Frustrated Lions Fans Football League League Articles

Here is how the divisions will look next season:

[1] - The Mayhem and the Terriers were credited with the 2006 league average of 1240 points for the purpose of this ranking.

If an owner retires during the off-season, all of the owners below the retiree will move up on the chart.

I recently read an interesting article on Footballguys.com by Jeff Pasquino where he compares 4 different approaches to setting up the draft order to see which approach strikes the best competetive balance. Mr. Pasquino's article was based on a 10 team league with a draft consisting of 16 rounds. Since this article is only available to Footballguys.com subscribers, I thought I would conduct my own analysis for a 12 team league and share my results with you.

Five Flavors

First, let's define the different draft approaches I'll be comparing.

1. Normal Serpentine - This is the approach we have used for the last two drafts.  1-12, 12-1, 1-12, 12-1, etc.
2. Third Round Reversal (3RR) - Start with a normal serpentine order, then reverse the 3rd round.  The team that is picking 12th in round 1 gets to pick 1st in rounds 2, 3, and 4.
3. Third Round Serpentine (3RS) - The first two rounds are 1-12 then 12-1.  The third round is also 12-1, then the draft proceed in a serpentine fashion from that point.  1-12, 12-1, 12-1, 1-12, 12-1, 1-12, 12-1, etc.
4. Double Serpentine - 1-12, 12-1, 12-1, 1-12, 1-12, 12-1, 12-1, etc.
5. 1-12-12 - I made this one up myself. Each group of three rounds are set up 1-12, 12-1, 12-1.  The team with the first overall pick will lead off round 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, and 16.  The team with the 12th overall pick leads off rounds 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, and 15.

Comparing Apples to Apples

In order to see how balanced each of these approaches are, we first need to assign a value to each pick.  Everyone's opinion on what each pick is really worth is subjective. Here is how I approached the problem...

I have a database that contains scoring data from the last 10 year for our scoring system. This data gives me the average points scored for each X^th ranked player at each position. I used this year's draft to find out how many players at each position were drafted (31 QB's, 53 RB's, 60 WR's, 19 TE's, 13 K's, 16 Defenses). From the scoring averages database, I took the top X scores from each position, where X corresponds to the number of players taken at that position this year. I then assigned a "Value" to each "player" by subtracting the number of points scored by the lowest player at that position and adding 1.

Here's a quick example using the QB's.  I've got 31 QB's.  The average score for the #1 QB is 339.  The average score for the #31 QB is 103. I subtract 103 from each QB and add 1 so that the #1 QB's value is 237 and the #31 QB's value is 1.  I follow the same process for each position to end up with a list of 192 "players" that I can sort by value and plug into each of the five draft orders.

Results

Here are the overall totals for each team's draft picks in each draft format:

Here is a graphical representation of the results showing each team's overall total as a percentage of the highest total for each draft type:

Observations:

• The normal serpentine draft results in the greatest advantage for the first three teams and the greatest disadvantage for the last 5 teams.  The team that picks 12th ends up with an overall total barely 91% of the top team's overall total.
• The Third Round Serpentine (3RS) and Double Serpentine yield similar results, with the 3RS appearing to be the more balanced of the two.
• The Third Round Reverse seems to produce the most balanced results of the 4 types of drafts reviewed by Jeff Pasquino.
• The 1-12-12 format is a futher improvement on the 3RR style.

If you are interested in getting a copy of the spreadsheet containing all of the raw data used to create this article, let me know and I'll send it to you in an email.

JCW