2011 eSFL Draft ganglewad

The 2011 eSFL draft concluded yesterday, 20 August 2011 with 14 teams battling for 12 rounds to build their team to championship caliber. The quest for the Ballistic Bowl was hosted by ESPN and was scheduled to kick off at 0915 ET but was delayed for 0ver 20 minutes due to technical difficulties. "As commissioner of the league these type of things are embarrassing and unacceptable", commissioner T. Lee Rhodes stated after the first round was paused twice and even restarted once.

The problem was a repeat of last season which left the Vial Vigilante squad in shambles. This time around no one was severely setback but the D Crownholders did lose a late round pick in the debacle.

The root cause turned out to be the leagues restricted free agent rule, which allows team owners to keep any rookie they drafted the previous season but not use them in a game. The rules state that player will be allocated as a 10th round selection in the next seasons draft. Dez Bryant of the Texan Bruisers fell into this category and the ESPN draft site was setup as a keeper league, Bryant was marked as a keeper for the Bruisers. Once the draft kicked off ESPN began the draft as normal but when it got to the Bruisers he was skipped and Dez Bryant was selected as his 1st round pick.

"I have initiated an investigation into the incident and promise all league owners this will never occur again. After talking to Representatives at ESPN on the phone they have informed me they will try and re-write their software to allow keepers to be marked and the owner to identify the round the keeper will be taken. If they are unable to get this done for next season we have a workaround. All teams will have a player identified as a keeper and those players that are not restricted free agents will be released after the draft. These players will be players that would not have been drafted (scrubs) to ensure the availability of all quality players in the draft universe".

For the sake of the league owners let us hope this problem is behind the league as the extra 20 minute delay seemed to have a negative impact on several owners' decision making abilities when it came to building their team.