Pay for online league maintenance, or keep it in the kitty? (1 Viewer)

[Doug B]

Starting up a new, low-hassle FF league with guys from the office. Since we're not going to have a lot of frills or esoteric scoring, everyone's agreed to go with some type of free online league, preferring to leave the money we'd spend on a pay league in the kitty.

What do your leagues do with this? Especially for leagues that are uncomplicated, rules-wise? For those leagues that go with free options, what have you found out there that suits your league's needs? I'm just starting to gather info on two free services, Yahoo! and CBS Sportsline. Seems that:

[*]CBS Sportsline free leagues don't allow flex positions or any kind of scoring-system customization. Our scoring rules will be simple (no PPR) ... but I think I'd like to be able to at least do some tweaking. Everyone seems to really want a flex spot, too.

[*]Yahoo! free leagues seems to be a lot more customizable if you skip over their Express Set-up. However, I'm having trouble getting specifics on just what you can adust in a Yahoo! free league. I'm getting ready to just go through the steps of setting up a free league over there just to be able to see the options -- was hoping to find a FAQ sheet or something.

 

[FreeBaGeL]

For simpler leagues, I've always gone with Yahoo and never had any problems or found any really bad missing features.

 

[Captain Hook]

don't know because I don't play in any leagues like that but my guess for best free option would be Yahoo

 

[kinglochness]

My advice for a free league is ESPN. More options than yahoo and a lot more streamlined that CBSsportsline. Real time scoring updates and the commish can post weekly messages to the league (with pics, links, youtube vids, etc.) and doesn't cost a dime.

 

[RUSF18]

If you're running a standard league, Yahoo is the best option. It's a very clean, simple interface. I find ESPN on the clunky side, with some things being downright annoying. It's been a while since I've seen it so I don't remember the particulars, but the data ESPN displays on your main lineup screen would be completely irrelevant - something like preseason draft rank and percentage owned while ignoring all stats.

If you're doing an online auction, ESPN should be the choice.

 

[lebowski]

I like fleaflicker for free leagues.

 

[NajehHejan]

Never tried ESPN or NFL, so I can't comment on them.

Have tried Yahoo and Fleaflicker and I prefer FF. My pet peeve with Yahoo is that it does not reshuffle seeds in the playoffs. Most guys don't care about this but for some reason it annoys the crap out of me.

 

[Mr.Pack]

If you're running a standard league, Yahoo is the best option. It's a very clean, simple interface. I find ESPN on the clunky side, with some things being downright annoying. It's been a while since I've seen it so I don't remember the particulars, but the data ESPN displays on your main lineup screen would be completely irrelevant - something like preseason draft rank and percentage owned while ignoring all stats.If you're doing an online auction, ESPN should be the choice.

 

[Doug B]

Thanks for the input, guys. Hadn't used Yahoo! since 2005, and I wasn't sure how their free product stood up to the competition in 2011.

 

[cheese]

ESPN used to be terrible, but it has improved a lot. If you haven't checked it out in a while its at least worth another look. The gamecast program on gameday is pretty slick these days IMO.

 

[Peiz]

I agree with a few others that Yahoo would be my choice. I've never used Fleaflicker so I can't say anything about that but I've found CBS to be lacking with the free version and ESPN to be clunky as well. I've done a league on ESPN the last 4 or 5 years and it's the one I care about the least because I inevitably get frustrated with all the clicking around. Yahoo is so easy and well put together even if it doesn't offer all the frills and flashy graphics that ESPN does. (Another plus is the free live scoring on Yahoo now)