Fox Fantasy Football

Wow, its already here. Fantasy Football season has started. It has been a crazy few weeks for me. I've spent most of my spare Internet time trying to win a couple Fantasy Baseball leagues (made the playoffs in both - lost in the first round of one) and getting started for Fantasy Football. I really didn't do any research this year for football. Normally my baseball team is pretty much destroyed by now, and I'm just barely making the playoffs with no really Championship in site. This year, I had 2 decent teams, 1st place in one league, 3rd in the other. Just trying to stay ahead of injuries and worn out plaers, how was I to study for the football season? Well one way was to join one Football league, not 2 or 3. Also, no money involved this year, which helps ease the mind before draft day.

This year the league I joined decided to try out Fox's new fantasy football format. Promising a few extras for free that Yahoo! usually charges extra for (live scoring) and powered by MSN, it looked like it might be worth a shot. Boy were we wrong. Signing up for the league worked out pretty well. We got all 12 teams joined into the league and the draft date was set. A few weeks away so we had enough time to get ready for the draft. All of a sudden the date was quickly arriving and we noticed a few bugs in the Fox system. I guess they weren't ready for all the last minute leagues getting set up the week before the draft. Timeouts while logging in, pages not loading, randomly getting booted to the main Fox Sports site, were just a few issues we were dealing with. The day (or 2?) before the draft we get a nice reminder from Fox with our draft time and reminding us that the draft was going to happen, although the time had changed, one hour later. 9:30 instead of 8:30. Wow getting late I thought, but then I realized we only had 30 seconds to make a pick. Should go pretty fast, 12 rounds of 15 players, 180 picks, 90 minutes. OK, guess I'll be in bed by 11.

Draft day arrives, and it appears that the site is running better than most days, and everyone (that remembered) the draft was able to get into the draft room. Soon the draft starts and right away number 1 pick loses connection. Then the picks start rolling along. Fast, really really fast. 30 seconds isn't long, especially trying to track who has been picked, what positions you need, bye weeks, other teams, etc. Then, if a manager fails to make a pick (or isn't drafting) they get set to auto pick, which makes their pick in 5 seconds. I think we only had 6 people drafting live, so 5 second picks coming ahead of you weren't good. I think we went halfway trhough the draft in 20 minutes. Sure enough, 15 rounds in 40 minutes is where we ended up. So fast and so not prepared.

So the draft was over and we notice that one of the players that couldn't make it somehow received 8 running back and 7 wide receivers! I'm not sure if he changed his predraft rankings, but if he didn't, he really got screwed. My first natural instinct is to check the waiver wire, see who didn't get drafted. Of course, I ended up drafting 3 Vikings and 3 Washinton Redskins, although one is the kicker and the other is defense. Both expendable if needed for a bye week. OK so the site is displaying teams drafted, but the free agent listing isn't quite working. OK, time for bed, tomorrow will be better (or so I had hoped).

Well its been 2 weeks since draft day, and one week of football has been played. The Fox Fantasy site is still having major problems. The transactions aren't being displayed, and now no roster adds/drops are being allowed. Insane. Also no message board to trash talk or communicate with the other teams, which takes away from some of the competive nature of Fantasy Football. I'm hoping they get everything cleared up in the next week, otherwise this may be all we can take and give up on the league. MSN and/or FOX really screwed this up big time. I'm sure they are going to miss out on a lot of would-be returning fantasy football registrations next year.

On a side note, my first round draft pick scored me 0 points this week, while my backup score 24 points. Yes I lost by less than that. That really hurts, worse than my stinging itchy eyes.

Waj

/* EDIT - Had a spam comment as soon as I published, wonder if it could be a bot checking all new blogger blogs? May have to add word verification... We'll see */