PIFF 2007 Ahoy! (email)

It is stating to get to be that time of the year, that special time, a time for football. And with football comes the 5th season of the Pirate Islands Fantasy Football league.
For this momentous occasion I have made a short trailer for the league, which you can watch here:

http://kinross19.blogspot.com/2007/07/2007-piff-promo-video.html

There are three reasons I am sending out this email.
1. I need to make sure that I have everyones correct email address, and to make sure they want to play again this year. So when you get this email send me back a quick email from the email account that you want me to send stuff to, and to let me know that you are planning to play in the league again this year.

2. The league is ready for everyone to join over at Yahoo. (Sorry, no fancy new league host this time, hopefully next year though. I really would like to get a bowl system going for the last games of the year.) The link to sign up is here:

http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com/f1/register/joinprivateleague_league_select?.scrumb=

(hopefully that works)
The league ID # is 81300
And the password is (the normal PIFF password).

In case you forgot how to spell your team name, here is the "official" way to do it:
Ambersandia &'s
Damierana Ecilops
Harbor Coast Red Burns
Kreplachistan Rebels
Netthuania Nites
Ninja Isle Eldars
Pirataly Vampirates
Scotslandi Kilters
Snotvia Snotknockers
Sparrow Island Maties
Svinksland Pillagers
Takawokonia Plankers
Tea Republic Steepers
Tsukestan Picklers

If you want to change your team name, let me know. Also if you want a redesign on your teams helmet let me know, there are a couple of helmet designs out there that are in need of redesign.

3. Now the biggie. You may have noticed that at the end of the season last year I never contacted people about who they wanted to keep for their team for this year. That is because the league is moving to a semi-salary cap league, and I had to wait until the salary cap figures were released from the NFL. Now this is not going to add any extra stuff to do during the season, but and the end of each season all the teams will have to cut their rosters down to get under the salary cap before they can play the next season.
So what that means is that you will get a budget each off season ($1100, this year) and you may keep as many players off of your team from last year as long as their cost is less than $1100. All players not kept will be released and can be signed as free agents by any team that has extra cap room. After all the free agents are signed then we will have a draft like normal to propagate the rest of your team's roster.
This means that it is possible that you could drop your whole team, pick up some free agents that were released from other teams, and then try to redraft all your team back. ...But I doubt that this is a good tactic.
Any money that you do not spend on keeping people on your team can be used to pick up other people's free agents, which will be conducted via closed auction. Any money that your team has left over after this will be carried over to next year (but may be transfered in trades if you like). So If you only spend $1000 this off season, next year you will have an extra $100 to keep players for next season.
Ok, enough rambling. Attached is an Excel file that has the current rosters for each team. The cost for each player is listed on the left of the players name and then to the right of each players name is their position, the NFL team they played for in 2006, and then how many fantasy points they scored last year. There is another column of numbers to the right of the fantasy points scored, called Adjusted, more on that one later.
What I need from you by August 6th is a list of all the players that you want to keep on your team for this season, remember you can only spend $1100. And that you may want to save some money to pick up some players that other teams release, also there still will be a draft like normal too.

You may be wondering what changes there are to the league. Well for the most part this year will be just like last year.
There will be 19 roster slots:
1 QB
1 RB
2 WR
1 RB
1 TE
1 K
1 DEF
2 DB
2 DL
8 Bench

The scoring will be the same except for some Individual Defensive Players (IDP) changes:
Interceptions are now 2pts (up from 1pt)
Forced Fumbles are now 2pts (up from 0pts)
All other scoring will remain the same.
But this is where the adjusted scoring column comes in on the Excel sheet, this column is how many points each player would have scored in the league had they played with the new scoring system last year. Roughly it doubles the points scored for each IDP.
--If a cell has a 0, that means that either he would have scored 0 points last year, or I could not find his stats (i.e. he isn't in Yahoo's database of active players, a good hint that he isn't playing this year.)

I think the last thing that I would like to mention is that the cost for each player is based on a formula I worked out which takes into account how well each player did for their fantasy team last year, as well as how much the player used up of their NFL team's salary cap. If you want the formula shoot me an email and I'll get to typing it out, but basically the better the player was in his position the more it will cost to keep him. Oh, also Tom Brady being only $159 is not a misprint; when we decided to move to a salary cap system for keeping players, which was about midway through last year, we decided that the team that won the championship would be able to sign their best player at discount (1/2 price).

Alright. Thanks for slogging through this very long email. If you have any questions or comments, no matter how small, please email me.

Remember that I want three things from you:
1. Send me an email from the account you want me to use.
2. Sign up for the league ID: 81300, PW: (the normal PIFF password)
3. Tell me who want want to keep on your team. ($1100 budget, due August 6th.)

I look forward to our 5th season of the Pirate Islands Fantasy Football, I always have a great time running the league, and maybe this year I can win it all. Or at least keep Matt (Baker) for winning it two times in a row.
Shannon
Tea Republic Steepers

-I'll post this on the PIFF blog at http://pirateislandsff.blogspot.com/