Fantasy sports debate: snake style vs auction style draft

Its that time of year again. Time to call up all your friends and fantasy league mates for another year of fantasy football. In August, the month before the NFL season begins, you will be having league meetings, studying, and preparing for your eventual fantasy football draft around the end of the month. Some you will be starting up new leagues, others will be playing already established leagues with your friends. When you are setting up your league for the year, a lot of decisions have to be made about how the league is run. Decisions like how many teams are gonna be in the league, how many playoff teams, whats the scoring system, what website are we gonna use, where is the draft going to be held, is this a keeper league, and what type of draft are we going to do. Based on those decisions all leagues can all be a little different in some way. One of those decisions i am going to focus on is which draft style to use for your league.

The 2 most popular types of drafts are snake drafts and auction drafts. The two are completely different from each other yet both are effective ways for drafting for your fantasy league. A snake draft is probably a little more commonly used than the auction draft. In a snake draft, you randomly draw for draft picks to see what order everyone gets to gets to draft their players each round. So if you had 8 owners in you league, all 8 people would have a randomly chosen draft number from 1-8 (Some people use last years standings to determine draft order but thats not as common a practice). To make it fair, every other round the order is reversed so owners drafting toward the end of the round in the first round would draft in the beginning of the next round (1-8, 8-1). For example, the owner with the first overall pick would have the last pick in the next round and the owner with the last pick in the first round turn around and have the first pick in the next round. This pattern continues the same way till the end of the draft however many rounds the league determines it needs to fill the teams rosters. An auction draft is totally different. Each owner gets a certain amount of "play money" used to draft their team in a real auction. Every player is "bid" on (except keepers) and the owner who is the highest bidder on each player is awarded that player to their team. Each owner must use their budget in the auction to fill out their entire roster. Most football leagues use around 100 dollars to draft in an auction with for each team and baseball uses 260 dollars. So as you can tell, both drafts are totally different, and they both have their advantages and disadvantages. After drafting in an auction league for the past couple years in my baseball league (when before all i did was snake drafts), i can tell you there are a lot more advantages to an auction draft over a snake draft in fantasy baseball and football. Here are all the advantages to doing a auction draft:

Better for keepers- In most leagues that draft with the snake format, when you want to have a keeper, you have to use your #1 draft pick to keep that player (or if its 2-3 keepers, use your top 2-3 draft picks). Thats not bad, if you've had Ladainian Tomlinson, Larry Johnson, Priest Holmes, Shaun Alexander or some other stud in the past 5 years. For everyone else though, if you werent lucky enough have a top 3 or top 5 player, you will be left without a keeper. Same with baseball with Arod or Pujols or Vlad. But in an auction league, you have the realistic option of keeping anyone on your team, if you bought them for a good price. In an auction league, you can allow owners to keep a player (or players) on your roster the next year for the price you bought them for plus you pay few extra dollars to keep them. In my baseball league, i bought Justin Morneau for 7 bucks and now i can reap the benefits from that. This year i drafted Eric Byrnes for 6 bucks, he is a great keeper candidate for next year. If this was a snake draft though, i doubt he would be worth keeping for a top draft pick, but in my auction league, hes an excellent value. Basically, the auction draft will reward owners who do their homework and draft well, who buy players (sleepers) at low cost and end up performing at a high level. Whereas, in snake drafts, the guy who is lucky enough to be randomly selected for the top 2 or 3 picks is rewarded for the next couple years. So if you want the possibility to keep more players and not limit yourself to a few players, you want to do auction draft for a keeper league.

Everyone has a chance at every player- In most snake drafts, the draft picks are randomly selected for each team. Some snake draft leagues do draft picks in the order by the standing of the previous year but thats not near as common, most just draw picks out of the hat every year or however you want to randomly do it. So in a 10 team league, some lucky owner will end up with the 10th pick. So how does it feel to know by chance or (bad) luck, you get absolutely no shot at a top 5 player? I know in a snake draft, that 10th pick would be the first pick in the 2nd round but that owner still gets no shot at a top player, how fair is that? And how many times do you have players targeted during the draft and they get selected a few picks before your turn, and then you have to pick some guy you really didnt want. And in a 10 team league, you can have anywhere from 2-18 picks between your pick and your next pick, there is huge group of players that will be selected in between there that you just wont be able to get, based on the rankings and projections and where you are on the draft board. How many times do you hear in a snake draft after a pick is made "dang, i really wanted that player"? Well, in an auction draft, you get to find out how much every owner really wanted that player because every owner has an equal shot at every player in the draft(except keepers). Since every player is bid on in the auction, any owner has a shot at getting any player they want. As long as you are willing to pay the highest price for that player, you can get any player you want. This allows you to draft those players and team you like and are not forced to make a decision to draft whats left (which you may not like) at a certain time like in snake drafts. If you are looking for fairness and whats most fair for every owner, auction drafts create the most fair situation for everyone to draft any player.

