By:  Pam Melton

Okay, let’s get ready for the draft.  I actually did a little bit of checking out stats my first season.  I’m going to roughly do it the same way.  I want to keep track of time, so you can get a general idea – let’s face it, time is a definite issue of participation.   Our league uses the tool that CBSSports.com provides.  I believe that there is a fee, and with that fee the commissioner of the league has access to a variety of tools.  The site has lots of information helpful to the process of playing Fantasy Football, including info about the players.  For time crunchers like me, everything at my fingertips is KEY!

My pre-draft efforts were thwarted due to the time required to go to a separate website to get a look at the guys.  What I ended up doing was looking at who’s available and picking guys whose names I recognized, or were on teams that I like.   The fantasy tool that we use allows you to pick a draft team.  This is great; because I’m not gonna remember anything 15 minutes from the time I walk away from this.  The player search ranks each player based on their previous fantasy performances, so you don’t have to remember stats (the only thing that makes participation a remote possibility for me).  I picked what I think are some decent choices.  I’ll go see what they all look like later – could determine their trading future.

This approach required an investment of about an hour, while doing laundry.

This year, we’re using the CBSSports.com draft room so that we can participate online.   This works out well for me.  As much as I want to be with the other owners, I’ve got stuff going on at the house that just will not allow me to attend in person.  This absolutely rocks!   I just got Jeremy back – woo hoo!! (I’ve been informed that an exchange between me and one of the other owners on this subject has elicited giggles from the room – ain’t it great to make people giggle).  The tool has a chat area so we can talk smack back and forth.

I must say, this has been a great experience!  I was able to draft my team, talk trash with the party and the other owner who couldn’t attend (new baby), supervise some yard work organized by my husband, do laundry, iron and watch politics all at the same time.  If this isn’t a fantasy draft H.O.W. style, I don’t know what is.

The elapsed time of the whole process was 2 hours and 10 minutes.  I just kept my computer positioned so that I could see the draft order.  This allowed me to keep getting stuff done and not hold up the draft.  The only hiccup was when my mom called and I lost focus for a minute.  I ended up having to make a choice that wasn’t on my list, and it took me 25 seconds (the longest that it took me to register any draft pick).  I took 1 minute and 52 seconds to register my draft choices – and the commissioner tells me that I picked a pretty decent team, we’ll see.  From the time perspective, the next closest time was 4 minutes, 41 seconds. 

After all, as you ladies know – everything is all about time and making the most of it.  I was having so much fun doing this that I didn’t even think about how much I hate doing laundry – and I got 3 loads done!

This was a definite 5 fingernail experience!



CBS Sports is a registered trademark of CBS Broadcasting Inc.