I don't know anything about the ESPN site - can someone give me a quick overview of the differences between ESPN and CBS? We switched from Yahoo to CBS a couple of years ago, and most like it, but the reality is that our league is a straight 5x5 league. We do use keepers, but if I can manually enter them then it is not a big deal. If ESPN is good enough and free, I might consider moving.
"The government cannot give to anyone anything that it does not first take from someone else"
I think ESPN dominates CBS in every way that doesn't involve Jeff Probst.
The customizability and depth of CBS is not worth the cash required when compared to ESPN's much better interface. And the depth is easily made up with the simple use of an excel sheet or two.
I wouldn't use CBS unless I had a really custom league with lots of funky rules...CBS is definitely the most customizable. But I find ESPN to be a lot more user-friendly and it still has a pretty decent array of options, including some basic keeper support, but there's a few random things missing here and there that I would like to have. But for a free platform, it's really good, can't really complain. Definitely better than Yahoo if you want a free league with any kind of custom settings. And if you want all the bells and whistles, you might as well skip Yahoo's premium service and go for CBS, which has a lot more options. In summary, Yahoo has been passed by, ESPN is the best overall, but CBS is the most flexible. That's my opinion anyway.
It launched on Feb. 14 last year, so I would assume some time around then. But as you may have noticed, it's currently down right now, so maybe it will launch sooner than that.
Bloody Sox wrote:I don't know anything about the ESPN site - can someone give me a quick overview of the differences between ESPN and CBS? We switched from Yahoo to CBS a couple of years ago, and most like it, but the reality is that our league is a straight 5x5 league. We do use keepers, but if I can manually enter them then it is not a big deal. If ESPN is good enough and free, I might consider moving.
If all you have is a standard league with keepers, I'd go with ESPN. The site remembers your team from year to year and each team can select their own keepers. I feel that CBS can handle the more complex leagues (like auctions and contracts, minors, etc), but if you have your auction offline or if you run a snake-draft, then save the money and go with ESPN.
How is the player pool in ESPN vs the player pool in CBS? I'm the commish of my league and we're thinking about making the switch from Yahoo to CBS mainly because of the deeper player pool and the keeper freindly set up. Our league is basic H2H 6x6 but the player pool and keeper league stuff is a big consideration. Maybe ESPN would be an option? Thanks in advance.
BeanTown wrote:How is the player pool in ESPN vs the player pool in CBS? I'm the commish of my league and we're thinking about making the switch from Yahoo to CBS mainly because of the deeper player pool and the keeper freindly set up. Our league is basic H2H 6x6 but the player pool and keeper league stuff is a big consideration. Maybe ESPN would be an option? Thanks in advance.
Honestly I don't remember running into any missing player issues like I've ran into in Yahoo before and my "deeper" league is a mixed 12 team 5x5 H-2-H with C/1B/2B/3B/SS/MI/CI/4 OF/9 P and 3 BN (or something like that). But again, last year was only my first year running on ESPN but I was happy.
As for the keeper league setup, teams in our leagues get to keep 4 per year (two perennials and two later drafted players) and all the owners have to do is go under the Keeper section and pick the players that they want to keep. Obviously I have to manually check to make sure that they followed our league specific rules, but ESPN keeps track of the players and the first four rounds of the draft are automatically filled with the keepers.
Balco, you mentioned that with 4 keepers the first four rounds of the draft are full. We plan on using a penalty chart for our keeper set up. So if you're keeping a player you drafted in the 10th round you forfeit your 8th round pick. Could ESPN do something like that? Could CBS do that for that matter?
Unfortunately I don't know that because I've never had to look into that. My first guess is no, but again, probably just look into it once they open up baseball for '09.
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by Bloody Sox » Tue Jan 27, 2009 4:27 pm 
