10 Technologies to improve your Fantasy Football experience

Posted in News and Announcements. Written by admin on August 23rd, 2007

I was recently reading an article about Tom Crawford, a man who was the commissioner of the first ever fantasy football league (GOFFFL). The league, which was created in 1962, was made up of a bunch of journalists and other men connected to the Oakland Raiders. Crawford talked about how he would wake up at 3:00am on Monday mornings to get first crack at the morning paper and begin tabulating and typing out scores. He also described the lack of research available, as the best thing was a Street & Smiths annual, but even that information was all a year old.

As a 16 year veteran-commissioner myself, I can say first hand that things really hadn’t changed much from the GOFFFL for another 40 years. In the early/mid-90’s I too was waking up at 5am every Tuesday morning to spend 3 hours manually entering in statistics from our local newspaper, and then spending another couple hours waiting for my dot-matrix printer to spit out the results.

As an owner, things in the early 90’s also weren’t much different from the GOFFFL days. The only research available was the one annual magazine (Fantasy Football Index). “Real-time scoring” meant doing manual calculations based on current game scores to guess how many kicker points you had. Preparing your weekly lineup usually consisted of watching endless hours of SportsCenter, and scraping around out-of-town newspapers to find the latest NFL Injury Report.

Needless to say, the times of turning in your starters via a scrap of notebook paper, and making free agents acquisitions via the telephone are long gone. In the late-90’s a surge of new technologies (online and offline) came into the marketplace to assist with league management, and endless amounts of research websites became available for owners to stay on top of all of the latest NFL news.

In the last couple of years though, new technologies have brought about some unique innovations to the world of fantasy football. Some of these products are really concepts in their infancy, but others are slowly becoming staples to every fantasy league out there.

The list below is in no particular order. Some of the products are created especially for the game of fantasy football, and others are just general technologies that can be manipulated to enhance your own league and experience.

* Note: It would not be responsible of us not to note that some of these products are distributed by FanSoft Media (our parent company).

1. FanDraft – Fantasy Football Draft Board software *: Back in the day leagues would put up a dry-erase board during their draft, and write down all of the picks as they were made. Along came the paper draft board, where you could purchase a giant cardboard grid with pre-printed player names. This was a definite improvement, but was still a very manual process, and somewhat static experience. This brings us to the new era of Draft Board technology, FanDraft. This software, which is best used by exporting to a large screen TV or digital projector, creates a very excitingly graphic and professional draft, simulating the actual NFL draft experience. Its interface displays team logos, a clock, streaming ticker, multiple display views, and allows you to automatically create a variety of draft reports at the end of your draft. Truly a unique experience for any live draft. Costs & Suggested/Required materials: FanDraft software – Cost: $29.95  TV/Digital Projector (optional) - Cost: Varies

1. Draft Order – Fantasy Draft Order Lottery software *: For those leagues that are really serious about their draft, but even more specifically, about their draft order, we present to your Draft Order. Like FanDraft, this is a desktop-based software that is ideally used by exporting the display from a PC to a digital projector or large screen TV for the entire league to enjoy. The software is extremely flexible when it comes to the lottery rules, and its actual “draft order presentation” is extremely entertaining. If you want to get your league away from the archaic method of just drawing team names out of a hat, Draft Order is a great place to look. Costs & Suggested/Required materials: Draft Order software – Cost: $19.95  TV/Digital Projector (optional) - Cost: Varies

1. Streaming Video / Video Conferencing (Ustream.tv): There are now countless ways to involve owners that cannot make the live draft. Instant Messaging, cell phones, VPNs, and now video streams are becoming more prominent tools used at drafts. If you are looking for a quick, easy, and cheap (free) way to stream your draft to those few owners that are having trouble attending, you should check out Ustream.tv. The service allows you to setup a free live stream for anyone to see. Costs & Suggested/Required materials: Ustream Account – Cost: Free  WebCam – Cost: $14.00-50.00

1. Wiki’s/Blogs (WetPaint / WikiMedia) When the internet was first becoming a key component to fantasy football leagues, many league web pages started popping up. This was usually the product of the one technologically savvy owner in the league who had the ability to create a GeoCities account, and understand what FTP meant. Needless to say, “design ability” was not a key requirement, so most of the sites had a look and feel paralleling the fantasy equivalent of this site:http://www.horserentals.com/virginia.html.  In the mid/late 90’s the “League Manager” services became available. It’s now rare to be in a league that doesn’t use one. Be it Yahoo Fantasy Football, or CBS Sportsline Fantasy Football, these services have transformed the way fantasy football is now played and managed. While these services are almost necessary, they still fail to deliver in some ways that the those home grown sites were able to. This is especially the case in the areas of documentation and historical archiving. If your league wants to keep an online record of rule changes, records, and anecdotal history, you really have to do it yourself.  Insert the use of Wikis/Blogs. There are countless numbers of these services out there, and most of them are free. They allow greater flexibility with design, and content management than ever existed in years past. Most importantly though is the community aspect. Instead of one person having to manage all of the content, it can now be a group effort. It takes very minimal ability to contribute to a Wiki/Blog, so even the most technologically inept members of the league can get on and edit a page. Costs & Suggested/Required materials:  WetPaint / WikiMedia
   – Cost: Free* WikiMedia is a PHP/MySQL software package that you can install for free on your own server. You will need you own server space, and knowledge of PHP/MySQL to make this work.

