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