NFL Commisioner Roger Goodell & Buffalo Bills QB E.J. Manuel

Who Will Be the 1st Rookie Taken In This Year’s Fantasy Draft?!?!

It’s almost official! The draft for both leagues is upon us this weekend with the Class of 2013 on the clock 1st, and the Origins group on deck to follow. And I don’t know about you, but I’m primed and ready to kick this fantasy season off! As most of the league members are going over their draft strategy, I wanted to go over everything that will be featured in The League! this season. For Origins members, this will be a refresher. But for the Class of 2013 members, this address will hopefully answer any and all questions you had going into this season. So as I like to say…, “Let’s Get To It!”

League Fees (for Origins Members Only)

As voted on in one of last seasons League Polls, The League! Origins will add a money pot to the championship trophy this season. Individual team fees are $25.00. The overall money pot is a modest $250.00, that one fortunate Origin member will win along with the coveted E.L.S.I.E. Award. The previous deadline to have your league fees in by was the league’s draft date, Sept. 1st. However due to the busyness of my schedule, I have not had the chance to enforce this deadline and therefore I have pushed this deadline back by two weeks to Sept. 15th. I would like to get the league fees handled as soon as possible though. You can send in your league fees through Paypal from the “Pay Now” link below. If you have any further questions regarding league fees, feel free to contact me at (813) 516-1978, or email me at enviousstaff@gmail.com.

PayNow Paypal button

The League Draft (***Very Important***)

The league draft for both leagues (Origins & Class of 2013) will be featured online. The Class of 2013’s draft has been postponed to Monday, Sept. 2nd at 5 pm EST, where as the Origins league draft will be held on Sunday, Sept. 1st at 6:30 pm EST. Each draft should last approximately two hours as each team will be on the clock for 90 seconds. If for whatever reason you can not attend your league’s online draft, the computer can draft your team for you. It will take the best player available for each round in most cases. You will only be able to attain access to the live draft 30 minutes prior to when the draft is suppose to start. So if your league’s draft start time is at 5:30 pm, the earliest you can access your live draft is 5 pm. ***IMPORTANT NOTES:*** 1.)To test to see if your computer supports the NFL.com draft client, click here. 2.)For a hands on guide on the NFL.com Live Draft Application, click here. 3.)To practice in a NFL.com Live Draft (a mock draft), click here.

The Keeper’s Deadline (Update!)

I posted in a prior League Story that the Keeper’s Deadline was Oct. 16th. THIS IS NOT CORRECT!!! The Keeper’s Deadline is actually Oct. 11th. Please make a note that the Keeper’s Deadline is in fact Oct. 11th, and NOT OCT. 16TH! A full list of everyone’s keepers from last season can be found here.

Logging Into the NFL.com or TheELSIE.com Websites

Something I want to address early on is the Log In factor of both websites. As I have mentioned before, TheELSIE.com will play a much more prominent role in this years fantasy season than it did in previous seasons. League Stories, Polls, Rankings, Awards, The Forum (you will have to log in to use the forum), E.LS.I.E. University, among other features will all be posted here on TheELSIE.com. Only the management of your teams fantasy roster will be done over at NFL.com. Logging into TheELSIE.com website DOES NOT log you into the NFL.com website. They are obviously two separate identities. Although there are links provided in the navigational menu on TheELSIE.com for managing your team roster under the tab “The League! – Team Management”, but they only take you back to the NFL.com website. Because of server cost, it is not feasible for me to host everything on this one website. I would happily suggest to use the same username and password for both websites, therefore you will only need to remember the one log in for both. Hopefully this settles any and all confusion.

NFL.com Mobile App

NFL.com has a mobile app for making lineup changes on the go. There’s an Android app, as well as an iPhone app. Personally, the NFL.com app isn’t good for much other than making lineup changes or roster decisions. But with that being said however, I do recommend you having their app. Just in case you’re out with the fam on a Sunday morning and your RB, who was listed as probable all week, ends up being a last minute scratch and not playing at all. It would suck not being near a computer to make any last minute roster moves. To download the NFL.com app for any Android powered device, click here. For iPhone or iPad, click here.

E.L.S.I.E. University

All current owner/coach and team profiles are kept under E.L.S.I.E. University. This profile page is your own personal hub to show off all your accomplishments in The League! It features your overall win/loss record, accolades won that season and prior, your returning stars for the upcoming season, you Official League! Rating, and a Doctorates section. Your Official League! Rating is where you get to see how you match up against other league members from different leagues. The higher your rating, the more accomplished you are as a league member. It’s also one of three factors that determines your teams ranking. The Doctorates are gathered by completing major accomplishments, over several season. As accomplishments are met, a little E.L.S.I.E. Award will become filled with color, instead of being in black and white. Once all three requirements have been met, you will win The Monster Award for that particular doctorate. To see The Monster Award, click here. More features are to come for E.L.S.I.E. University.

