Okay, so I got curious about how long these fantasy football drafts take, you know? I mean, I’ve done a few, and they always seem to drag on forever. So, I decided to time my next one and see what’s what.
First off, I jumped into a standard 12-team league with some buddies. We opted for the snake draft format ’cause it’s what we usually do. You know, where the draft order reverses each round.
We set a timer for each pick. I’ve seen leagues do anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes per pick, but we went with a nice round 60 seconds. Figured that’s enough time to make a decision without it taking all day. I even started to write down every pick in order to track the time.
The draft kicked off, and I noticed right away that the first few rounds flew by. Everyone’s kinda got their eye on the top players, so those picks were pretty quick. But, as we got deeper into the draft, people started taking more time. Thinking strategy, looking at stats, maybe even grabbing a snack.
- Round 1-3: Smooth sailing, mostly under 30 seconds a pick.
- Round 4-8: Things slowed down a bit, closer to that 60-second mark.
- Round 9-16: This is where it got interesting. Some guys were really taking their time, using up almost the whole minute.
By the time we hit the last few rounds, it felt like everyone was just ready to be done. Picks started speeding up again. When all was said and done, I looked at my timer, the whole draft clocked in at around 1 hour and 45 minutes.
Now, I also tried out an auction draft once. That’s a whole different beast. Instead of picking in order, you’re bidding on players with a set budget. Let me tell you, that took way longer. We were at it for a solid 3 hours, easy. Popular players had bidding wars that dragged on for minutes. It was fun, but definitely a bigger time commitment.
So, there you have it. From my little experiment, a standard 12-team snake draft with 60 seconds per pick took close to 2 hours. Auction drafts are a longer game, but for snake draft, it was under 2 hours. Hope this is useful for you guys!
