Fantasy Football is huge. My friends play it, my extended family plays it and my co-workers play it. Me, not so much. You might recall that my experience with football, fantasy or otherwise was less than stellar. When I played I didn’t quite understand the game and when I watch it is usually the Superbowl… for the commercials.
However, I was given a Season Pass for WaiverWire’s new Fantasy Football site in order to write this post. Which is, let’s get this out of the way right now, sponsored. Being a total outsider to this whole world I think I have a unique perspective and have no preconceived notions about what a fantasy sports program should do for me.
I showed the site to one of my co-workers who said that I could find all of the information about sports teams for free on my own. Sure you can do that for everything. Information is everywhere and most information for anything you can find for free. Heck you can start a fire with flint and some other rock but if you want it done more efficiently use a lighter. If you want the best results use the best tools.
What makes this All Season Pass and the WaiverWire site the best tool is that you have access to all the information in one place. You don’t have to waste time going to a ton of places all over the web to find the information. You can have it automatically available to you every time you sign in to your profile. I played around with the news wires and RSS feeds to pick the ones I’d look at most often, all things NE Patriots related of course. I pass by the stadium twice a day so I gotta support the local team. Here is the RSS feed selection page.
But the best part of the All Season Pass is WaiverWire’s revolutionary new “intelligent” drafting software. You can create as many mock drafts as you would like and there are some great tools for analyzing your picks. Here I’ll let WaiverWire explain in their own words from a July 29, 2009 Press Release.
CEO, Chris Nalley can’t wait for the season to start and believes Waiver Wire’s fantasy football draft software will revolutionize the way fantasy league drafts are conducted. “We’re all excited,” Nalley said, “our intelligent draft tool really levels the playing field (no pun intended), giving the ‘amateur’ a tool to draft like a ‘pro’ and giving the ‘pro’ a distinct advantage over other so-called pros. You can start a mock draft right now to see for yourself.”
After customizing for the user’s fantasy league (scoring, players, teams, prize structure, etc.), the fantasy football drafting software automatically computes ranking, points and future performance results using up to the minute player and team data that has been filtered and analyzed to determine which variables are the most statistically significant. Combining proprietary artificial intelligence technology with extensive statistical modeling and the principles of modern portfolio theory, the fantasy football draft tool then incorporates the results of the opponents’ picks and the user’s present team, running thousands of scenarios to compute the best possible pick from the remaining pool of players in order to optimize the user’s probability of winning. All of this in seconds, giving the user a distinct advantage at draft time. Because the system permits an unlimited number of mock drafts, it wouldn’t be surprising if NFL teams or Vegas bookmakers wanted to see who Waiver Wire’s draft tool would pick in different scenarios.
At $29.99 for the entire 2009 Football Season, Waiver Wire’s drafting software offers a tremendous bang for your fantasy football dollar. “Given the tough economic times, we wanted to offer a superior product at a reasonable price,” said the Company’s president Steven zum Tobel. “While the draft tool is our flagship product, we have designed the site and offerings to be a one-stop-shop for information, analysis, interaction with other fantasy players and of course…fun!” – (July 29, 2009 Press Release)
Data, analysis and up to the minute information is what you are going to get with WaiverWire. I was using the draft software and I was easily able to compare a few Quarterbacks. I liked this part of the software the best because you can see graphical interpretations of the information similar to seeing stocks. You can also compare all the stats for a given player vs other players of the same position.
Sure I could continue to use this season pass but that would be like be like putting flippers on a dog. They may make the dog swim faster but he’s gonna have no clue how to use them and look silly figuring it out. So, I figure that at least one of my readers is a Fantasy Football Fan and that person would certainly benefit from all that WaiverWire has to offer so I’m going to make this a simple contest.
1 week from today I’ll give my All Season Pass to one random lucky reader. Check out the WaiverWire site, sign up for an account and kick the tires a bit. Come back here and leave me a comment with your favorite feature and your Superbowl winner prediction for the 2009 – 2010 season. I’ll go with the Patriots although the were terrible last night. Next Friday I’ll pick the winner.
I’ll be watching the Superbowl again this year too… for the commercials.
Disclaimer – The contest was my idea. I don’t want to see this great account go to waste on someone who can’t use it properly.
