Here Comes 2009 - Starting a 7th Season

As every new NFL season comes around and I get the opportunity to add a year to the existence of the league, I become more and more proud. I can certainly say that when I went around asking some friends if they wanted to join my fantasy league in 2003, I had no idea that I would be welcoming many of the same people back for a seventh go-round in 2009. But I am, and it's the best league around and I'm glad to have you all back.

That's right. Twelve out of twelve managers are coming back for this season. A first for the LOTC. And best of all, it looks like it's a permanent league make-up. Twelve competitors, committed to winning the league.

I'd like to take a few minutes now to go over all of the changes that you will be seeing this year, both in our league constitution and on the yahoo fantasy football experience.

INJURED RESERVE

As voted on by our league members, we have instituted an Injured Reserve option for the 2009 season. This change became necessary after we agreed to convert the league to a dynasty format last season. I do need to address a possible issue here. This year, when I was going over the league settings, I noticed that yahoo had added an IR slot option to rosters. I went ahead and included it in the settings, but I don't know if yahoo has the same standard requirements for using the slot. I have looked all over their info pages, checked the message boards and even sent an email to them to try to get some information on the position, but I've heard nothing back yet. I'm assuming that the IR slot remains empty until a player goes on IR in real life, which would be ideal. However, I am wary of the possibility that you might be able to place any injured player in that spot on any given week to add an open slot to pick up a FA. If this is the case, I trust all of my managers will not use the slot for that purpose, right?

FLEX POSITION

2009 marks the return of the flex position to our rosters. This year, yahoo expanded the flex position designation, allowing commissioners to include TEs in the mix. So our flex position can be a RB, WR or a TE if you so choose (instead of the traditional RB/WR limitation).

DIVISIONS

This is a bit of a downer for me. As some of you might recall, I mentioned last season that my first experience playing fantasy football involved playing in divisions, which I had loved. I added that my experience had been four divisions of three teams and yahoo only allowed two divisions. Well, lo and behold, I was updating the settings for this season and yahoo had expanded the options to allow up to four divisions. If I had known this was going to happen, I would have insisted we break up the league into four divisions, but I didn't. So instead, we're broken into two divisions, which is still an improvement in my opinion. For a reminder of the layout of the new divisions, refer to the league constitution.

WAIVERS

In what turned out to be the closest vote amongst the proposed changes, bringing back a 24-hour waiver barely managed to force it's way back into our league settings. Yahoo has incorporated an additional option in waivers that I will cover later on, called budgeting. Since it was not discussed last season, I could not incorporate it this year anyway, but I think it is something we should seriously consider adding to the settings next season. For now, waiver position will be based on a permanently rolling list. Waiver priority is randomly assigned at first and then, as you pick up a player on waivers, you move to the back of the line.

THE YAHOO EXPERIENCE

I'm only going to cover the changes that yahoo made that will affect/be-of-use to us this season. Other changes in settings options that we could possibly incorporate in 2010 will be discussed later.

• Improved StatTracker - Reportedly, the stat tracker will be even more accurate in real-time this season and will also include a chat feauture so that if you and your opponent are following at the same time, you can actually chat/trash-talk about the games through the application.
• Custom Schedules - Im going to love this because it actually allows the commissioner to set a 'rivalry week' into the schedule to intensify the competition. So I would appreciate you guys telling me who you would prefer to play during the rivalry week so that I can customize the schedule as soon as possible. Not everyone will have a 'rivalry' but one can develop by playing the same person in the same week every year. I know Dinger probably wants to play me, but we'll have to see.....
• Mock Drafts - You can now do as many mock drafts as you would like before your actual draft to plan out your draft strategy ahead of time.

More to come as the draft gets closer. Thank you all for joining. And please do start to adjust to checking this blog once a week (at least when you sign on to set your starting lineups). As time passes and I get used to managing this blog, more and more useful information will be posted on this page on a regular basis.

Go Cowboys!