In Memorium...Mock Drafts

[Schwks]

Obituary:

Mock Draft, died in fall, 2011. Mock Draft left behind the $125 Slow Draft, the satellite leagues, the early season draft for money.

For the last several years, at the end of the regular season, there would be an almost immediate mock draft that took place on these message boards. Often times the mock would be followed with several more mocks, often times with clever/thoughtful annotations by the mockers, and people mocking the mockers.

Mock Draft Central would be littered with drafters both from the NFBC and from the Yahoo leagues of the world beginning in early-mid December.

This fall, I PM'ed Doughy, who usually ran the mocks. He wrote back that he was too immersed in two pay drafts. It was not even November yet. I knew the Mock was dead.

Now we all know the flawed nature of mocks and all of the multiple reasons for the flaws(no money on the line, different skill levels, differing ADPs affecting the default settings etc, etc) But gosh darn it, I miss mocks. I miss the excitement of the blank team as the clock wound down to zero. I miss the witty repartee, the discussion, the panning of the picks. I miss scanning over the teams picked by the guys who knew what they were doing.

Maybe this nostalgia is born out of the boredom of being laid up, but has the Slow Draft killed the Mock Draft Star?

[Winston's Empire]

I think the Slow Drafts are simply going to make people better live drafters and NFBC Players in general. Every time your picking in a slow draft, your doing research on 10-15 players and mentally banking stats and info that would be tough to get doing mocks with 90 second time clocks or piling through the MOST up to date fantasy baseball magazine .

The slow draft season has become one of my favorite things about baseball and I think the DC Championship portion of the NFBC pie will only continue to grow as more people learn about this awesome format!

Props to KJ Duke for coming up with the idea for Slow Drafts!