bigh0rt wrote:Just want to bump this and re-ask if anybody has had good and/or pleasant experiences using ESPN leagues. For some reason the league members of the league I run want to try it -- I do what the majority of them want, so somebody give me good news here...
We switched from CBS to ESPN last year - overall the experience was pretty good, but there was a stupid roto setting that I hated - you couldn't set the maximum games-played limit on a per position basis. If you had 10 offensive spots, you were given 1620 total games to use for your entire offense, not 162 for each separate position. For H2H this wouldn't have been a big deal, but for roto it was lame. They've since fixed that, however. All that said, however, for a free league with no special settings I prefer Yahoo.
"The government cannot give to anyone anything that it does not first take from someone else"
bigh0rt wrote:Just want to bump this and re-ask if anybody has had good and/or pleasant experiences using ESPN leagues. For some reason the league members of the league I run want to try it -- I do what the majority of them want, so somebody give me good news here...
We switched from CBS to ESPN last year - overall the experience was pretty good, but there was a stupid roto setting that I hated - you couldn't set the maximum games-played limit on a per position basis. If you had 10 offensive spots, you were given 1620 total games to use for your entire offense, not 162 for each separate position. For H2H this wouldn't have been a big deal, but for roto it was lame. They've since fixed that, however. All that said, however, for a free league with no special settings I prefer Yahoo.
I know very little about the ESPN offering. We're a H2H League. Anything that you liked specifically about ESPN?
bigh0rt wrote:Just want to bump this and re-ask if anybody has had good and/or pleasant experiences using ESPN leagues. For some reason the league members of the league I run want to try it -- I do what the majority of them want, so somebody give me good news here...
We switched from CBS to ESPN last year - overall the experience was pretty good, but there was a stupid roto setting that I hated - you couldn't set the maximum games-played limit on a per position basis. If you had 10 offensive spots, you were given 1620 total games to use for your entire offense, not 162 for each separate position. For H2H this wouldn't have been a big deal, but for roto it was lame. They've since fixed that, however. All that said, however, for a free league with no special settings I prefer Yahoo.
I know very little about the ESPN offering. We're a H2H League. Anything that you liked specifically about ESPN?
In general, I thought the presentation was a bit "prettier" than Yahoo. Overall, I think navigation was comparable to Yahoo, as were player analysis tools (though ESPN does have stat sorting by last 15 days, not just last week and month). ESPN supports polls as well as URL links in message board posts, which Yahoo can't do. I'm not sure on keeper settings in ESPN vs. Yahoo. In general, I think they are pretty even in terms of functionality and usability, I'm just more familiar with Yahoo. The good thing is that since they are both free, you can setup leagues in each and try them out for yourself.
"The government cannot give to anyone anything that it does not first take from someone else"
I played ESPN football a few years back. I quit the league after they tried to re-up on ESPN a second year. bleh!
CBS is by far the most encompassing fantasy system out there that I know of. Sometimes it can be too big though. It can do everything, and as such it can be confusing. It's only real downside is that it is not free.
I think ESPN is fine and it saves your league $140. I use to play in 2 cbs leagues and felt that the money we pay for the site could be used for the payouts. I convinced one league to switch to espn last year and our league really did not have any problems.
90% of my posts are from complaining about my team
ESPN's FA pool navigation is about 100x better than yahoo's. and it contains much more info..PR7, PR15, PR30 (player ranks), easy display of BvP info, and everything is lightening fast compared to yahoo.
ESPN was great, except last season, their servers got overloaded on the final day (stupid fantasy footballers) and i know many people including myself that were unable to edit rosters (viewing worked) going into final sunday's games. this was the only negative thing i remember but it was a major issue and something i'm sure cost some managers dearly.
other than that, ESPN is pretty good. i played with their standard settings, 10 team, no IP but games started, and no games played limit for position players. i think you can customize settings to make it like yahoo, but not positive. still, there are many good things about ESPN's service. one thing i thought was nifty was automatic live updated standings page, without having to launch another window/java app like stat tracker.
cbs is great too, but it's more for baseball geeks. it takes a good few months to figure out most of the important features on their service. not as intuitive as ESPN, but ultimately it has everything other sites have, in a way that is sometimes unnecessarily complicated.
i'll probaly sign up for free leagues in both to see whether they made any advancements. although i felt like there wasn't much more to improve for ESPN other than their server reliability. cbs can definitely make things more user friendly and intuitive with a nicer interface and site layout.
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by Bloody Sox » Tue Feb 23, 2010 8:50 am 
