Results of the Expert Draft Part 2

John Hansen, FantasyGuru.com

See his team

Q: Fred Jackson has been a source of disagreement in many drafts that I have been in… You drafted him in the 8th round… where do you think he’s drafted with no Marshawn Lynch suspension? Where would he be drafted if Marshawn were out for the season?

A: With no Lynch suspension I’d guess he’d be about a 12th round pick. I wasn’t thrilled with taking him in the 8th, but that’s not bad for a guy I can start to open the season. Plus, I think he’s better than Lynch, who I don’t think has been the same back he was his rookie year the last 12-14 months.

Q: You took Jason Witten as the 2nd TE off the board… How do you rate the big 4 TE’s? and how much difference is there between the four?

A: That isn’t my usual deal, drafting a TE early, but this league is a little light with starters with only 2 RBs and 2 WRs plus a flex (as opposed to 3 WRs and a flex), so I decided to get the best player available. Plus I think Witten will be a huge part of their offense, more so than last year. Other than Witten and Gates, I’d rather hold off on the position. Dallas Clark is very solid, but he doesn’t excite me based on his draft stock, and I’m not a big Tony G fan in 2009.

Q: Including your team, what players do you consider to be the steal of the draft and the reach of the draft?

A: Even though it’s not a PPR league, getting Reggie Bush with the 9th pick of the 5th round was a damn good value based on his upside. Ray Rice in the 4th round will go down as a reach. This isn’t a PPR league, and Rice hasn’t yet shown he can run inside out of a power formation. He will likely go down as the most over hyped player of 2009.

Results of the Experts Draft

Hey all,

The experts draft was last night and the results can be seen here

As you can see it’s probably the best collection of the so-called experts.

Each day I will be publishing the experts reactions to their draft based on questions that I asked them. Today we feature defending champion, Chris Liss from Rotowire.com (see his team here.

Me: You decided to take two TE (Keller and Gates)? What was your thinking here?

Liss: It was the 13th round, so I just took the best player available. We can also use TE at the flex during bye weeks, so maybe if I’m desperate, and Keller has a good matchup, I’ll do that. Or maybe I’ll drop him.

Me: You took Schaub and Cutler on back to back picks? How much of this was done with trading in mind? What was your thinking?

Liss: I was going to take Schaub and Ahmad Bradshaw, who I like a lot. But I have Bradshaw in three other leagues, so if he does well, I’ll be happy anyway. And I thought it would be fun to fuck everyone over who was still waiting on a quarterback. Maybe some trades will come out of it, but just as likely one of those guys will get hurt or be terrible, and I’ll be glad I had two. Actually, it won’t matter because at least 3-5 waiver wire QBs will probably finish in the top 10.

Me: Including your team, what players were the steal of the draft and reach of the draft?

I hope people call my picks the reach of the draft. Last year someone called Michael Turner who I drafted with the last pick of the second round the reach of the draft, so it’s a huge blessing to be tabbed for that, given how clueless everyone in expert leagues is. Hopefully, that’s not the case here because I think Berry reached for Roddy White at 18. I like White just fine, but where’s the upside? It’s a run-heavy team that just added an elite red-zone target in Tony Gonzalez. Greg Jennings, Steve Smith, Kevin Smith and Pierre Thomas, who were still on the board, were better choices in my opinion. Berry doesn’t deserve the benefit of my calling out his reach, but I had to pick someone.

As for the steal, I like Rashard Mendenhall in Round 9 by Erickson. Mendenhall’s essentially in the same situation as Donald Brown who went three rounds earlier.

Anyone Can Be an Expert!!!

Well at least in fantasy football…

So a couple weeks ago, I announced our Facebook Experts League field…

Matt Berry, Nate Ravitz from ESPN
Andy Behrens, Brandon Funston from Yahoo
Jay Clemons, SI.com, FSTA Fantasy Football Writer of the Year
William Del Pilar, founder of KFFL
Ryan Houston, founder of Fanball
Chris Liss, Jeff Erickson from Rotowire
John Hansen, fantasyguru.com

and one qualifying member from our Facebook app.

In order to be a qualifying member you need to have created at least two leagues on our fantasy football app on Facebook that have at least 10 players in them…

If you qualify and are interested in beating the experts send me a note on Facebook by midnight EST tonight…

Draft is tomorrow (Tuesday) at 7 PM EST/4 PM PST.

Fantasy Football Goes Mobile

So as I mentioned I’ve been playing fantasy football since before the Internet. We used to keep score via spreadsheets and each week had to wait or the USA Today to publish their weekly stats. If the commissioner of the league was out of contention, often the stats wouldn’t get done for weeks at a time and the league became a mess.

