Now that fantasy football draft season is in full swing, there will be thousands of drafts conducted every day from now until kickoff. Some leagues will conduct their draft on-line using the live draft room capabilities of MyFantasyLeague.com. But a lot of leagues will make it a social event as well by gathering all of the team owners at the same physical location, such as a house or a bar or a conference room. If that’s the scenario that you are looking at for your league, then we want you to be aware of a great option to enhance your draft experience while keeping track of your draft picks and making it really easy to update your league when the event is done: FFLM!

Fantasy Football League Manager

FFLM is a Windows program that can be used to conduct your live draft. All you need is a PC with Windows at your draft event. You don’t even need an internet connection. Just be sure to download and install the program ahead of time, and then click on the “Update” button in FFLM after you run it to make sure you have the most recent player updates.  Then follow these steps to prep for your draft ahead of time:

1. Use the “File > New League” menu item in FFLM to create a new league file.

2. Use the “File > Import from MyFantasyLeague.com” menu item to import all of your settings into FFLM.

3. If you already set up your draft order, then you’re ready to start. If you want to create or edit your draft order, then use the “Draft > Set Draft Order” screen in FFLM.

4. When you are ready to start the draft, click on the “Draft > Interactive Draft” menu item.

From there, FFLM will guide you through the process by showing the current round and pick in the upper left, and a timer bar on the left side, along with a list of available players to choose from in the center of the screen, and the rosters of each team as the draft progresses. It even includes player rankings as provided by TheHuddle.com based on their cheat sheets, as well as the latest ADP Rankings from MyFantasyLeague.com. So you can quickly see which players are remaining with the highest rankings. You can sort the player list by these values, or narrow down the list to only show certain positions. And you can Find any player quickly just by typing their last name. In short, it provides you with an always up-to-date list of players to choose from during your draft. As each pick is made, the players are taken off the list, and the rosters are updated accordingly.

Now for the fun stuff… You can optionally include announcements of each pick by downloading and installing the FFLM sound files. If you install these ahead of time, and then turn the Audio options on, the computer will announce each player as he is selected during the draft. So when you click on a player to draft them, you’ll hear something like this over your computer speaker: “Team 1 selects Tom Brady, Quarterback for the New England Patriots. Team 2 is now on the clock. Team 3 is on deck.”

In addition to the audio, you’ll also see a countdown timer to keep the draft on track, and the system will announce when there is one minute remaining, and 30 seconds left, and then it will say “Please make your selection” in an ominous voice to let owners know when their time is up.

Another fun part to all of this is letting everyone else view the draft program by projecting it onto the wall or a screen. If you can borrow a projector or a large monitor from work or home, or use the equipment at whatever location you are conducting your draft, it makes for a great way to keep everybody on track and informed throughout the draft. There are several views of the draft in progress that you can toggle between, including the available player list with the various rankings and stats, and the rosters of each team, or the draft summary that shows the last 20 or so picks that have been made. And if you have an auction instead of a draft, there is also a view of each team’s funds spent, player count, and remaining funds and the minimum bid based on how many open spots you have left to fill your roster.

Be sure to check out FFLM if you plan to conduct your draft in a social environment where all of your owners will be in the same location. The best part is that after you are all done with your draft, you use the “Exchange” button in FFLM to transfer your draft results to your league in MyFantasyLeague.com with just the click of a button.