The Draft
Just like in real football, each year fantasy football leagues have a draft (note: in dynasty leagues, this normally consists of NFL rookies only), in which each team drafts NFL players. These players are kept unless "dropped" (aka become free agents) or are traded. In most leagues, no player may be owned by more than one team, (although some leagues do allow for this).
There are essentially two types of drafts. In a traditional "serpentine" (aka "snake") draft, owners take turns drafting players in a "serpentine" method, i.e. the owner who picks 1st in the odd rounds picks last in the even rounds, in the interests of fairness.
In an auction draft, each owner has an (imaginary) budget which he must use to purchase all his players in an auction format. Owners take turns nominating players for open bid. The owner who bids the highest on each player receives that player (reducing their remaining budget accordingly). Auction drafts are viewed as the more fair method since every owner begins on equal ground. A few leagues use a hybrid of the two styles, selecting a portion of their roster via auction, with the remainder selected through a serpentine method. As the NFL has evolved, so has fantasy football draft strategies. The most commonly used strategies are value based drafting and opinion based drafting. Value base drafting requires projecting the total fantasy point value for each player in the draft and basically, while standard cheat sheet based drafting requires ranking each player based on your opinion of worth, or other people’s opinion of said players worth.
Drafts can be conducted in "live" or "auto" formats. Live drafts involve players utilizing real-time strategy and reactionary measures to acquire specific available players. Auto-drafts use preliminary draft rankings set by each team to automate the draft cycle and establish the teams. Live drafts are often preferred to automated as they are believed to require more skill.
The location of fantasy football drafts depend on the geographic location of each team manager (in-person or remotely via the internet). The growing popularity of American Fantasy Football has resulted in the some managers traveling cross-country to attend annual league drafts. Group drafts conducted in-person are typically scheduled many weeks in advance. Common locations include boardrooms, offices, bars, and/or dining establishments.
Read more about this topic: Fantasy Football (American)
Famous quotes containing the word draft:
“News is the first rough draft of history.”
—Philip L. Graham (1915–1963)
“Why not draft executive and management brains to prepare and produce the equipment the $21-a-month draftee must use and forget this dollar-a-year tommyrot? Would we send an army into the field under a dollar-a-year General who had to be home Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays?”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)