And So It Begins.....

This is my absolute favorite time of year. Football is unquestionably my favorite sport, fantasy football is my favorite game and the LOTC is my favorite league. And now, on the night of the Hall of Fame game between Cincinnati and Dallas, I am happy to announce the 8th season of the LOTC is ready to kick off! With everyone returning (myself, as commish only, with Jacob Herrera taking over as the manager of my team), I'm excited to get things started once again. There are two changes worth noting right out of the gate.

1. No league surcharge

- Last year, Yahoo made a dramatic cut in the price of their PLUS leagues, from $129.99 to $29.99. This year, the price has been completely eliminated altogether. Now, the entire Yahoo fantasy football experience is free, with all of the built-in features that we have enjoyed in a PLUS League. For us, this means the extra $30 will be going towards the weekly scoring prizes. The highest weekly scorer will not get a $5 prize instead of $3.

2. QBs will score less points

- Scoring settings for passing have experienced two changes. Points per completion is now (.5) instead of (1) and interception penalties have returned to (-2) from the (-1) I had them set with last year. The estimated impact will be an average weekly decrease in 8-15 points for your starting quarterback. No complaints! I gave everyone notice of this upcoming change several weeks before keeper designations were made!

Keep your eyes open for more news as we get ready to get things started. The draft is in just over five days!

Important News: Everyone Should Read This

Not that this blog is bloated with readers hanging on every word in every post, but I'm still sorry it's been a couple of weeks since I updated any news or history for the LOTC. Things have gotten very busy for my other job at Nova Fantasy Sports (obviously, with the fantasy playoffs going on right now), so I've been forced to neglect some of my less-important hobbies.

So it might seem rather sudden to be reminded that your FINAL keeper designations are due by midnight tomorrow night, but they are. I hope everyone meets the deadline, because every every draft pick you own will go down one spot for each day the deadline is missed. You can post your designations on our yahoo page OR as a comment on this blog. If you've already turned in your designations, please check that I've entered them correctly by going here and looking under the 'Keeper Designations' tab, under 2010.

In other news, this might or might not be important to you, but I have decided to stop managing my Djibouti Crust team next season. I'm the sort of crazed organizational nut who loves playing fantasy football, but who loves running a league as a commissioner even more. My already abnormal obsession has enabled me to [hopefully] deliver a product to you guys that is far superior to any other fantasy football league you are in. For me, my increased involvement in running things behind the scenes has hindered my ability to manage my team as well as I would like. I've actually been pondering this decision since the last offseason. There's even more changes I want to make in years to come to enhance and improve the LOTC experience and those changes will only make it harder for me to manage my team while maintaining the high standard that I want to hold as a league commissioner.

Like I said, I think one of the benefits to this decision will be that I can devote even more time to making this league the best fantasy football experience possible. Another pro is that you will have the benefit of having a commissioner who can make decisions and rulings as objectively as humanly possible. I'll obviously want to see the excellent heritage of the Djibouti Crust franchise continue, so I'll be pulling for them every year. But it still allows me to make more of the inevitably controversial decisions without the question of whether my choice is motivated by my own team's success. One of the settings changes to be brought about by this decision will be the dissolution of the trade approval committee. Now, all decisions on trades will be made by someone who is not running one of the teams in the league.

You can also now expect me to start planning an ACTUAL draft party every year. We had some makeshift stuff at Buffalo Wild Wings for a few years, but since I was trying to prepare for my own team's draft, I didn't put very much thought or effort into planning the party. I'm going to start planning the 2010 draft NOW, and I plan on having it at someone's house. At this point, almost half of the league managers are NOT living in Dallas and we might be even more spread out by the time the next season starts, but I figure with enough notice, we can at least get the majority of this group together for a draft party.

So that's that. I wouldn't bother protesting (if you were planning on it) because I'm not going to change my decision. I'm honestly more excited than ever about what this decision means for the LOTC and I think you will all eventually agree that it was a very good decision.

And in case you were wondering, the individual taking over management of the Djibouti Crust franchise is one of my good friends, Jacob Herrera, whom many of you already know. You probably didn't notice his username under my team page, but I added him as a co-manager more than a week ago so that he could take a look at the roster and choose his own keepers for next season. I'm fully confidant he'll do well in carrying on the great Djibouti Crust heritage.

Also, congratulations to Joe and David, whose teams, 'The Big Breesy' and 'The Undisputed' are facing off for the championship this week, which means we will finally have our first ever two-time champion in the LOTC.

Upcoming changes for the 2010 Season

Most of the changes are minimal, and this list is not at all complete, but I will update it as more ideas come to me.

1. Interceptions will count for -2 points now, instead of -1
2. Completions will now be worth .5 points instead of 1.
3. Preseason trades of keeper designations will be allowed, but with a number of stipulations, including tighter approval guidelines, requirement to maintain the minimum position count (1 QB, 2 WR, 1 RB, 1 TE, 1 K/DEF).
4. Pre-draft trades of redshirt designations will also be trade-able on the condition that both managers draft the redshirt player AND that the terms are even.

More to come with time.

2009 Regular Season Records & Interesting Facts

+ As of this moment, we at least know the first six draft spots (although Ben owns about half of the picks in the first round) in each round for next year's draft. They are, as follows.....

