The Town of Odyssey

If Eugene doesn't make contact before draft day I recommend we implement the proposal I had too late last season for EK's team, and we move him to last in the draft order. (If he isn't already placed there by the system.) In the event we are required to retain a potentially inactive team to keep the conferences balanced this should be our official procedure for teams who do not confirm their participation by season start. It allows them to come in late and still have players to use, but gives selection precedence to the verified active teams as is proper.

I'm not sure whether the draft order can be messed with unless it's manually setup with an RNG. Otherwise I'd agree. The worst possible scenario would be to have bye weeks.

Once the date is set the system should randomly order the picks. As I recall that order is visible ahead of time, so we would simply keep everything as it is other than the inactive team(s). Just move them to the end and have anyone that was behind them move up, in order.

13 days until the first game.

I'm assuming that we're going to end up having this draft around 9PM at night again this year.

If everyone could answer the following, that'd be great. The season begins September 8 (Thursday).

For me personally, I'll be pretty flexible over the next few weeks. I know I cannot make it on September 7, but otherwise, I should be able to swing by for the draft any day we choose.

August 27 (Saturday): Works
August 28 (Sunday): Works
August 29 (Monday): Works
August 30 (Tuesday): Works
August 31 (Wednesday): Works
September 1 (Thursday): Works
September 2 (Friday): Works
September 3 (Saturday): Works
September 4 (Sunday): Works
September 5 (Monday): Works
September 6 (Tuesday): Works
September 7 (Wednesday): Does not work.

September 1st on doesn't work for me. Not for being there, but because I want at least a full week between draft and kickoff to prepare.

Next weekend would work best for me and my husband, simply because we're busy at the hospital and getting ready to bring our son home...we don't get back home til after 9. Hopefully we'll be back home for good one of the weekdays next week, so should be around for Friday night onward. Maybe Wednesday or Thursday night, but not sure.

August 27 (Saturday):Yesterday
August 28 (Sunday):yes
August 29 (Monday):yes
August 30 (Tuesday):yes
August 31 (Wednesday):No
September 1 (Thursday):yes
September 2 (Friday):no
September 3 (Saturday):yes
September 4 (Sunday):yes
September 5 (Monday):yes
September 6 (Tuesday):yes
September 7 (Wednesday):school starts that day but yeah.

Working with AE on getting set up. We aren't scheduled yet, but be advised the draft could be happening as soon as tomorrow night, most likely Thursday or Friday night (the 1st or 2nd). It will be at latest Saturday night. Be prepared.

DRAFT SCHEDULED FOR FRIDAY AT 9PM!

Our draft is now scheduled:
Date: Fri, Sep 2, 2016
Time: 9:00 PM ET

Note: If you cannot make this night, please be sure to "Edit Pre-Draft Player Rankings" so that you end up with your preferred players.

Hopefully see you all there!

Now that it's scheduled and I can see the available settings, I don't know if it is in fact possible to move Eugene. The options right now are random or manual order, and the random order isn't assigned until one hour prior to draft, at which time it appears the draft settings lock, so we wouldn't be able to alter the order after the system sets it. How do we want to handle this?

Yes I know there are third party ways to randomize, even some specifically designed for fantasy drafts, but I didn't want to go outside of the ESPN system if it could be avoided.

Edit:

Upon further exploration, when you go in to set the order manually there is a randomize option. I could use that to set a random initial order, then bubble Eugene down the list as planned.
The only potential issue with that is there is no way for anyone else to confirm the initial randomized order to verify that Eugene was the only team that was moved. I had wanted the system to publicly assign the order first so everyone could see it before it was altered.

Edit Edit:

I found some third party draft randomizers that send emails to people in the league with the draft order that is output so transparency is assured. Should we use one of those? I don't like going outside our system, but it's important to make sure everyone is comfortable with what's happening here.

Or can't you just take the currently setup list and move Eugene to the back?

I can, and that was the original idea, but like I said ESPN's order can't be made public so it would only be my word that he was the only team moved. If everyone is good with that it's fine, but I don't want problems or doubts to arise.

Weird I could see it a couple hours ago.

Oh yes, that was from when I did a test randomize. The order did become public, but only after setting it at least once meaning there was already opportunity to alter it. There's no way on ESPN to get an order automatedly locked in and viewable before going in to move Eugene.

I'll go ahead and use one of the online randomizers. I'll have the output emailed to AE so he can verify what was and wasn't changed from the initial order if need be. Stand by.

Edit:

Well it's a good thing we agreed to move him, because Eugene actually would have had the #1 pick. O.o Of course if we weren't adjusting the order we wouldn't have had to use a third party and ESPN might not have given him the first slot, but then it might have still because it's random. But anyway, announcement of the draft order and explanation for transparency:

I used this website and entered the teams alphabetically. The order returned was "Bench Coolers, Constantinople Chrysostoms, Avid Echos, Winoka Warriors, Mr Cheesehead, Blitzing Bookworms, Seattle King's, Texas Staleys" because Eugene has not confirmed participation the order was changed to "Constantinople Chrysostoms, Avid Echos, Winoka Warriors, Mr Cheesehead, Blitzing Bookworms, Seattle King's, Texas Staleys, Bench Coolers" to give first round precedence to the confirmed active teams. I will now enter this order in ESPN and we should be good to go.

Looks good to me! Thanks for getting the draft order set up, bookworm.

I am going to participate live as soon as I am able, but it likely won't be this season yet.