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.

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?

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.

Scheduled Maintenance – 10/29 8:30pm Pacific Time

Hey everyone,

Our colo (the place where we keep our servers) is doing maintenance work tonight on their facility at 8:30p PT and will be shutting off power, most likely for about 2-3 hours.

This means all of our sites (Fantasy Football 2008, PROTRADE, Phillies Phanatics, Patriot Reign, Liverpool Kop…and hundreds more apps!) will be offline until they’re done.

We’re expecting to be back up around 11pm Pacific Time.

UPDATE: It’s looking more like 11:30pm Pacific (this is ultimately PG&E at work here, not us).

We’ll post additional updates if anything changes.  Sorry for the inconvenience!

- Citizen Sports

Checking in on Red Sox Nation

After a long agonizing night of missed opportunities (at home watching the Red Sox NOT at a bar), I decided to check in on the largest Red Sox community on the web.

Looking over fan wire on Red Sox Nation, I found an interesting post. Posted by Red Sox Nation member Matt Savoie was an blog entry from boston.com.

If you’re looking for one more example that everything about the Boston Red Sox has changed since 2004, there’s this: The Red Sox, gaggers for decades, have become cold-blooded postseason finishers. They have played six games in which a victory would give them a playoff series win since 2004. They have won them all.

Of course they did not extend that streak to seven, losing to the Angels last night and now play in a nearly must win game 4. Not sure if I want to go back to Anaheim (which is nowhere near LA) for a game 5 with Dice BB on the mound.

Anyways, the more interesting thing to note is the calm that Red Sox fans exhibited in the comments on that post.

Let’s see if there is a similar calm if the Sox don’t get the job done tonight.

Going Back to the Well…

(Read this in a very loud voice)

SO LAST NIGHT I GAVE YOU MY 1 MILLION STAR LOCK OF THE WEEK OREGON STATE PLUS THE 25 OVER USC. THIS ONE WAS NEVER IN DOUBT AS THE BEAVERS RAN ON THE TROJANS DEFENSE LIKE THE WERE THE ONES GIVING 25. NOW TONIGHT I HAVE A LIMITED RELEASE 1 TRILLION STAR LOCK FOR SATURDAY’S COLLEGE GAMES.

(You can stop yelling now)

So my very complicated handicapping came last night by looking at the spread on a marquee game and then checking our Head to Head College Football App to see who the majority was on, then going the other way. 76% of the people were picking USC yesterday, leading to my recommendation of Oregon State and all of you guys owning all your Trojan friends. Simple enough, right?

So let’s replicate that strategy today. Let’s pick an obvious road favorite. Wisconsin -6 at Michigan. Let’s check that game page on our app. 61% of the people are picking Wisconsin. Perfect. Now let’s do some additonal handicapping like we did last night.

After further review it’s clear that Michigan is probably not as bad as they looked in losing to Notre Dame. They turned the ball over six times and that spelled their doom. They have actually been reasonable on defense, allowing only 280 yards but the turnovers have killed them. On the flipside much of Wisconsin’s success in their marquee win against Fresno State was due to turnovers.

One team underrated because of their propensity to turn the ball over and one team potentially overrated? I’ll bite.

(loud voice again)

TAKE THE WOLVERINES AT HOME PLUS THE SIX AND OWN A BADGER FAN TODAY

Own All Your Trojan Friends When the Beavers Cover Tonight

So I went to lunch today with a friend of mine who founded a company called, Bleacher Report and he showed up wearing Trojan colors as any good USC Alum would do on game day.

After talking a little shop we moved on to tonight’s game and immediately started talking about the point spread. USC -25 in Corvallis. My initial reaction was 25 points will be a drop in the bucket for the Trojans. It almost seemed to easy.

So I went on to our NCAA Head to Head College Football application and saw that over 75% of fans are picking USC to win by more than 25 points.

So I did a little research and it looks like this Oregon State team can move the ball to the tune of 439 offensive yards/game (against Stanford, Hawaii and Penn St.) Oregon State likes to move the ball in the air and USC will be missing one of it’s starting CBs. (although it may not matter if Beavers QB Lyle Moevao has no time to throw). The Beavers have played competitively against the Trojans in Corvallis even stunning the Trojans outright in 2006.

So what does this all mean? It means that if you have any Trojans on your friend list, here’s your chance to own them.

Take the Beavers plus the 25 and own a Trojan fan today.

The Problem with the West Coast

So I just got back in from lunch and it’s 75 degrees here with a warm breeze and almost zero humidity. It’s the end of September and we will likely have days like this on and off for the next month and a half.

Ahhhh California.

But here’s the problem. Our offices are two blocks away from Telecom-to-be-Named-Later Park and as the Giants prepare for their final homestand and a potential Cy Young coronation nary a word can be heard about them in the hood. Contrast that to anywhere in Boston where I’m sure the streets are buzzing with anticipation of a Yankees elimination party tonight.

One needs only to spend a little bit of time on Red Sox Nation and Giants Faithful to see the difference in the passion of the fans. In the last ten minutes alone there have been 12 cheers for the Red Sox. My favorite of which was from Beth Herman, who wrote “Red Sox don’t need a new stadium to prove they are the team to beat”. You have to go back three hours to find a cheer from a Giants fan and it’s a very original “Go Giants”.

I know this is really an unfair comparison since one team is in the hunt and the other is long out of it but the raw numbers too are staggering. There are 2360 members of Giants Faithful versus 617155 members of Red Sox Nation.

Enough Giants fan bashing for now. I’m headed outside to go for a walk in the sun.

Unfortunately I’m All In

When we decided to aggressively enter the fantasy football space by building Fantasy Football 2008 I knew that I was going to have to be in more than one fantasy football league this season.

That was an understatement.

I ended up in 14 fantasy football leagues and so far this year I am 17-11 in all my leagues combined. When you do more than one league in a season, inevitably you end up caring more about some leagues than others.

As a way to gain more awareness for our fantasy application we organized a celebrity league with the winner getting a $5000 donation made to the charity of their choice. Playing against the likes of Peter King, Brooklyn Decker, Michael Phelps, etc for charity seemed like fun friendly competition but certainly nothing to lose sleep over.

Until professional poker player Phil Gordon raised the ante (pardon the pun). Before the draft he challenged me to a side bet since of course he bets on everything. I certainly couldn’t back down from the challenge and before I knew it my fun and casual celebrity league became my $1000 side bet league.

Unfortunately, my draft was not as strong as some of my others and guys like Billy Beane and Jeremy Roenick snaked players out from under me throwing off my strategy. I did not adapt very well and sit 0-2 going into week three.

I have tempered enthusiasm for my team this week as I face SI Swimsuit Model Brooklyn Decker. I have some questions at RB – do I start injured Ryan Grant against Dallas, old Jamal Lewis against Baltimore or fat LenWhale White versus Houston but I do like my QB matchup – Kitna versus SF and my WR’s Brandon Marshall and Lee Evans (with TJ Houshmandzadeh on the bench)

Either way this is a do or die game for me as I don’t want to be 0-3 when I’m already all in against Gordon.