My draft preparation is in full swing, with player rankings being researched, mock drafts being completed and injury updates being digested. The draft can’t come soon enough and my attention is already drifting to the post-draft state of assessing my roster and how I will ponder my team over the course of the season.
The online Yahoo roster system looks nice enough, is easy to use and will always be up-to-date, but I like having a physical roster board to refer to as well. Most Major League General Managers also have such a wall feature in their office, as noted in Sam Walker’s ‘Fantasyland’ (well worth another read at this time of year), although I don’t quite have the time and space to list every single player in the league like they do.
With hopes and enthusiasm high prior to the draft, I indulge in a bit of ‘arts and crafts’ time by putting together a BGB Fantasy League roster board for my own team.Â
What you need
An A3-sized piece of card, or the cardboard backs of two A4 paper notepads
The specially-designed BGB Fantasy roster template (two A4 pages)
Some sticky/’post-it’-type notes
A pen or two
Any other design tools (pens, paints, collage material, Photoshop etc) that your creative urge compels you to use.
The magical roster board-making process
Start off by making a base for your roster board. I save up two thick cardboard backs to A4 note pads as they make a good backing for the board. You just need to securely stick them side-by-side with some parcel tape or suchlike to make for a solid A3-sized base.
Next, print off the BGB Fantasy roster template with one page per A4 piece of paper. The pages have all the boxes you need to display your roster, but there’s still plenty of space around the sides for you to customize it as you wish. A fantasy team logo, positive slogans to boost your confidence, bright colours: the choice is yours!
Once you’ve got your roster template how you want it, just stick the two pages side-by-side on to the A3 cardboard base. Alternatively, you could stick the paper roster sheets to a wall or pin them on to a pinboard.
Once you’ve drafted your team, or even while you are drafting your team, you can then create post-it/’sticky’ notes for each player and stick them on to your board in the relevant boxes. The roster sheet is designed so all your active players (10 position players and 6 pitchers) are on one half of the board, with the bench (5 players) and Disabled List (3 slots) on the other. The sticky notes I use are 2 inches wide by 1.5 inches tall (5 cm by 3.8 cm) and anything around that size will work. I use a blue pen for position players and red for pitchers so that I can quickly differentiate between the two on my bench or DL. Alternatively you could use different coloured sticky notes or maybe even pictures of each of your players.
However you decide to design your roster board, I hope you find it useful throughout the season and are able to look at it with a sense of pride/contentment after the draft.
Or like me at the end of last season, when injuries had hit my team and I had been left scavenging for someone vaguely useful, staring at it and wondering: ‘how did I end up with him on my team’?
2 comments
Loving the effort you’re putting in Matt! Not long until the draft, really looking forward to it.
Apologies – highly likely that I’m going to have to miss the draft, but I have set my rankings, which will hopefully work. I’ve done a rubbish job of weeding out injured players, but oh well! If I don’t see you there, have fun!