Attention IPB Leaguers! This post is for you! (This post is also mostly recycled from last year; we’re all about efficiency here at IPB.) By now you should have received an invite from Andrew to join either the Amazingleague or the Superleague. By now you should have registered your team. And by Thursday, September 24th — and this is the most important thing EVAH — you must exclude all of the players in your favorite team’s conference. If you’re a Blues fan (shudder), you must exclude all, and we mean all, players from Western Conference teams from your draft-eligble players list. If you’re a Panthers fan (what, St. Louis isn’t good enough for you?), you must exclude all, and we mean all, players from Eastern Conference teams from your draft-eligible players list. We mean business on this matter; this fantasy league is meant to be a fun educational experience, dammit! If you do not exclude all the necessary players from your draft-eligible list, and end up accidentally drafting players from the wrong conference, you will have to jettison them from your roster and then you’ll be stuck choosing from the dregs of the correct conference that were left behind. Believe us, that is a fate worse than death.
Now you might be asking, “That’s all well and good, but how do I exclude players, O Wise Ookies?” It’s simple:
1: Click on the “Draft Central” tab.
2: Select “Pre Draft Rankings” at the top of the screen.
3: Above the list of “Default Player Rankings”, there is a small link that reads “Edit My Rankings”.
4: The following screen shows three columns — Excluded Players, List of Players, My Players. You must go through every single player in the List of Players box and move all players from the conference you’re NOT drafting from, using the arrows between the boxes, to the Excluded Players box. This sounds like an unholy terror of a task, but really, it should take about 20 minutes. If you’re slow. And if you’re like Pookie, you’ll ask every few minutes, “Columbus is in the WC, right?” And if you’re like Schnookie, you’ll spend the entire exercise saying, “Thank goodness I’m not drafting from the East. All these players suck!” The most important step of all, once you’ve moved all the players you aren’t allowed to have on your team, is to hit the “SAVE” button at the top of the screen. Because goodness knows, you don’t want to have to do that all again, do you?
The Amazing and SuperLeagues will have auto-drafts, which means that once you’re done sorting your players, you’re good to go. The draft order will be set at random by Yahoo, and then when the computer runs the draft for us, you’ll be given the highest-ranked player available whenever your turn comes up. If you want to go with the pre-set rankings, that works. If you feel the pre-set rankings are totally bogus and don’t give, say, The Iron Boar (ranked number 421 over all) enough respect, then you can set your own rankings in the “My Players” box. The draft will be two days from today (namely: Thursday, September 24), so get sorting!
We’ll be providing updates on both the leagues here on IPB so you can enjoy all the fun and excitement from across the best fantasy league in all the land, but please take note of the message boards and smack talk features on Yahoo. Take note, and use prodigiously. The more swagger and smack talk the better, right? And taking the time to talk smack will help your bolster your self esteem as you face the unenviable task of taking on the juggernaut Craig Andersoxers and The Too Oranges. Starting today, you’re all gunning for second place.
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