League configuration help index

Draft Method

The draft method is the method by which your league goes about choosing players at the beginning of the season. This process sets the contents of the initial rosters and serves as the starting point for seasonal play.

Your league has a number of options for how the draft is to be conducted. FantasyBowl.com supports four draft methods that are hosted by the system itself, and one method that allows your league to hold its own draft outside the confines of this website.

The draft methods
Listed here are the different draft methods available to your league. They are Live on-line draft; We'll hold our own draft; Single-list method; True multi-list method; and Modified multi-list method.

Live on-line draft
FantasyBowl.com can host a live draft for your league members. You can configure the hours of the day the draft will run and the amount of time allowed for each pick, among many other options. When it is a team owner's turn to pick, he logs into the draft system and makes his pick. The system sends a notification e-mail to the rest of the league that contains the most recent pick and the next team on the clock. Team owners can check into the draft system at any time to check up on the state of the draft, such as drafted players and remaining players, the current round, and who is currently on the clock.

Depending upon how you configure your live draft, your draft might last a few hours or a few weeks. The draft can be configured to automatically put the next team on the clock when the previous pick is completed (for speeding up the draft); or configured to maintain rigid windows for each pick regardless of how quickly a team gets his pick in (good for knowing beforehand that your team's picks will come at 8 AM, 9:15 AM, 10:30 AM, etc, for example). The league commissioner will be able to set the draft order, reverse (or undraft) picks, reassign upcoming picks to a different teams, and pause and resume the draft.

We'll hold our own draft (honor system)
With this method, your members arrange a meeting time and place (physical or virtual) to meet and hold your draft according to your own rules. Once the draft is completed, each league member returns to the website at his convenience and tells the system which player he drafted. (The league commissioner can load team rosters as well if he likes.)

This method relies on the honor system. If you have an owner who snaps up a bunch of players he didn't draft, it will be the league members' responsibility to ask that owner to remedy the situation by putting those players back into the talent pool so their rightful owners can claim them.

All owners should claim their drafted players by 10 PM ET on Wednesday, September 6. However, we recommend that all your owners finish claiming their drafted players by approximately one week before the NFL regular season starts. This way, your league can have one week of waivers and free agency activity before the first week of the season.

When this method is chosen, the draft date value is ignored, because it does not apply in this case.

Single-list method
With the single-list method, players from all available positions are lumped into one list. Each team owner ranks the players in that list according to the order he wants to draft those players.

During a draft round, each team in its turn is given the highest ranking available player from his list. This process repeats team by team, round by round, for each round of the draft. The number of draft rounds is equal to the league's roster size, or the number of players on a team.

The team owner can place a limit on the number of players taken at any one position. This helps insure he ends up with an even distribution of talent by position.

For example, a team owner can set the maximum number of quarterbacks to draft equal to three. After the draft engine has drafted this team's third quarterback, the system will not draft for him another quarterback regardless of whether or not another quarterback comes up on his list.

True multi-list method
With the true multi-list method, each team owner ranks a series of lists of players by position, according to the order he wants to draft the players at that position. Quarterback, running backs, and wide receivers are split into groups by their NFL conference.

For example, each owner ranks one list of NFC quarterbacks, another list of AFC quarterbacks, a list of NFC RB's, and so on with lists of AFC RB's, NFC WR's, AFC WR's, TE's, K's, and D's.

When the draft is conducted, each round one position is chosen to be drafted for that round. In other words, only players of the chosen position are drafted during that round. Each team uses its list of players at that position to draft players for that round.

The next round, another position is chosen, and each team uses a different list. The same position can be drafted during different rounds of the draft, because each team will probably want more running backs and wide receivers than kickers.

This process continues for each round of the draft. The number of rounds in the draft is determined by the roster size, or the number of players on a team.

The positions to be drafted are chosen by the league administrator when the league is configured.

Modified multi-list method
The modified multi-list method is another means of drafting players using multiple lists of ranked players. With this method, each team owner ranks a series of lists of players based on position. QB's, RB's, and WR's are not split into AFC/NFC groups as in the true multi-list method. Instead, each team owner ranks one list of all QB's, another list of all RB's, a list of WR's, and so on with lists of TE's, K's, and D's (if your league uses all these positions).

The team owner then indicates for each round which position to draft for that round. In other words, the team owner specifies which position to draft in the first round, which position to draft in the second round, and so on for each round to be drafted. The draft will follow his instructions, regardless of which positions other team owners are drafting that round.

For example, you could direct the system to draft a running back in the first round, a quarterback in the second round, another running back in the third round, a wide receiver in the fourth round, etc. Then when it's your turn during each draft round, the system will take your highest ranked available player at the position you've specified.