More difficult/challenging, more strategy involved- In a snake draft, you have to worry about filling out your roster, getting a good balance of players, and filling your team needs. That can be a challenging task for any owner. But if you've done your homework, went through mock drafts, and show up with a good ranking list, almost anyone can show up and draft a good team. In an auction draft though, you have to worry about all those things in building your team, plus you have to manage your team budget. In an snake draft, you do have to keep up with things throughout the draft, but its a little more laid back and since you know exactly when your turn comes and whos there, it makes things easier. Whereas, in an auction draft you are constantly having to think and stay on your game at all times. And since you dont have a "turn" to draft, you just bid on a player whenever you want, and you have to decide on every player that is up for bid whether you should jump in on the bid or not. So therefore, you have less time you can take off and not think during an auction draft. There are so many more things an owner has to think about and consider during the draft. If you are bidding on a player against another owner or owners, there are so many things at play you are going through in your head: How bad does he or I really need this player? How much should i spend on this player before i stop bidding any higher? Are there other cheaper options available that would be a better choice? How much money will i have left to spend on other players after i make this pick? Do the other owners really want this player or are they just driving the price up on me? Should i just try to drive the price up on a particular owner to handcuff him for later picks?....Those are just some of the many questions going through your head on a particular bid. The auction draft also is better for more creative team building. You can spend over half your money on 2 or 3 high priced stud players and then build around them with a lot of cheaper options. Another strategy is saving your money till the end and being able to outbid everyone for any quality player left that you want. Or you can just do the standard and safest thing and spend here and there when the price is right and build a solid team all around. These are just some of the several options and strategies you can employ when going into the auction draft that you couldnt possibly do in a snake draft. If you consider yourself an above average or advanced fantasy manager or would just like more of a challenge, you should definitely do an auction league to test your skills.

More unpredictability- In most snake drafts, the draft order is set before you show up to the draft or you find out when you get there. So most owners go through and do some mock drafts so they know what to expect when they get there. And most of the time you can predict what little group of players you will or can get in each round that you want. And like most any draft, you will have a few owners who make some dumb or unlikely picks that you didnt expect. But by and large, if you have a competitive league with smart owners, most snake drafts are fairly predictable and go according to most rankings or mock drafts. The great thing about an auction draft is, you have absolutely no idea how the draft will go or how your team will look after the draft. You can determine before the draft who you want on your team but if the price is too high you will have to go in a different directions and possibly use different strategies after the draft starts. A lot of players will be drafted at higher and lower prices than you originally expected. Some players you may not expect were highly sought after and end up going way above their projected value. A lot of owners may blow all their money overspending on players early and leaving you with all the money to spend on everyone else . You will always have those couple owners who come up with some wild strategies like spending most of their money on 2 or 3 players or not spending money till late in the draft. Any way you slice it, the auction draft will always provide more unpredictability and suspense than any standard snake draft.

More interactive, more fun, everyone gets more involved, better experience- In your usual snake draft, the draft order is set, so usually you are only speak when its your turn to draft. During an auction draft you have more chances to talk since you can bid on every player. Normally during a snake draft, you usually have at least an owner or 2 that will take a while to draft so it lags the draft and makes it less fun. An auction draft is constant bidding on players so its more fast paced and fun. The highlight of a snake draft is usually that one guy who picks an injured player in the early rounds that you can harass. Other than that and a few surprise picks, thats about all the excitement you get for a snake draft. The auction draft is full of excitement. The auction draft will always provide more twists and turns and surprises. There are several points in the draft where a couple owners get in a bidding war for a player and end up spending way over the projected value and thats always fun to watch. I think the auction experience is more fun in general, since you are bidding on every player you own, you feel like you earned that player as opposed to snake drafts where you just get a player since it was your turn to pick.

Auction draft doesnt usually take longer, less downtime during draft- In my experience with both drafts, either draft will take several hours. If you have a couple guys in your league that take a while to draft in a snake draft though, an auction draft could be quicker to finish than a snake draft. In an auction draft, owners take turns "nominating" players to bid on, they dont have to win the bid on them, they just have to make an opening bid on the player they nominate. So since you dont have to decide on the spot who to draft, only who to nominate, there is much less downtime waiting between picks during an auction draft. Most of the time in an auction draft, if an owner takes more than 30 seconds or so to nominate a player, the other owners will pressure him to hurry and throw a name out. I cant say for certain that every auction draft will go faster or take less time than a snake draft, but i can say that it will be a lot less boring. The only situation i would see doing a snake draft over an auction draft is if every owner cant be present at the draft.