Auction Football Draft

[bigmck]

I have played Fantasy Football since the 1980's, yea that is right. I have always done a snake draft. In baseball I can see how an Auction can be done. There is a standard $260 and magazines rate players and use the standard dollar amounts. In football, I have never seen a standard Auction amount and Fantasy Teams are different sizes. I have seen leagues have a $100 budget, $150 and lots of other auction budget amounts. When there is no standard, how are you to know how much to bid on player?

[Dan Lambskin]

i come up with my own values based on what i'm willing to spend for that position but you should also be able to find some auction values (say for a $100 league) and then multiply by 2 for a $200 league

[Cards24]

bigmck,
unfortunately all the values you see online are more than likely way off compared to your league. There are too many factors that play in effect to get accurate pricing the meets your league's settings. Roster sizes, starting positions, flex positions if available, and what type of bench spots are permitted, will all skew your values. Below is a formula I found a couple of years back in the cafe (third post down). I used one year and what I found out (other than it took me sometime to do) is the even though I had the correct valuation of the players, everyone else still used the cookie cutter sheets you download online and the market prices were based off those prices (and were significant higher). Bottom line is that YOUR league will establish those prices no matter what any sheet tells you.

http://www.fantasyfootballcafe.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=327448&p=3213554&hilit=auction+formula#p3213554

My suggestion, Have a good ranking cheat sheet and everyone who gets off the board mark the price next to his name. That way you have an idea what players will go for above or below him (or at least what your league has valued those players at). Another good tip is to go back into your leagues history and see what players went for based on what tier you had them in (top 5, top10, etc).

Good Luck!

[bigmck]

Thanks very much for the insight. I think I will just stick to draft in football and do auction in baseball. It is alot easier on the nerves.

[Dexter II]

I've been doing football auctions for about 10 years and was a little unsure at first too. If you like the auction style for baseball I think you will also enjoy it for football. Having more opportunity to build your team (stud & duds, strong WR's or RB's, paying a little more for a favorite sleeper, etc.) makes the auction a more attractive draft format in my opinion.

I believe the general rule is that player values tend to fluctuate with the # of players in the pool and also the starting lineup requirements (another poster also called this out I believe). More players generally means prices will be lower on average. So 10 team 14 player roster auctions will have higher prices than 12 team 20 player roster auctions in general (especially if the league requires more starting players).

Also, I wouldn't worry too much about the actual dollars. Whether $100, $200 or $1,000 it comes down to the allocation of those dollars not the actual dollars. So if you want to spend 35% on RB's it's still 35% no matter the actual dollars in the budget.

There are plenty of websites that will give you a sense of player values but much of that goes out the window when the auction starts. All it takes is one owner who really likes a player to create an artificial price point. But you can take advantage of that and spend elsewhere when that owner is running short of dollars.