1. Beatubad
2. First or Last
3. Texas Thundermonkeys
4. Wrong Answer
5. Vince Young
6. I'm a Texan

+ In his second season as a manager in the LOTC, Gavin Espinoza improved his First or Last franchise's sinle-season win total from two in 2008, to three in 2009. I'm not sure there should be such a thing as an 'expansion team slump' in fantasy football, but it seems to be what's happened in this case. Here's to you Gavin. I hope you can at least double your five all-time wins next season.

+ David Onyon's The Undisputed franchise had the biggest improvement from one year to the next, improving his win-total by six games in 2009. The second-greatest improvement this season was Jorge Parrales's Djibouti Crust, which had a four-win increase. Conversely, both Texas Thundermonkeys and Beatubad experienced six-game declines in 2009, and defending champion Wrong Answer declined by five games.

+ Stephen Dinger is probably happy to know that an LOTC all-time record that he owned has no been broken by another manager. Ben Weiss set a new mark for the longest losing streak in a single-season by starting this season 0-10.

+ This is the first time in seven seasons that no manager turned out a double-digit final score. The lowest scoring output of the season was Dinger's 129-point score in his opening-week loss to Aaron Diehl.

+ With Aaron Diehl's Vince Young missing out on the playoffs this season, the league-record for most consecutive seasons in the playoffs stands at three, an achievement held by Vince Young ('06-'08), Texas Thundermonkeys ('03-'05), Djibouti Crust ('03-'05), Tenacious D ('07-09), Deion Found Jesus ('05-'07), and The Undisputed ('04-'06). If Tenacious D make the playoffs in 2010, they will hold the new record of four consecutive seasons. Tenacious D, Djibouti Crust and Texas Thundermonkeys hold the record for the most overall playoff seasons, with five.

+ Wrong Answer is the fourth of six champions to miss the playoffs the year after their championship season. The only two league champions to make the playoffs in their title-defense season are The Undisputed and Vince Young.

+ Speaking of league champions, the LOTC has seen six first-time league champions since its inception in 2003. This year's top-two seeded teams, The Undisputed and The Big Breesy have both previously won a championship. In the four seasons that we have had a bye game in the first round of the playoffs, a bye team has won the championship twice. So history tells us we have a 50% chance of seeing our first repeat champion in league history.

2009 Regular Season Wrap-Up

Well, it was yet another successful regular season of fantasy football in the LOTC, and I'm very grateful to all twelve managers for being active and competitive all season long. In the coming weeks, there will be several updates and news regarding what you can expect in the offseason and next season, including some changes (mostly minor) that will be incorporated into the settings in the future. In the meanwhile, I thought I would recap some of the highlights from the regular season and also take a moment to preview this week's matchups. So without further ado.......

It was highly unlikely. In fact, to my memory, it was the least-likely win-and-in scenario I had ever seen. Jorge Parrales's (yes, me) Djibouti Crust franchise was holding on to a one-game lead over I'm a Texan and Vince Young as we headed into the final week of regular season games. But I was playing The Big Breesy, who would end up earning the #2 seed and first-round bye. The loss was imminent. If Djibouti Crust lost, all I'm a Texan needed was a win, because they had scored 100+ points more throughout the season, giving them the tiebreaker over the Crust. And, if Djibouti Crust and I'm a Texan both happened to lose, Vince Young needed a win AND 40 more points than Djibouti Crust to earn the final playoff spot.

Headed into Monday night's game between Green Bay and Baltimore, Djibouti Crust had clearly lost their game this week, I'm a Texan needed only 32.5 points between Ryan Grant and Derrick Mason (averaging 46 combined ppg to that point) to win their game, and Vince Young had successfully outscored Djibouti Crust by 43 points and held a 52-point lead against Texas Thundermonkeys, who had Aaron Rodgers and Greg Jennings (averaging 69.5 combined ppg to that point) left to play. The Vince Young franchise was eliminated by the first minute in the third quarter, as Aaron Rodgers turned in a spectacular performance. But the real shocker came in the mere 18 points that Ryan Grant and Derrick Mason combined to score for I'm a Texan, giving them the loss and giving Djibouti Crust the final playoff berth.

Djibouti Crust might have scrapped their way into the playoffs, but the magic seems highly unlikely to continue as they take on East division rival and winner, Deion Found Jesus, whom they have already lost to twice this season. Until this 2009 season, Djibouti Crust had enjoyed tremendous success against Deion Found Jesus, having only lost to Robby Grunwald's franchise once in five meetings. But Robby now has an opportunity to even things out at 4-4-0 if he can win one more time against Jorge. This marks the first meeting between thes two teams in the playoffs.

The #4 vs #5 matchup features North division winner Tenacious D and West division runner-up Hybrids, who just played each other last week in the final regular season game. If the results from that game (Hybrids won by 104.5 points) are an indication of what we should expect in this one, Hybrids should easily coast their way into the second-round. This is actually the second meeting between these two teams in the playoffs. The first was last season, in the #4 vs #5 first-round matchup. Hybrids also won that game, but lost in the second round to eventual champion Wrong Answer. My guess is that Ryan Hennesy is looking to make a change to his recent history against Tim/Michelle/David Ferguson.