Look at all the secondary linemen coming off the board. This is an exciting time.

http://i55.tinypic.com/15dxg9d.jpg

get ready for a run on picks in league 1. we just nationalized two teams that have been abandoned. anybody not already in league 1 want to take one of them over?
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No thanks running 2 teams is enough

It seems like this will be an ongoing problem for this game because it's such a long term commitment. Even if a guy perseveres all the way through the draft process, if his team really bombs during the simulated season, is he going to want to commit to what is likely to be a multi-year rebuild? And when someone bales in a fixed league, finding a new owner seems like it would be a pain if the guy could just as easily start from scratch with his own, hand-picked team that isn't an automatic cellar-dweller from the get go.

Here's an alternative idea. Each new player drafts a team against 23 (or whatever number) computer GMs. If the human player has the 5th pick in the vet draft, the computer removes 4 players from the vet pool before the human gets his first selection. After the human picks, the computer removes 47 more players from the pool before the human gets to make his 53rd overall selection. And so on. It would take some creativity to develop the algorithm for the computer picks, but I'm sure you could come up with something either based on average draft positions on your own system (if you have enough traffic) or on some kind of positional rating system like the one GoChiefs keeps referencing.

You could still group teams together in leagues for the head-to-head competitions like you currently envision, but you wouldn't be able to insure that NFL players exist on one team and one team only in that league, of course.

How many owners are actually doing a responsible job in league 1 thus far?

Like 19

Oh god, 5 players just vanished from my draft board. This is excruciating.

It just wasn't meant to be, Tommy Kelly.

God I won't be picking until another 40 players off the board

Pick #274 is available in league 2.

I pick at 281 today and then it's a long trek to pick 334.

What are you looking to get for it? I'm Pomona Platypi

That's a reasonable thought, and cdcox and I recognize that team maintenance will be a huge issue. We expected it anyway, and we're seeing it in this soft launch.

I've also pondered (without cdcox's approval at the moment) charging people some reasonable fee to join if they want to start a team from scratch (and recognizing that there'll be a wait) or a dirt cheap or free entry if they take over an existing team. It would give people an incentive to try the game out for free, and the hope would be that they'd either get attached to their team and rebuild, or maybe they'd buy a team from scratch later.

I've pondered something like you're proposing too, and I don't think I'd have a problem with clone players running around. I wonder if it might freak out some players, though. Still, it'd be intriguing to see a team that makes trades to get 2 Darelle Revises and 2 Troy Polamalus and 2 Andre Johnsons.

cdcox tells me that two teams have been abandoned - Fort Worth and Las Vegas. I hadn't been paying attention because I was handling some abandonments in League 2, but poor Fort Worth only had 5 players drafted. I'm converting them to a scrappy Replacements-style contender, though.

Las Vegas was in slightly better shape, but they may not need a punt returner on the roster. They only had one defensive player, who was a rookie.

Are you wanting to keep your 276?