Enter the Internet and web based commissioner services. And once what was a bunch of nerd huddled around a spreadsheet became an industry that every major media entity is trying to get a piece of. Technology in the late 90′s and early 2000′s totally revolutionized the world of fantasy sports.

Now mobile has the chance to repeat history.

At Citizen Sports, we have always aimed to bring fantasy sports to users where they are already spending time. We were the first company to launch a full fledged fantasy football commissioner product on Facebook last season and this season we’ve extended that functionality to the iPhone.

Our iPhone application now available for free in the iPhone store. For those of you in leagues on our Fantasy app on Facebook, you will be able to manage your roster, view live scoring and track all your player news on your iPhone via our app.




For those of you who aren’t in a league in our Facebook league you can still enter your players from any league you are in, on any service. You can then track the scoring and news of those players real-time.

Probably the coolest feature on the application is the way we have used the iPhone’s push notification system. Once you have set up the application you will receive push notifications on any new news on your players or any scoring updates on your players. Imagine Sunday morning, tied up at church or shopping with the girlfriend. A push notification shows up on your phone with news that Adrian Peterson has been scratched due to an accident slipping on a banana peel in the locker room. You open the app, go into your roster and sub Chester Taylor in for him in your starting lineup. Then go back to saying Our Father or telling your girlfriend how nice her new dress looks on her without missing a beat.

Just download the app, so your reason for losing this year isn’t your commitment to God or your girlfriend.

Four Points or Six Points… That is the question…

So I’m in this sort of strange league. It’s with fraternity brothers (yes MIT has fraternities and they are very popular) and I’ve been in the league for 18 years. We’ve been playing fantasy football since you had to manually calculate points using the newspaper box scores.

Anyways, this league has some, let’s just call them, eclectic rules. Over the years we’ve tried hard to make QB’s as valuable in fantasy as they are in the real world and after 18 years we have definitely accomplished that.

How, you ask?

Well, first off our thresholds for scoring are a joke. A QB receives zero yardage points until he gets to 150 yards and doesn’t get significant bonuses until he goes over 200 yards at which points his points can go through the roof. We award six points per each TD pass and the clincher is we are forced to start two QB’s. Take a look at the marginal difference between the number two QB and the number 20 QB (10 teams in the league) and you will understand how we have finally accomplished this.

We actually do an auction format where everyone has $20 total to spend on their team and the minimum a player can go for is $.05. For the first time, this year the two most expensive players were QBs – Tom Brady for $7.35 and Drew Brees for $6.55.

At first I thought that this scoring system was stupid but the more I’ve been involved with it (this will the third season), I think it might actually be better than standard scoring because of the great value it gives the QB (arguably the most important position in real football)…

Anyways, the point of this babbling was to get some feedback from you guys on what you think the best fantasy scoring system is, starting with the simple question… four points or six points… what is the right number for TD passes?

Play Fantasy Against the “Experts”

In the old days, experts leagues were easy. I mean there weren’t very many so-called fantasy experts and all of them knew each other so they’d always help each other out by being in their company’s expert league. I remember my first ever expert’s league was shortly after we founded PROTRADE at an FSTA show.

I had played fantasy for 14 some odd years at that point but believe it or not had never done a draft – always having played in auction leagues (don’t get me started about how much better those are). Anyways, to make a long story short, my draft was far from pretty. We’ll call it the Mike Anderson fiasco and that league was against the likes of a pre-ESPN Matt Berry, a pre-ESPN Nate Ravitz, Yahoo’s Brandon Funston, etc, etc, etc.

Anyways, regardless of the result, the experience of getting to compete in a league with these so-called experts was a blast and something that not many people get to do. Over the years many of them have become my friends and I enjoy being in fantasy leagues with them. The reality of it though is that as much as these self-proclaimed experts know there are plenty of you guys out there that know as much and probably win as much in fantasy football as these guys do.

One of our goals at Citizen Sports has always been to make the fantasy experience all about the fan so again this year we are opening up the opportunity for one fan to compete against the experts. I’ve lined up a killer field this year again… from the guys you see on TV, Berry and Ravitz to the guys you hear on the radio John Hanson and Chris Liss, to the guys you read online like Brandon Funston, Andy Behrens and Jeff Erickson. We even have the reigning FSTA Fantasy Football Writer of the year Jay Clemons from SI.com.

All you have to do to be eligible is create at least two leagues on our fantasy app with at least 10 people in each league. We’ll draw a random fan from all of those that qualify and invite you in to the draft.

Until then happy drafting.

Rotowire is King…

… or at least Chris Liss is for now.

Last year in our inaugural year as a fantasy football company, we hosted an experts league on our Facebook app for some of the top guys in the field. Karabell, Berry, Funston, Liss, Erickson, Rosenthal, Hanson, Schatz, Carroll, Sabino, myself and one lucky Facebook user competed for 16 weeks to determine the number one Facebook Fantasy Football expert.

