Saturday, August 19, 2006

PIFF Draft Schedule

Hello,
Well the people have spoken and there is more support for the night draft instead of the all day draft. So here are the earliest times you can add a player to your team:

6:00pm Takawokonia Plankers
6:20pm Netthuania Nites
6:40pm Damierana Ecilops
7:00pm Sparrow Island Maties
7:20pm Pirataly Vampirates
7:40pm Futontopia Elders
8:00pm Harbor Coast Red Burns
8:20pm Snotvia Snotknockers
8:40pm Svinksland Pillagers
9:00pm Scotslandi Kilters
9:20pm Tsukestan Picklers
9:40pm Tea Republic Steepers
10:00pm Kreplachistan Rebels
10:20pm Ambersandia &s

The first day of the draft will be the 21st (Monday) and it will go for ten days. If you miss your time you may make it up when you can. After the tens days everyone is free to add and drop players as they see fit.

Happy hunting,
p.s. if you haven't had a chance, check out the PIFF message board at: http://kinross19.proboards104.com/index.cgi
Shannon

Thursday, August 10, 2006

PIFF Forum

I have set up a forum to discuss all things PIFF, football, and things. Check it out here.

All the team helmets are loaded up for avatars, so you can just use the drop down avatar list and find your team (they are in the format of ***Icon, where *** is a three letter abbreviation for your team).

Also there is a link on the side bar to the forum.

PIFF possible alternative draft schedule and other things

Hello,
It has been brought to my attention that some people work. (Perish the thought!) So I have constructed the following alternative draft schedule. This would still take place starting August 21st and go for ten days. And again these times are in CST.

6:00pm Takawokonia Plankers
6:20pm Netthuania Nites
6:40pm Damierana Ecilops
7:00pm Sparrow Island Maties
7:20pm Pirataly Vampirates
7:40pm Futontopia Elders
8:00pm Harbor Coast Red Burns
8:20pm Snotvia Snotknockers
8:40pm Svinksland Pillagers
9:00pm Scotslandi Kilters
9:20pm Tsukestan Picklers
9:40pm Tea Republic Steepers
10:00pm Kreplachistan Rebels
10:20pm Ambersandia &s

If you have a preference to either this draft schedule or the one that is already in place respond back, whichever one gets the most support by Saturday night will be the one that we go with.

Ok, that is all the business for now. Now for more fun stuff.
If you want to change your team colors or have your helmet redesigned, I will work on them if you let me know before the weekend is up. If you do not let me know by then I will assume you are happy with your current team helmet.

Oh, since some of the new players do not know everyone through the cryptic nature of their team names, here is how everyone in the league is related to me:
Takawokonia Plankers – Baker, Roommate from Smith House
Netthuania Nites – Jenette, Sister
Damierana Ecilops - Addison, Friend from Garden City
Sparrow Island Maties – Andy, Friend from High School
Pirataly Vampirates – Michelle, Sister
Futontopia Elders – Newgen, Friend from High School
Harbor Coast Red Burns – Lance, Friend from K-State Stat Dept.
Snotvia Snotknockers – Nicole, Wife
Svinksland Pillagers – Davin, Roommate from Smith House
Scotslandi Kilters – Julia, Friend from Garden/ Pickle's wife
Tsukestan Picklers – Pickle, Friend from High School
Tea Republic Steepers – Shannon, Me
Kreplachistan Rebels – Aaron, Friend from Manhattan
Ambersandia &s – Amber, Friend from Manhattan

There, now everyone knows everyone else.

Now for the next couple of lines I would like to further explain better what's going on with the scoring system this year and how it came about.
The way I got this scoring system is by inputting real game statistics into a regression model that tried to predict the final score of real NFL games. Then I found what statistics were significant and also how important each statistic is.
One of the biggest changes this year is to abandon the 6 point touchdown in favor of the 3 point touchdown. The reason is because players can be rewarded more accurately for the effort they contributed to the score if all the points for the score was not already wrapped up in the actual touchdown.
Last year in PIFF I combated this by over shooting the points awarded on the offence and then reducing out the points from points allowed from the defense. This worked, but it lead to a fair amount of games resulting in a negative score, which is not a realistic result. So after running the regression model I was pleased to see that I did not need to subtract out points allowed to come up with a good fantasy football scoring system. So that is the logic behind how the scoring system was made. Now I am not really that happy with the scoring system, it seems to me that it will score low, but we will see. And if we do move over to ESPN for next year there will be many more factors that can be included in on the regression model (such as home team, head coach, and even bonuses for reaching a certain plateau, such as rushing for 100 yards).
If you have any questions or want to know anything else about the scoring system ask away, it is something that I really like talking about.

