The Blog for the Sports Gamer Three guys who love Sports Gaming rant and rave about various stuff.

Thursday morning notes

- As we were reminded yesterday, the Blog fantasy football draft is taking place tomorrow night at 8:30 EST.   Here are a few of the rules that you need to be aware of.

90 seconds per pick

The league has a draft robot configured for it.  (One of the features of the free league from CBSSports.com)  If you miss one pick, it will auto draft for you for the rest of the draft.   So, it's a good idea to have your draft list ready, just in case....

It is a snake draft, so my team is picking 3rd in the first round and 10th in the second round.

That's about it, as far as the draft goes.  If you check out the league page, you can see the rules for scoring and such.

Next year I might take a look at a different fantasy site that allows us to customize the rules more, but I have stuck with CBSSports for the past few years, just for simplicity's sake.

See you tomorrow evening.

- I see that we have 5 owners locked into our Madden 11 online franchise and I know that at least two others will be joining... (C'mon Dan... just grab the Pats already...)

Plenty more room if you want to join in.  It's a very casual league, so just drop me an email if you want the details on it.

Same goes for the online NCAA Football 11 franchise.  Just send me an email and I'll get you an invite.

- I received Mafia 2 yesterday from Gamefly and I have to say that the atmosphere in the game is quite impressive.  A few of the reviews for the game have really disliked the pacing of the game, but I have always liked the way that Mafia handled it's approach to the police and the fact that if you break a law when a police officer can see you, they're going to try to arrest you for it.   If you speed, they will try to arrest you.  It's actually refreshing to have a game where you have to commit crimes in the game but still have to abide by some laws to avoid attracting more police attention to your character.

Lastly, I love the character dialogue used between the two main characters in the early stages of the game.   The interaction between the two of them in the car while you are driving from one event to another is quite impressive.  It's the first time, that I can recall, where I actually wanted to spend more time with a character in a game, just to hear more about them.

- Another preseason game for the Packers tonight.  This time matching up against the Colts.

Again, nothing to really look for in the game other that individual performances.   It would be nice to see Woodson play for a bit tonight though, just to see him match up against Wayne a few times.  Stopping the passing game is going to be a huge key to this years success for the Packers.  Something that they need to prove that they can do consistently.

- Former head coach and current athletic director for Wisconsin, Barry Alvarez, has confirmed that Wisconsin and Iowa will not be in the same division in the new Big Ten football conference layout.  Add that to the rumors that Michigan and Ohio State will not be in the same conference and you have a good idea of what the Big Ten is looking to do with their new alignment.  It's all about creating divisions that will generate the most hype and build to the best possible matchup in the conference championship game each year.