In a very tight league, the championship game pitted myself against Chris Liss of Rotowire. Liss’ team pulled off a narrow victory and as his prize, the Rotowire draft guide is now my Facebook profile pic

We’re starting up the experts league again this year and will have one space reserved for a Facebook user who exemplifies the ideals of Citizen Sports (creates lots of league on our application). Also, we have a few spots open for “experts” so contact me if you have an expert you want to see compete or if you consider yourself an expert and want to compete against the best.

Welcome Back, Mr Bundchen

As a Patriots fan the return of Tom Brady is the most exciting story line of the 2009 football season and as we sit on the precipice of the official beginning of the 2009 fantasy football season (the day we launch our fantasy app on Facebook), I am of the opinion that his return may also be the most exciting story line of the fantasy football season.

I participated in an experts league a month and a half ago and was able to snag Brady in the 4th round. Crazy value, I say.

I anticipate though that Brady’s average draft position will vary more than any other player this season. I think the 4th round is too late and great value but the first round is certainly too early. Or is it?

So the question for all of you is in a 12 team league with no PPR and 4 points per TD passed where would you draft Brady?

How would that change if it was 6 points per TD passed?

Sportacular v1.3 brings social sports experience to the iPhone

After a long company-wide vision quest, we here at Citizen Sports are excited to announce that the latest update for our Sportacular app for the iPhone has been approved by Apple. The update is our first step towards a more social sports experience from your phone, something we’re passionate about improving. Sportacular 1.3 allows users to comment on live games, in real time, from anywhere in the world. You can also pick winners and see what the world thinks about an upcoming game.

If the social sports experience isn’t your thing and you just have Sportacular for fast, easy-to-use live scores and stats, you’ll still be stoked about version 1.3. You can now configure your auto-updates (10 to 90 seconds) via the Settings tab. This means that all scores, stats, play details plus the new NBA on-court view will automatically refresh at the interval you set. You’ll notice a nice improvement to general performance as well.

We will roll out improvements regularly over the next few weeks and months, so we would love to hear your feedback on what we should come next.  Right now we’re focusing on adding more teams and leagues (specifically Premier League, Champions League, and a few other European football leagues) plus enhancements to the social side of the experience. What do you want from your mobile sports application?

Onward,
Brian Mead

Brian is a Product Manager for Citizen Sports and enjoys pointing out how lame people can be when they try to get clever while writing these blurbs, including this one.

Easier Said Than Done, Mr. President Elect

So Barack Obama has weighed in and said there should be a playoff in the college football. That’s kind of like saying that we would like to end world hunger. Not the riskiest stance in the world to take.

Anyone’s that been unlucky enough to have to listen to me spew on the subject knows that I actually am against a playoff. (But for the record I would also like to end world hunger)

Well today at lunch in the Citizen Sports offices a few of my co-workers called me out and made me explain why I was against a playoff. After arguing the point I think I did realize that I’m not so much against a playoff but don’t really believe a perfect playoff can be created or rather will be created.

Ultimately, that is a pretty bad reason to be against a playoff. So before I go back to my anti-playoff stance I think it is important for me to actually construct the perfect playoff system.

One of my personal beliefs is that if we are to create a playoff system every team in every conference should have an equal chance at the playoff and there should be automatic bids for winners of each of their respective conferences.

So there are 11 FBS conferences and therefore 11 automatic bids. If we have a field size that can play through a perfect bracket with no byes then we need a field of 16 for these eleven teams to play against. Easy, five at-large bids selected by a committee similar to NCAA hoops. In fact all seeding would be done by this committee.

These sixteen teams would play a playoff down to one champion. The first round of games would be played in the higher seeds’ home stadium and then each subsequent round would be played in the BCS Bowl Stadiums. You’d get a total of seven BCS games so that would actually be more than the current number of BCS games.

Here’s the obvious rub. You’d be adding anywhere from one to three games to each teams’ schedule. So the first step would be to reduce the number of play dates for each team by one. Sure this would reduce one non-conference game from each team’s schedule but would that really be a bad thing? God forbid Florida doesn’t get to play Citadel in November again.

Next we’ll remove conference championship games from the equation. These are a new thing anyways and as anyone who follows the Big 12 can tell you, they are far from perfect. Also, given five at large bids to the “Big Dance”, having a championship game seems less vital.

So where does that leave us. Basically it leaves us with two teams playing an extra game and two teams playing two extra games. Not really the end of the world for the athletes.

So there it is… if we can get a playoff approved with the above format, I’m in favor of the change…

It is a very interesting debate though, and I’d love to hear your point of view.

Like I said, it’s easy to say you are for a playoff but figuring out how to actually end world hunger is a totally different story.