CBS Draft Room questions...

[BeanTown]

My league does a offline draft. We've always used Yahoo and we would get together at my house and as people made their picks I would enter in the selection in the draft selection screen of Yahoo and then two of the owners that are offsite (out of state) could simply refresh another sectin of Yahoo called "draft results" and they could see the players being picked as I entered them in the draft tool. Then when it got to their picks they could just IM me their selection and I wouldn't have to list every player that came off the board since their last selection and wait until they decided.

How does CBS work? I currently have the league setup as offline draft. When I go to check out the draft entry tool I can't tell if there's a way for other managers to go in at the same time and follow everything that's happening real time. I thought that the CBS draft room had a built in chat? That would be great because then instead of using a seperate IM program I could have those guys go in and just watch the selections and talk to them at the same time. I also couldn't see how I would input a pick one by one in draft order? I don't want to enter the picks per team. I want to enter the first choice, then the second, and so on. Am I missing something?

[Curtis Pride]

I don't think the Sportsline "offline" site works like that.

However, what you could do is actually have an "online" draft with people in different locations. If you had a live draft with 10 guys and two of them were remote, the commissioner would just sit and manually input the draft picks in real time.

The guys who are remote would just see the draft picks being put in and then could make their own whenever it was their turn. The whole thing could be done in real time.

I would recommend turning off the autodraft option in the draft settings, and extending the time allowed per draft pick.

[BeanTown]

Thanks Curtis Pride. Couple of questions...

If I set it as an online draft do I need to find an available day/time like Yahoo? I hope not.

If its an online draft can I enter the picks for everyone if I want to? Not all of the guys that come to my house for the LIVE draft bring laptops so they won't be able to enter their own picks.

Will the "off site" guys be able to see everyone being picked and will I be able to communicate with them through the draft application?

Can I set it up right now as a online draft and go in and check it out without doing anything permanent?

Thanks for the help.

[Curtis Pride]

You pick whatever time you want. There's no "available" time slot like with Yahoo. Just choose whatever date/time works best for your guys.

That was my assumption. They call out their draft pick, you sit there with the draft applet and make their picks for them. The commissioner on Sportsline (unlike Yahoo) has the ability to pause the draft, back out accidental picks, and make picks for other teams.

The offsite guys will see you picking players in real time. It's no different to them than if all of the players were remote and doing an online draft.

You can set it up, and look at the draft applet. Hell, you can even make picks, do whatever you want, and then just reset the thing and start over (I think you may need to send Sportsline an email to get them to clear it out and re-set everything.

[BeanTown]

Great, I'll check it out and I'll post any additional questions here. I appreciate the help.

[BeanTown]

I went and updated the draft setting to "By Online, Live Draft (all in one day)" and I set the draft date to 3-14-09. I don't see anywhere on the site where I can go into the draft app to check it out/test it. Do I need to enter draft date as today? Is the app only made available on draft day? Thanks.

[Curtis Pride]

yeah, you'd need to set it for today, screw around with it, and then email CBS to have them reset it.

I've never done this, so I'd recommend you email them beforehand to confirm that they would be able to reset it for you.