CBS Sports, ESPN & Yahoo! Your opinions.

[Shakespeare 0]

Hello,

 

My primary league has been with CBS Sports since 2000. At the time, CBS was worth the premium. Now I'm not so sure.

 

I would love to get your experiences regarding the 2012 season with any of these products. What about the independent league managers out there?

 

Your feedback in greatly appreciated.

[Kopy 493]

MFL

Don't look back!

[rholio 339]

For free sites, Fleaflicker.com is hard to beat.

[Frozenbeernuts 1,652]

I never have problems with espn, but i have never commished. Im not sure how their customization stacks up to mfl which is vast. All my redraft leagues are basic so espn and cbs are fine. In our fftoday zealots dynasty league we tried switching from mfl to cbs, big mistake. Cbs sucks for dynast and mfl has so many options.

[Shakespeare 0]

I've looked at Fleaflicker, but a quick search of their Twitter/Facebook feeds shows a fair bit of downtime. This is to be expected with a smaller operation, but maybe not something I want to risk my league with. Can you commend about this?

 

As for MFL, I've looked into it and (like Fleaflicker) it's really attractive to support an independent, for-pay service rather than going with your typical ad-supported platform. However, like Fleaflicker, it seems like the website is fairly rudimentary with setup being (possibly?) a bit complex? Can you comment about this?

 

Also, I'm kind of surprised no one has mentioned Yahoo. I've never used it, but it seems to be the most popular of the big sites.

[Frozenbeernuts 1,652]

I've looked at Fleaflicker, but a quick search of their Twitter/Facebook feeds shows a fair bit of downtime. This is to be expected with a smaller operation, but maybe not something I want to risk my league with. Can you commend about this?

 

As for MFL, I've looked into it and (like Fleaflicker) it's really attractive to support an independent, for-pay service rather than going with your typical ad-supported platform. However, like Fleaflicker, it seems like the website is fairly rudimentary with setup being (possibly?) a bit complex? Can you comment about this?

 

Also, I'm kind of surprised no one has mentioned Yahoo. I've never used it, but it seems to be the most popular of the big sites.

I use yahoo also. Its fine i guess. Cbs, espn, and yahoo are all fine for redraft and keeper leagues that do not require a great deal of rules flexibility. Mfl does have a learning curve but allows for maximum customization more suited for dynasty. So... there really isnt much more to it.

 

Oh, cbssports fantasy app for last year was TURRIBLE. Just completely broken. Never used any other sites fantasy app before.

[WhiteWonder 2,179]

ESPN is great. has a good interface with simple navigation. lets you do most of the custom scoring you need.

 

MFL is fine too but its not the be all, end all that people make it out to be. Very clunky site navigation, A lot of people argue about how much you can customize your league page but then they link me something that looks like a 5th graders computer programming project and I dont see the big deal. but they are a little more custom in terms of scoring options. A few leagues i'm in are only possible on MFL.

[GreenTD 56]

In the two leagues I commish, I use Yahoo. I've never had any issues with them other than when their servers went down last season a few hours before Sunday games started (I believe it was week 10). Easy to use as commish & it saves all your league info for free from year to year.

 

Play in one ESPN league. Meh. No big issues but not my favorite.

 

My ESPN league used to be on CBS, & I hated that site. Always slow & seemed to lock up a lot. Since you have to pay for it, it's not worth the hassle.

 

Just entered two dynasty leagues with a bunch of FFToday vets & we are using MFL. I like the site & like others have stated it's very customizable. I agree with WW's point that it's very simplistic in regards to how it looks but that doesn't bother me. I'm not the commish so I'm not sure how difficult it is to navigate & work with.

 

If you want a free site, Yahoo is great. If you don't mind paying for extra features, MFL seems to be the most popular. My $.02

[giraldi02 470]

Free site: Yahoo

If you want full customization for each member of the league : MFL

Those are the two options

[Pecos Rattlers 5]

Yahoo slowly adds more and more customizations each year. It's not quite as flexible as some pay sites, but it's pretty close, easier to use & has good uptime (though not perfect).

 

I'd start with Yahoo & look at the pay sites only if there's a customization you will really miss.

[TFO4 1]

I noticed no mention of NFL.com. I've used all of the above mentioned sites and while I do agree that MFL is great if you are running a highly customized dynasty league, I think NFL.com is the best choice when running fairly standard leagues.

 

It has all of the scoring and roster customization that ESPN, Yahoo, and CBS have and it has a beautiful interface, google hangout support for drafts, customized news stories, and everything else you would expect to find. I'll be use it this year for my IDP league.

[Peanut33 0]

MFL

Don't look back!

 

Agree! We've been with CBS for 14 years and now switching to MFL. We're very customized league -- scoring, head-to-head doubleheaders customized schedule, blind bid waivers. Nothing that free site could handle. Appears MFL will handle well. Years ago when we looked at MFL, it was lacking in security area whereby commissioner could view pending waiver claims of all owners. Now they have the feature to turn off commissioner access to the owner's menus. MFL just seems to keep enhancing their site while CBS keeps going backwards. Plus MFL will give you 50% off this year for coming over from CBS. Good deal. We're going to at least give it a try this year. The "new look" CBS site isn't an improvement IMO and now they took away the CBS message boards too.

[Quickolas1 80]

MFL is fine too but its not the be all, end all that people make it out to be. Very clunky site navigation, A lot of people argue about how much you can customize your league page but then they link me something that looks like a 5th graders computer programming project.

 

http://www24.myfantasyleague.com/2013/home/19736

 

http://www21.myfantasyleague.com/2013/home/56019

[IGotWorms 3,325]

Free site: Yahoo

 

If you want full customization for each member of the league : MFL

 

Those are the two options

[Stewburtx8 67]

I've never seen ANY reason to pay for a fantasy site. Espn and Yahoo are both perfectly fine and free. At this point, they both offer pretty much all the options you need to setup your league. I don't really care about pretty colors so I don't need to be able to customize "the look" of my fantasy home page. To each their own when it comes to that.

[eaglesfreak 10]

 

http://www24.myfantasyleague.com/2013/home/19736

 

http://www21.myfantasyleague.com/2013/home/56019

hey man how do u get ur league to look like that?? I know theres another member who charges for the templates but is this something I can do? I've messed with the settings and just can't figure it out..MFL seems complicated lol

[LunaTick 29]

I have used three primarily over the years.

 

CBSportline, until it became over priced (was it ever not)

 

then replaced it with

 

Fanball, until it was bought out.

 

then replaced it with

 

ESPN

 

Of these, ESPN is the least adaptable.

Is the least flexible.

Can be down right annoying.

What it has going for it is it is free. If I paid a dime i would not walk I would run away.

 

e.g. our league likes to do in season player aquisitoins in the following way.

1. 2 FA pickups a week.

2. week starts at start of first game of week and ends at start of game the next week.

3. first come first served.

ESPN could not handle this.

But that isn't the worst of it. I contacted their tech to see if this is correct. I was told I should change the setting. But to do this, as I had used their Draft App to do the draft and upload the team, meant I had to reload the draft. Ok, if it meant FA would work better. Change didn't do it. Had to reset the reset. Worst yet, I had to manually fix the games played.......... just a cascade of sh!t.

 

BTW, it cannot handle doing alternative championship scenarios also. Like my favorite the Toilet bowl (inversion of the bottom dwellers where losers advance.)