1. Team and League Logos (Logo / The Logo Company / more) A couple of years after our league had first started, we decided to take things to the next level by creating logos for all of our teams. So one year at the draft we handed out some pieces of notebook paper and markers, and for the next thirty minutes we crafted some of the finest artwork one has ever seen.  In truth,
   a retarded gorilla addicted to huffing gas could have done a better job than most of us, but at that time “doing it yourself” was really the only alternative. Today, owners can now get some really slick logos made on the cheap. There are a variety of online “Logo Makers” out there that will deliver a near-professional logo for as cheap as $20 bucks a pop. Most of these places are middlemen for cheap outsourced labor. The way the process works is this. You fill out an online form describing in detail what you want the logo to look like. This would include the colors used, the style, or even other sample logos. Once you complete payment they will contact you within about a week with 2-3 designs to choose from. Costs & Suggested/Required materials: Logo Creation
   – Cost: $20-100

1. Podcasts (The Audible / Extra-Points) While TV and Radio have slowly been dedicating more time to covering the specifics of fantasy football coverage over the last few years, Podcasts have really been slow to the chase. However, just in the last year or two, some fairly high quality ones have started being produced. These Podcasts are all free, easy to acquire (easiest via ITunes), and make great companions on long car rides.  Some of the best out there we have found are The Audible (distributed by FootballGuys.com) and the Extra-Points podcast. These two have a lot of episodes that cover everything from the basics of fantasy football, to specific player projections. Costs & Suggested/Required materials: Podcast files – Cost: FreeIpod - Cost: $50-300

1. Average Draft Positions (MyFantasyLeague / AntSports) Every year, at about 3 months out from league’s draft, our league members tend to start formulating mock drafts. Some of this is done in mere fun, but there is a lot to gain (strategically) from a Mock Draft. It can give you a great sense of what players will be available when your pick comes around, and thus prepare some semblance of a strategy before going into your draft.  Unfortunately the science behind this (up until now) has been fairly lacking. Guessing which owners will take which players has usually been based off of knowing their personal preferences, and their historical trends. This is strategy is completely useless if you are in an online league where you don’t even know anyone personally.  Lucky for you, a few services have been sprouting up lately to help tighten up the science behind the mock draft. League Manager services have been starting to produce tools called “Average Draft Positions”. The data is derived from actual drafts that people have been holding online. It then manipulates this data and displays the average pick that players have been taken during these drafts. Having that sort of hard evidence is an invaluable tool for creating an accurate mock draft for yourself. Costs & Suggested/Required materials: Website Access
   – Cost: Free

1. Yardbarker If you’re into the whole “Web 2.0″ / “Internet Community” thing, this site is basically Digg for sports. Much like Digg, Yardbarker is all about user powered content. All of the content is submitted and voted on by the Yardbarker community. It’s a great place to discover, and promote news that you find of interest. The site covers all sports, but you can dig down to just view “fantasy football” related material.
   Costs & Suggested/Required materials:Website Access – Cost: Free

1. Fantay Football Disputes This is one of those sites that make you ask whether things have gone too far? Do you really need some faceless team of individuals to settle minor disputes within your fantasy football league? When did the days of bare knuckle boxing, or throwing people over a couch, not resolve all problems? Well, if you want to run a very proper league, then this may be of interest to you. The staff at Fantasy Football Disputes act as a “fair and objective solution for all of your fantasy dilemmas. Along with this service, there is a very strong community aspect to the website, as well as lot of other very useful fantasy resources. Costs & Suggested/Required materials:Website Access – Cost: Free

1. MoSneaky.com After giving you almost 4 pages of insightful knowledge and ideas, we feel justified in a little shameless self-promotion. So here goes…If you really want to enhance your fantasy football experience, start utilizing MoSneaky Fantasy Football! MoSneaky has been around since 2002, delivering the best in crude humor and merciless fantasy football analysis. In 2007 MoSneaky has put a big emphasis on the aspects of community. All content is open to criticism (and/or praise), by using the “commenting” features available at the bottom of each article. There is also a highly active Forums area, where users can give and receive help to other fantasy footballers. Best of all it’s all free! Costs & Suggested/Required materials:Website Access – Cost: Free