Tutorials

In the navigational menu, you will see a tab labeled “Other Resources”. There, you will find “League Stories”, and “Tutorials”, which I will cover next. The tutorials will help you with a variety of things. If you are interested in setting up NFL.com Fantasy Alerts to your phone or email, then check out the tutorial I did last season on that here. If there’s a tutorial you want to see published to the website, use The League – Forum under The Help/Tutorial Forum to request any tutorial you want. Speaking of which…

The League! – Forums

This is where the community of The League! comes together. There are a variety of forums hosted on TheELSIE.com website. The five forums are…

  1. The Help/Tutorial – To request tutorials or to ask for help on either the NFL.com or TheELSIE.com websites.
  2. The NCAA – To talk about anything college football related.
  3. The Tailgaters – To talk and share all things alcohol, football and food!
  4. The Assistant Coach – To ask for fantasy football advice on who to start, who to sit, or possible trade advice.
  5. Seen This…, Heard That??? – For any new fantasy football ideas to add or try out in The League!

I took the liberty of posting the 1st post to The Tailgaters forum. You can visit it here.

League Polls

As fun as running your fantasy team is during the season, the League Polls are the boring day to day or week to week chores we all have to do to keep this league running strong. It is extremely important that every owner/coach vote on the League Polls when they are presented and in a timely manner. League Polls are typically new ideas, strategies, issues, or problems, another league member has presented to me or my co-commissioner. No matter how myself, or my co-commissioner feels about the issue or idea at hand, we will poll it to all members of that particular league in a League Poll. Eight (8) of the twelve (12) owner/coaches, or 75%, have to agree or disagree on the League Poll for a ruling to come down either way. Be it the removal of a owner/coach, adding a new element to the scoring system, or whatever. This is EVERYBODY’S LEAGUE, not just mine and everyone apart of it should have their voice heard.

The Playoffs

Last season we were being very generous in that every team had a chance to play for The E.L.S.I.E. Award. That will not be the case this year. Starting this year, only the top eight (8) teams from the regular season will have a chance to play for The E.L.S.I.E. Award, with the final four (4) teams playing in a consolation bracket (which those games will not count towards any E.L.S.I.E. University achievements). Playoff wins starting this season will now count as three (3) points, instead of two (2) points towards your Official League! Rating in E.L.S.I.E. University.

The Awards Breakdown

Obviously, the only award that really matters is The E.L.S.I.E. Award right? Those ELeven Solid Inches of Envy is what we all covet…lol. But there are more awards to be won among league members. There are only two trophies, The E.L.S.I.E. Award and The Monster! The other awards are framed certificates that when won, give your Official League! Rating in E.L.S.I.E. University a significant boost! So here’s the other awards breakdown if you will…

  1. Team of the Year – Arguably the highest award outside of winner The E.L.S.I.E or The Monster! This award is voted on by me and my co-commissioner and is awarded to the overall best team who has placed 1st in multiple statistic categories or has won multiple awards in a single season. Not necessarily the league champion. This award adds 15 points to your Official League! Rating if won. See last year’s award winner here.
  2. Coach of the Year – This award is actually configured directly from the NFL.com website. To sum it up, the NFL.com website keeps track of your actual lineup, compared to your ideal lineup for each week of the season and calculates the difference for the entire year with the lowest point total being best. So for example, any player on my bench that outscored a player of that same position in my actual lineup, those were positive points gained. Where as if no bench player outscored any player of the same position in my starting lineup, those would be points deducted. Keep in mind, the fewer the points, the better. This award adds 15 points to your Official League! Rating if won. See last year’s award winner here.
  3. Division Winner – This award is pretty self-explanatory. Win your division, you win this award! There are two of these awards available every season for the North and South Division winners. This award adds 15 points to your Official League! Rating if won. To see last year’s award winners, click North or South.
  4. Draftologist Award – This award is figured by myself and it’s basically compiled by calculating the individual player with the most fantasy points accumulated, that was drafted in the lowest round. Last season I drafted Randall Cobb in the 14th Rd, and he finished 3rd in all fantasy points only behind Adrian Peterson and Doug Martin. Pretty nice huh? This award adds 10 points to your Official League! Rating if won. To see last year’s award winner, click here.
  5. Juggler Award – This award is also figured by myself and it is basically compiled by calculating the most MEANINGFUL player transactions made throughout the entire season. Be it trades, waiver wire, or whatever. This award adds 10 points to your Official League! Rating if won. To see last year’s award winner, click here.
  6. Trash Talk Award – This award is almost completely automated as the website will nominate the top trash talkers for me and my co-commissioner to vote on. In essence, you control if your nominated for this award or not. As the syndicated articles and league stories get posted to the site, every time you comment on a post, you nominate yourself with one vote. Basically the more you comment on post, the more chance you’ll have at winner this award. The top five (5) trash talkers are displayed automatically in the footer section of the website, along with the latest comments. This award adds 5 points to your Official League! Rating if won. To see last year’s award winner, click here.

Don’t Be Anti-Social…

Lastly, TheELSIE.com has gone social. TheELSIE.com has a Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ profiles. In the footer or the bottom of the website, you will find all the corresponding links. But just in case you have trouble finding them, I placed them below as well…

  1. To Like Us on Facebook
  2. To Follow Us on Twitter
  3. To One Up Us on Google+

Yes, I know as of now they are not much to look at, but I will design the page layouts for all the profiles above at a later date. I will keep everyone posted as to when…lol.

I believe that about covers its. I know this address was kind of long, but I wanted to address everything I could before the season started, and for the Class of 2013 that may have still had a bunch of unanswered questions. Before heading out, I’d like to wish everyone good luck in this fantasy season, and hope everybody has a fun and productive year. I’m out…, Late!!!