Guess what?  Guess WHAT?!

I haven't done any studying this year for fantasy football.  I've sat down in front of a computer, thought "Okay, let's do this", then gotten really bored and walked away.

But that doesn't mean I've done nothing fantasy football related!  Au contrair mo'fair (or whatever)



Let's talk about the biggest thing you might have noticed: The look of the blog has changed.  It's actually a work in progress as we speak, so it could change again.

The original purpose of the blog, outside of random posts, was to house a bunch of tertiary info - including manually tracked stats, draft history, about pages for every owner, standings, matchups, etc.  As you can see, I never kept up with the "central hub" concept that I originally saw for the blog.  Instead, I'm trying to modify it to fit where we are and how much time we spend with this league.  It's a New Day!


My goal for the refreshed blog follows two main focuses:

1. Blog posts
2. Chat

That second item is the most ambitious and difficult to actually pull off.  In concept, it's really simple: I want to be able to use a mobile chat application like GroupMe and embed our mobile conversations directly into the page.  That way, you could talk smack both on your phone and on your computer Siem-lessly.  In practice, apparently this is impossible.  As of today, there isn't a single chat service that allows you to chat on a mobile app and embed it into a webpage.  In the meantime, I'm getting rid of a lot of the extraneous stuff we don't use anymore and keeping one eye open for an API function that could let us have mobile and web chat across the same server/hub. But right now the blog will be without the chat function.


Side note: Get GroupMe on your phone if you haven't!  I believe most of the league has it, but it's a great way to have a general smack board for the league.  We might have the draft over GroupMe (they have a webpage themselves) if it's easier than Google Hangouts, but I'm testing that.

But now on to some small housekeeping notes.  Firstly, trades this year only have a one day delay, but can be pushed through by Air Bear as he sees fit.  If you remember last year, Baron took over in-season rule enforcement, so if there's any issues, bring them up with him.  Otherwise, there shouldn't be any other changes to in-season rules for the season.

Secondly, I've backed out as commissioner of the league.  That sounds worse than it is.  Since Baron already was handling rules/governance, he was always going to act in more of an in-season commissioner role anyways.  And I'll still be doing all the off-season stuff from setting up the draft grid and times, as well as maintaining the blog however I see fit.  So it's more of a change in title only, but no change in the structure of the league or how we did things from last year.

Now, let's move on to the fun stuff!

The draft grid is updated!  All keepers and their values have been revised and reflected in the 2016 Draft Doc.  Mind you, the one area I didn't update are the current costs to cut a player, but that's because I still haven't spent the time figuring out how to calculate the new penalty costs since contracts have aged.  I know Dan knows that, but I'll try to figure it out soon enough and update those costs.  You should see I have my keepers in there already, but obviously the values I have in place aren't set in stone.

And for the biggest reason I wrote this post - the schedule is done!

Tim, he of the current champion Chicago Rillas, has chosen Jeff to be his Week 1 opponent.  In his exact words "Gotta have a rematch of last year's championship" (note: those might not be his exact words).  With that mindset, I decided that, with this being our 8th year, I was going to take us down a trip through Memory Lane with our schedule.  Therefore, in the first thematic approach to our league schedule, the first seven weeks of the season will feature a previous championship matchup in reverse order.  Of course, Ed will be replaced by Joe, so let's rewrite history and congratulate Joe on his two championship appearances so far!  

Without further adieu, the schedule:


Week 1

Bryan	Jose
Joe	Sean
Jeff	Tim
Danny	Katarya
Dan	Siems

Matchup of the week: Jeff vs Tim.  Duh.  I'd compare it to the Dubs vs Cavs rematch this year, but c'mon, ain't nobody dropping threes on Mozgov's soul in this game.

Week 2

Danny	Sean
Dan	Jeff
Bryan	Joe
Katarya	Siems
Tim	Jose

Matchup of the week: Joe vs Bryan. Our 2014 championship rematch pits a guy who had a keeper get suspended for the chronic versus a guy who has a keeper with a chronic inability to fit into his suspenders.

Week 3

Joe	Siems
Jeff	Danny
Bryan	Dan
Katarya	Tim
Jose	Sean

Matchup of the week: Dan vs Bryan.  In this battle of 2013 cohorts, Bryan has to face Dan during one of the six weeks where Dan's teams seem unbeatable.

Week 4

Bryan	Katarya
Joe	Jeff
Danny	Dan
Siems	Jose
Sean	Tim