ESPN Fantasy Woes

I decided to try out ESPN's fantasy football services for our league this year. The main reasons I did this were curiosity, free real-time scoring, and 120 seconds per pick in the online draft (vs. 90 sec max at Yahoo!). There are a lot of other very nice features (almost too many at times).

However, I'm not here to praise the World Wide Leader's great fantasy site... there are a lot of drawbacks too. I find the menus and tabs to be pretty convoluted... then again, it's hard to adapt after 7 years at Yahoo!. The Bye Week information seems to be intentionally hidden (especially during the draft) with the exception of looking at the extended player schedule. This is a useful view, but there should be a more succinct way to get this info. I also overlooked an option that prevented us from drafting TEs, even though I had selected WR/TE roster spot. That was a mess... but oh well.

But all of those complaints are dwarfed by the ridiculous scoring limitations. I'm baffled by the difficulty of implementing fractional scoring (for example, when a RB gets 89yds in a game and you get 8.9pts, instead of 8pts). A very common and logical setting is seemingly overlooked in the ESPN rules. Here is a very painful email exchange I had with ESPN customer service about the problem:

Fractional scoring is (seemingly) very counterintuitive. Why not just have a button to say "Fractional Points" instead of having to put 0.1pts per 1yd. I've never discussed or thought about FF like that, it's always "1pt per 10yds", with or without fractional points. Plus I still don't know how to get fractional scoring for QBs, since you can't specify to the hundreths decimal (ie. 0.05pts per 1yd, since I really want 1pt per 20yds). Can you help???

Ben
_

Thank you for contacting us.

You are able to do this to the nearest tenth in custom leagues. The LM will need to change the scoring settings. For example rushing 10 yds = 1 point would need to be changed to 1 yd = .1 point.

Regards,
John
ESPN.com Customer Care
_

You didn't answer my question. I knew that about Rushing and Passing... but QBs can't have 0.1pts per 1yd. It needs to be0.05pts per 1yd (or less). If that's the best ESPN can do here... I'll be going back to Yahoo! next year.

Ben
_

Thank you for your reply.

You could go with every 5yds = 2.5 points. I know this isn't exactly what you want, but that is the closest we offer to what you are asking for. I apologize for any inconvenience.

Regards,
John
ESPN.com Customer Care

That's real effing brilliant, John... that means Phillip Rivers would have scored 203.5pts this week! Let's hope ESPN hires some people who understand fantasy football and make their site more user friendly... otherwise, it might be back to Yahoo! for me next year.