Draft until you can draft no more

Just as I have taken a blog break to focus on my fantasy football drafts, I took a break from my AUFL preparation (so true) to get ready for my college fantasy draft. College fantasy is much lower tech than NFL fantasy. Until a couple of years ago, we had to manually enter our stats. Now we have a site to do this for us. We do not have any kind of draft software, so last night's draft was a manual affair.

It was, in the terms of Dodgeball, like "a bunch of retards trying to hump a door knob." While there is a list of "taken" players on our league site, it was up to our Vice Commish, aka me, to keep track of the picks on the league message board during the draft. While I had worked hard to create a draft list, I had in no way researched all 119 FBS teams. In the first round alone there were three times when an owner selected a player who had already been selected. In our eight rounds, I was the retard twice.

While I was prepared enough to not make a fool of myself, I wasn't as with it as my fellow drafters. A few of them had participated in the other two leagues that Zealots hosted. In the first round I took who I thought was the starting running back at Kentucky. In the next round another owner took a different Kentucky running back. That's the insanity of this kind of draft. In nearly three hours we completed seven rounds. In that time four different running backs from Central Michigan were taken.

In dynasty football it makes sense to "lock up" a team's running game. In college, to lock up a team as mediocre as Iowa State, I have to draft five guys. It's almost better to grab guys from different schools unless you're dealing with a perennial powerhouse like Tennessee or Georgia.

Since it's easier than doing more research, I probably will spend the rest of the draft backing up spots. Then I can scour up to 60 box scores a week looking for the waiver-wire wonder.

Another downside to college fantasy: Imagine that you have Ryan Grant, a talented and upcoming running back on your team. You make him one of your keepers. A month before the draft, you find out that the Packers are converting him to safety. I found out that two of my keepers changed positions. One wide receiver became a safety and one running back became a wide receiver, ruining the value of both.

The AUFL draft is in five days. It's time to shift perspective. Now that Brett Favre is "competing" for the starting job in Green Bay, he becomes potentially the first QB off the board. Last year I had Vince Young as my keeper, and I waited too long to back him up. Since I have Derek Anderson at QB, I'm going to have to jump on a guy early, or feel really confident about a lower-rated player. Right now Eli Manning and Favre will be the top guys, and I'll have to use a second or third round pick to get them. Waiting for David Garrard or Philip Rivers may not be an option.