help with a offline draft

[dukedude2440]

i am the commish of my league and i am running the league at cbs. it is a bunch of friends that play in it so we are wanting to have a offline draft at my house. please i have never done this before so i dont really know how to pull this off. i know i will prolly need a white board to write on. also i think i will have to print out the player rankings off the web site. there for everybody will have something to look at. any other tips guys please help. i want to make this as good as possible please help.

[WaCougMBS]

A draft board would be a great start, but I wouldn't provide any kind of information for the other guys. It is their responsibility to bring their own cheat sheets and rankings. You don't want to help anyone remember to take your sleeper one round before you, do ya?

The biggest/best piece of advice that I could give is to have a 3rd party auctioneer or draft MC to control the flow and make all the proper notes, etc. You don't want to participate in the draft AND control and guide everything at the same time. This causes chaos and disorganization that will likely kill the draft tempo and hurt your drafting mojo.

I think there are a handful of other suggestions that other people will make, but I would start with a big whiteboard, some tasty snack food, and a top-notch cheat-sheet for your eyes only. Leave the rest up to the auctioneer/MC and have a great draft!

[jjack]

I don't know much about how they work, but I think there is some PC software you can get off the internet that would be useful, especially if you have you can get a projector. That might be more bells and whistles than you're looking for, but I thought I'd throw it out.

[Grouperman941]

I don't know much about how they work, but I think there is some PC software you can get off the internet that would be useful, especially if you have you can get a projector. That might be more bells and whistles than you're looking for, but I thought I'd throw it out.

If you are going to use a projector or port your PC through the TV for all to see, you can use the CBS Draft Room with the commissioner logged on and entering the picks as they happen. It would show who is up as well as players picked and rosters.

[DC_Commish]

I have run many drafts over the years, and all but one have been conducted offline. The fun and camaraderie of 12 friends on draft day simply cannot be replicated on the internet.

I would strongly caution against using a whiteboard to track selections. In a group of casual (or intoxicated) fantasy owners, people will inevitably select the same player twice. Use a system that will not allow this mistake, such as a web-based application or a pre-printed draft board and labels. It will save a lot of grief for you, the commish.

I vastly prefer pre-printed boards and labels. They are easy to tack on a wall, easy to read, and not susceptible to the technical malfunctions of a web application and projector. If you penalize particular rounds in a keeper system, this is also easy to record on a physical board. Additionally, most label sheets are color-coded by position, so alert owners can easily track draft trends and opponent needs. Tell each owner he is responsible for sticking his selected player on the board. As for using a web-based system, owners in my league keep all their research on laptops and bring the computers on draft day, so I would be loathe to designate one as the communal computer from which people make picks. The one downside to a physical draft board is that the commish will have to enter all picks manually after the draft, but I have never found this to be too tedious.

There are countless vendors on the web, but be careful, because prices vary widely. Split among all the league members, the cost is minimal. I have had particularly good experiences with “The Draft Kit” and highly recommend them. Most vendors will give you options regarding text size, player universe, and auction boxes.

Let me know if you have any other questions about offline drafts. As I said, I have run many live drafts and used a variety of third-party draft boards.