Make all players rookies for random-player draft?

[poopoo1970]

I like starting a league from scratch and holding a random-player draft. The only thing I want to change is the years of experience/age of each player. I would love to have all players 22 year-old rookies for parity.

Any ideas?

[jdavidbakr]

I think you'd have to build a roster file to get that to happen. Might be able to write an excel macro to give you the correct distribution. Or perhaps someone here already has a rookie draft generator that can be expanded to give enough players for a full draft.

[jzicc]

If you just want the 2008 adjusted real player file with all of them being made rookies --- that could easily be done ( ASKING FOR INPUT HERE ON IF MY FOLLOWING ASSUMPTION IS CORRECT) by just changing 3 columns in the csv (birth year, years in nfl, and year drafted) and then re-FDT'g the csv

[TheMeat]

I have no opinion on how it would best be done, because I've never played with the player files but I did think of something regarding the actual talent distribution of the league: Having all players rookies will mean no retirements for about 10 years, and with each new draft class adding more talent to the pool the league will have an extremely large talent pool for the first 10 or so years, then mass retirements will shrink that pool rapidly. This will surely give the league parity, probably lotsa FA talent, and each team will have the talent to compete, but when that old age decline happens some teams are going in the toilet. Hard.

So I don't know if you care about that but it will definitely have an impact on the parity of the league, just maybe not in the way you're hoping. Or maybe you don't plan on running it long enough to matter. Just my 2 coppers.

[jzicc]

I used my revised 2008 draft file and did the following:

1) only kept the top rated players (2 thru 9) = 757 players (rest will be generated and will provide the other half of the teams)
2) the players were sorted 9 to 2 with the top 200 getting a rookie status, next 200 1 year, etc..
3) all years of birth were made equal to 1987
4) all % developed were made equal to 35% -- this throws a nice curve into the entry draft and subsequent years

I can email the fdt draft file if anyone wishes ( I only fast simmed a few seasons but it looks like it could be a neat challenge) BTW LET ME KNOW IF IT'S ANY GOOD!)

(Btw there must be a cap on number of players per year --- making the entire database the same year caused crashes --- the above is one way to do a set)

[Autumn]

I've done this with my League of Ordinary Gentleman dynasty. in that case I intentionally did not want a talent distribution, the league started with all scrubs. That was quite easy, just make a new player file with one player of the right age. The game will fill in the rest.