What site to use for school fantasy auction league?

[scotty.ballgame]

Hi all,
I'm a middle school teacher and have run a league with my students for the last few years. We've had a live draft each year over the course of a few sessions after school, and then I've used Yahoo (and ESPN last year) for their free leagues and it's been great. I register each student for their own unique username and password, send invites out to those emails that have access to, and I do all the joining of the league for them so everything's up and running for the kids once the season begins.

I'm now thinking about having an auction draft instead of the traditional snake draft. I want my students to do some math and keep track of their $260 budget and it'll incorporate some strategy into how they pick their squads. My question though is - What site should I use for this league now that we're having an auction, and how will free agent acquisitions/waiver wire pickups work during the season? It's the first time I'm doing this so please bear with me. You can't have an auction draft, make a team based on $260 to begin the season with, and then just say free agent pickups are based on waivers, can you? I can't really spend $80 for a CBS league as I'm not being reimbursed by my district and I also don't think I can get each student a CBS username and password if they're under 13 years old.

Any cheaper sites (or free) out there that I could use to enter offline auction results that also have a FAAB feature for acquisitions during the season? One that I can also have my students register with for free (or I could do it for them) to join the league. Please let me know what you think my best options are (other than just keeping it simple and going back to Yahoo or ESPN with a regular snake draft).
Thanks, Scott

[Jaysfan84]

You would be able to run an auction league on yahoo. I was in one last year, but we are now switching over to cbssportsline. It can work.

You can just lock all the teams so they can not do add/drops. From there, you could run your FA system through email, getting all members of the league to send you their bids by, say, 7pm on Sunday. I am not sure if you were sending emails with them before, or anything like that, but I know if the kids don't have their own emails, they can send messages through the yahoo system as well to you. You go in Sunday night, add the players to the respective teams, and you, or they can adjust their lineups. Another option would be to have the FA bidding be open, and done on the 'league message board' on the league's yahoo website.

Hope this helps?

[scotty.ballgame]

Thanks Jaysfan. Yes, this could work - just more work on my part which stinks. I think having them email me might be better since it'd be blind and they wouldn't know who the high bidder was until I placed the player on the winning team. But, if I have a team too it won't work, so then the messageboard would probably be the way to go.

[MTUCache]

More importantly... why the heck did I never have any teachers this cool when I was in school?