Sooooooooo, it turns out that the biennial gala for the school where my kids are students and my wife is a teacher is not this Saturday like I thought but on 2/27. As is probably obvious, this is a command performance that I can't miss.
Normally this would mean that Unofficial Vice-Commissioner Brasher would run the IOD. Unfortunately, Eric is also unable to make the IOD on 2/27.
With my apologies for the scheduling snafu, I think we thus have several possible courses of action:
(A) Too bad, Tomlinson, you should've been more careful about checking your calendar (like everyone else was). IOD proceeds on 2/27 as scheduled. I will dragoon someone into running the thing and someone else into drafting for my teams. I should note that between me and Eric and a few other people I've heard from it looks like there will be 7+ teams that will have to be covered as well as someone else running the thing.
(B) Hold the IOD on Friday night 2/26.
(C) Hold the IOD on Sunday 2/28 (ideally starting a little earlier)
(D) Hold the IOD on Saturday 3/5 [I would rather avoid this as I know that at least one owner has made arrangements based on the announced schedule where this date wouldn't work]
(E) Revert to StratDraft after all
(F) Anything else y'all can come up with
If everyone (really, please, *everyone*) could let me know your thoughts/preferences in the next couple of days either by posting here or by shooting me a note I would greatly appreciate it and we can figure out the best way to move forward.
Well in our original conversation I was one of the people who preferred a live draft to using stratdraft, but at this point stratdraft might be the best option for this year.
I can make any of those dates work, though, as long as I know soon which one we are shooting for.
I would vote for option C. If we do the strat draft I would want to make sure that NO manager's turn would be passed over due to time restraints and that we would just have to wait on that manager to make his pick before we could move on. I want to be able to respond to the picks that have preceded me on the fly. I do not want to have to work from a pre defined list I made up yesterday or even earlier than that.
It seems to me the obvious answer is StratDraft, which is my vote. I cannot make the other dates and would have to find someone to draft for me.
In regards to Ken's point about skipping a manager's turn, if that were to happen, it would only be the manager's fault. Each morning of the draft, Stratdraft will list the ending time of each pick in the round, so that every manager will know exactly the time his turn is to pick. During that window, you simply log in to Stratdraft and make your selection. If you can't make that time, you allow Straftdraft to make your selection for you from your pre-programmed list.
Sorry, but if my time slot is from 2-3 PM and I can't make that slot, I don't want to leave my pick to be decided by some list I had to create. I am not fond of having to make a list every day to fill in for my slot. I want to be able to respond to picks as they happen and having to watch the picks happen for hours on several days is not my cup of tea. Not a fan of a draft that takes multiple days to complete. Been in the league for over 30 years and have not missed an IOD during that time. Had a wife and kids and a job that required 24/7 availability and never missed an IOD or C/FA auction. Guess I was lucky, but this the most enjoyable part of the league for me. I am in another league that does nothing real time online. Hoping this league does not go that route.
Per my new note, we'll be doing the IOD Sunday 2/28 this year.
Just wanted to drop a quick note about StratDraft though, because I am still planning on putting it up to a full league vote to use it next year.
While I have total sympathy for the idea of wanting to be able to make picks taking into account who has just been drafted rather than relying on a list from the morning or night before if you're unable to get to a computer at your assigned time, I hope it's obvious that this is the same problem - only to a *vastly* greater extent - experienced by people who are unable to make a live IOD and thus have to rely solely on a single ahead-of-time list for the entire draft.
The fact is that every year 2-4 people can't make the draft, and this number has seemed to be growing. If the majority of the league wants to keep doing the live draft anyway, that's fine. But if the majority of the league finds it better and/or more convenient to have the draft done through StratDraft, I'm going to make the switch next year.
Note that in any event we would still have the live C/FA auction as I don't think that there is any good way we could automate that.
Not trying to be hard headed, but the only way I would vote for Strat draft is to separate the carded players from the minors. Make it two separate drafts at different times. Just my two cents.
No takers?