Finally (thanks for reading this much already btw), I have redone the PIFF blog, its address is:

http://pirateislandsff.blogspot.com/

I redid the look and I also linked up each team with their past record (look on the sidebar). Also I am looking for contributors to the blog so if you think that you would like to write short posts as the season goes on let me know and I'll get it so you can contribute as well.

Ok, that is all for now. Remember to tell me which draft schedule is better for you.
Rock on,
Shannon

2006 is on!

Hello everybody,
We are locked, we are loaded, and we are ready to go.
First business:
Thanks everyone for getting registered to the league quickly, I have now got all the teams initially started with the nine players that they kept from last year, and now we can fill out our rosters with the leftover players during a 10 day draft frenzy.
The draft this year will take place from Aug 21st to Aug 31st, during which each day your team will be able to select an additional player to their team at a specified time. To draft a person all you have to do is look who is still free on the players page in the league and add him to your team. Remember to only add one person a day at your specified time. (If you have any questions about what to do please ask me.) The times for the draft are: (ALL TIMES ARE CENTRAL TIME ZONE)

10am Takawokonia Plankers
11am Netthuania Nites
12pm Damierana Ecilops
1pm Sparrow Island Maties
2pm Pirataly Vampirates
3pm Futontopia Elders
4pm Harbor Coast Red Burns
5pm Snotvia Snotknockers
6pm Svinksland Pillagers
7pm Scotslandi Kilters
8pm Tsukestan Picklers
9pm Tea Republic Steepers
10pm Kreplachistan Rebels
11pm Ambersaindia &s
(This will be reposted on the yahoo league page)

If you miss your draft time for the day you may make it up later in the day (remember the time is ticking and every hour that you miss your draft time by another player will be drafted ahead of you). For the couple of teams that only have 8 players on them (because one of their saved players retired) you may make up the extra pick on September 1st.
From now on you may trade players (and drafting spots) if you want, just let me know if anything goes down.

Ok enough business:
The biggest change for this year is the addition of four new teams to the league:

Sparrow Island Maties is coached by Andy (a friend from HS) and is returning back to the PIFF after sitting out last year (the team was plagued by financial struggles and was relocated as the Pirataly Vampirates just before the season started.)

The Netthuania Nites are back in the league making their first appearance in 2003, the inaugural season for Pirate Islands Fantasy Football. They are coached by Jenette (my sister).

The Damierana Ecilops make their league debut this year, and are coached by Addison (a friend from Garden City).

Finally the Takawokonia Plankers coached by Baker (A roommate from Smith House) are poised to to a team to deal with from the get go.

I am very happy to see four new teams added to PIFF this year, and the completion will be much stiffer to get into the championship playoffs as well as the loser playoffs.

Anther change for this year is the scoring system. For my Masters project I tried to find the best scoring system possible, and the result of that project is the scoring system employed by the league. I will skip the details (you can check out the scoring system in the yahoo league settings), but if our games were to actually take place this scoring system would get the correct winner more than 90% of the time, and be within 4points of the correct score for each team (this is a huge improvement over the standard scoring systems, and the one that we used last year). If you want to know more about my report let me know and I can get you a copy.
Anyways, the big change in the scoring system this year is that the points allowed by a defense will NOT be subtracted from your total score, so the good DEFs may be very different from last year.

A side note is that this will probably be the last year that we do PIFF on Yahoo, because ESPN has redone their fantasy football system and has made great strides in awesomeness. So to check it out I am running a shadow league over there, and if you want to see what ESPN is all about give me an email and I can turn control of your team over to you there.

Alright, I that is about all for now. I am working on redoing the PIFF blog page and I'll let you know when that is back up. Also there has been talk of doing a short PIFF video cast each week of the season, I'll let you know if that actually happens.

As always if you have any questions or comments let me know.
Arrrg!

Shannon
Tea Republic Steepers