Well we are finally back from our winter (or should I say fall) slumber, but do not be alarmed. Our absence is not due to a lack of effort, motivation, or care, it is because we have been ironing out the details of our 2016 DIII Fantasy Draft. Now, you might have seen me hype this thing up a lot these past few weeks because personally I think this is going to be an amazing set of articles. Fantasy is the big thing these days, with daily fantasy, weekly fantasy, sports gambling, and whatever all taking a big chunk of all of our incomes. Well, why not bring an element of fantasy to the blog? Great question, ASouth. I don’t have an answer for you. Low and behold, we’re going to do a DIII Fantasy Draft – however, there will be no competition or monetary prizes involved. Let me take you through the details.
What is the fantasy draft going to be like?
Well, boys and girls, the fantasy draft is not going to be scored. It will not be like your regular fantasy league. The exercise is this – we have chosen 10 writers/readers to participate in the “draft.” Participants will act as “coaches” to their teams, however they will not have any players to start. That is where the fantasy portion of this draft comes in. We will be drafting players, by position, in a snake fantasy format. Basically, it’s like we put every single player in DIII in the same pool and now we all have our choice, as long as the player hasn’t been picked already, of course. What this does is creates a fun element for our participants to create a “Dream Team” in their eyes. Who do they want on their team? Do they want the grittiness of Rafe Mosetick at #1 Singles, or do they want an up and coming freshman like Jonathan Jemison instead at #2 singles? There are plenty of decisions to be made.
To make sure that teams don’t load up on #1 singles players from across the country, we will be drafting a total of 12 positions. Each team will draft their #1-6 singles players as well as backups for each position. As you can imagine, we will be projecting out lineups for the rest of the year. Obviously, there will be some discrepancies and assumptions in this, but for the most part it will even out the talent for each team. It’s up to the drafters to find the anomalies and the sleepers in our projections to field the best team.
Also, the draft will be on a 2016 basis only. This is not a dynasty draft. That would just be way too hard.
Okay, so when is the draft happening?
Great question! The draft is actually happening in 2.5 hours at 10:30 PM ET! Below is the draft order.
- D3ASW @d3aswomens
- D3TennisBro @d3tennisbro
- ME!!! @d3atlanticsouth
- D3TennisGreek @d3tennisgreek
- D3NE (boooooo) @d3northeast
- D3Central @d3centraltennis
- Dante Quazzo @d_quazzo
- The Guru @d3tennis
- D3West @d3west
- D3Regional @d3regional
That’s your order right there. I got the third pick overall, and I know who I’m targeting. But you’ll see about that later on. I’d like to extend a warm welcome to three of our non-writers that are joining us. D3TennisBro, as you know, is one of our avid followers and one of the funniest guys on twitter. He’s also a longtime friend of mine. D3TennisGreek, is a new entry into our team. He has experience as a writer for a very good DIII team and brings an abundance of knowledge to a lot of tennis sections. Dante Quazzo has written articles for us before and even brought you a bracketology last year. We are pleased to see all three of these guys get on board.
What should I expect from the draft?
Well, from here on out, we will all be able to have our own “teams” this year, only for pride purposes. You can also expect a large amount of articles covering draft analysis. We will be going round by round detailing our picks and why we picked them. We will be recapping the total draft and some analysis on our teams. We will trash talk each other about how bad D3NE’s team is. It’s going to be fun.
Okay, I’m back to project some lineups. I’ll see you at 10:30 ET where I will be live tweeting the picks. Back to work. ASouth, OUT.