickup more than one player of any position. This
allows you to build list where you can add a number of players from the
same position to your list to make sure you get one. For example, if you
need a kicker for the week you can add five kickers to the add list, then
some other players you like. Check the “Don’t pick same
position” box and once you get the first kicker, all the others are
removed from your list. This “Don’t pick same team”
option works the same way. If you want to pickup two WR’s
but don’t want them from the same team, check the “Don’t
pick same team box” and once you get a player, all other players from
that team are automatically removed from your add list.
-
The “Always
Drop” checkbox tells the program to drop the players in your list
regardless of whether or not you are picking up a player. Remember that, in
general, the site will only drop players in order to accommodate a pickup
request. If none of the players you wanted to add are available when your
turn comes around, no one will be dropped.
Note: The auto-picking program does not run during the
off-season. Because there is no data to determine a relevant pickup order,
the program does not proceed and add or drop players. If you want to have
add/drops rounds using the Deadline style during the off season, you can
process the add/drops manually by using the Rosters screen to add/remove
players from the teams, and the Pickup Admin screen to show you the lists
that each team owner has submitted.
Note: The auto-picking program does not support having the
same NFL player on multiple teams and can not be used with this option.
Details about using the Blind Bid Method:
- The blind bidding process works as
follows:
- The program gets all of the team’s
#1 ranked bids and awards the players to the highest bidding
team. In the event of a tie bid between two or more teams, the team
with the worst record or lowest YTD points (based on the Pickup Order
setting on the Settings screen) is awarded the player.
- The winning bid can not place the team over its
cap limit and any bid that places a team above that limit is ignored.
- If the team owner needs to drop a player in order
add the new player, the player listed to drop in the bid is dropped
from the team. If the team owner does not need to drop a player to
acquire a new one (the current number of players on the team is less
than the “Max Players per Team” setting), no players are
dropped.
- The teams winning a player are marked as having
won a player and their bid amount is removed from their season limit
(if set).
- The same process is repeated for the #2 ranked
players, continuing through all the ranked players, with the exception
of those teams who have already reached the “Number of
Rounds” limit as set on the Settings screen (i.e. if the Number
of Rounds is set to 1 that means each team can only win 1 player so
any team who has already won a player is removed from the process for
the remainder of the bidding).
- Remember, a #2 ranked bid can never beat a #1
ranked bid regardless of the bid amount. This is done because leagues
can set a limit on the number of bids that can be won each week and
the computer needs to know which ones should be considered first.
- If your league does not have a limit to the
number of players that can be won by blind bid, you can have the blind
bids operate in a complete “Highest Bidder Wins” method by
having the teams set all ranks to #1. In this manner all bids are
evaluated at the same time and the high bidder wins with no
consideration to rank.
Calculating Scoring:
Your
team’s points are calculated on the Live Scoring Report as the NFL
games are being played. Scores are updated every 90 seconds to reflect the
current points you have achieved. The Live Scoring report can be reached
from your leagues home page as well as from the Reports screen.
Each
morning after a day there was a game (normally Monday and Tuesday morning), a complete statistics file is sent to us. This file
contains the cumulative statistics for the previous day’s games and
also any corrections that were made to the games statistics during the post
game processing by the NFL. Any missing statistics are filled in at this
time. They will be rerun Tuesday morning to take the Monday night game into
consideration and to assign wins and losses in league that play head to
head games.
The
Tuesday morning file is considered the “final file” and once run, the site is advanced to the next football week.
This is usually done by 10:00am eastern on Tuesday mornings.
League Articles:
On
the Home page for your league, all team owners have the ability to post
private articles for the league members to read. To post an article, click
the Add Article link and fill out the form with the appropriate
information. League articles allow the inclusion of an image URL that will
allow you to display an image alongside of your article. Images must
already exist on the internet somewhere. To get the URL of any image you
see on a website, right click the image and select the Properties menu
choice on the popup. You can cut and paste the URL from the info page that
appears and enter it into the Image URL field on the form.
Articles
are posted in HTML format, so you can use common HTML tags to bold, color,
or otherwise change the appearance of the articles that you post.
Messages:
The
messages menu choice is used to view message that the site sends to you
when events happen that you should be aware of. For instance, if you trade
away a starting player, the system will place a message in your message box
telling you that you need to remember’ to start another player.
You
can also send message to other players from the message screen by selecting
the name of the team to send the message to and entering a brief text
message to send. The next time the team logs in to the site they will see
your message in their “in-box”.
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