Auction Drafts

How was the auction draft?  You expect me to answer that in 140 characters?  Ha!

I joined a 10 person Yahoo! mock draft last night to practice for my auction draft with a former co-worker.

The draft still has an order and goes from one person to another.  Everyone has $200 to work with.  When it is your turn, you get to nominate a player and set the opening bid.  There's a 25 second clock that starts and people can bid in any increment starting with $1.  Everytime someone bids, the clock resets, but at a time shorter than 25 seconds (I can't remember - 15 seconds?  10 seconds?). 

Yahoo provides a lot of useful data.  There's the projected value, the average value from the drafts thus far, your budget, and the average amount you can spend on each player left, just to name a few.

The interesting part is the strategy - you can nominate ANY player at ANY time.  I learned this quickly when Colt McCoy was the 3rd or 4th player nominated.  With $200 to spend, $4 on a starting QB that has shown some bright flashes in the preseason seemed like a great value.  If he had come up late in the draft, I probably could have gotten him for $1.

I started out very stingy.  My plan was to try and go after value picks, so I expected to end up with a fairly even team rather than a few top picks and a team of fillers.  I went on a run and got Fitzgerald, MJD, and Schaub in 3 out of 5 picks. 

Below is my team:

1. Colt McCoy (Cle - QB) $4
2. Larry Fitzgerald (Ari - WR) $37
3. Maurice Jones-Drew (Jac - RB) $38
4. Matt Schaub (Hou - QB) $19
5. Nate Kaeding (SD - K) $3
6. Tony Romo (Dal - QB) $12
7. Greg Jennings (GB - WR) $25
8. Lance Moore (NO - WR) $4
9. Ahmad Bradshaw (NYG - RB) $16
10. Ryan Mathews (SD - RB) $12
11. Stevie Johnson (Buf - WR) $18
12. Knowshon Moreno (Den - RB) $6
13. Rob Gronkowski (NE - TE) $3
14. New Orleans (NO - DEF) $2
15. Johnny Knox (Chi - WR) $1

Some of the most expensive picks were:
Adrian Peterson - $54
Jamaal Charles - $52
LeSean McCoy - $50
Rashard Mendenhall - $50
Calvin Johnson - $52
Arian Foster - $52
Chris Johnson - $51

The biggest down fall of the auction draft is pacing.  If you get a lot of players early, you sit and do nothing for a LONG time.  I had only 2 selections of the last 50 (I left the room and was on autodraft by that point because I was too bored).  The Yahoo! clock also lengthened the draft much more than necessary.  There's nothing fun about waiting 25 seconds for someone to draft a kicker for $1.

Auction drafts are definitely for the more experienced fantasy football player.

The REAL NFL Team Comparison

Ok, before we begin, take a look at this:  Detroit Individual Ticket Pricing Map
and compare it to these:
Colts Pricing Map
Packers Pricing Map
Jaguars Pricng Map

The Packers' seating chart had me confused too, but the previous page states:

"From time to time, a visiting team returns tickets for a game at Lambeau Field. When such an occasion occurs, the tickets will be made available immediately on Ticketmaster.com. The Packers are pleased to offer this easy and efficient method to purchasing tickets, if they are available."

I half expected a computer animated Aaron Rodgers to start laughing at me when I clicked on "Individual Game Tickets" at their site due to their popularity. 

What is odd to me is that the least expensive tickets for the Colts, Lions, and Jaguars are relatively the same.  Yet you would have to pay twice as much to sit close to the field at any of the other stadiums.  Has anyone been to a Lions game in the past few years?  Is the upper bowl filled while field level is empty?  I think the best value would be the $78 zone.

Also, how do the Jaguars get away with charging so much?  I thought that they struggled to get people to show up for games.