Quick (and important) note...I plan to rely on this space for keeping everyone informed this season. Doing a post here and then replicating everything in an email has been pretty much a waste of time. I'll use emails (or the league site message board) for personal messages and to let you know something new has been posted here.
Now then...
As we edge closer to the 45th Hughes season it is time to update everyone on draft details and a few related items, as well as some announcements and reminders.
1st up...in case you missed it... the draft order was drawn on Tuesday. Per the email sent...
The following draft order was randomly generated for your league: 1 - Rbacks 2 - Strawmenn 3 - Nationals 4 - Heroes 5 - Bombers 6 - Legends 7 - Giants 8 - Sticks 9 - Blizzard 10 - Holes 11 - Pirates 12 - Flyers
Once it was distributed I heard from Rick, one of the owners I mentioned earlier that has a potential Labor Day evening issue. We agreed that switching slots might give him some time to arrive home from his trip so the actual draft board will have the Giants in the #12 slot and the Flyers at #7. I prefer a mid-pack slot anyway so it works for both of us. And now that I think about it there is no reason other teams couldn't swap positions. If you can find a partner, go for it. Just have it done by this weekend and both guys need to contact me. Note that this is for initial draft slots drawn. You can't 'trade' individual rounds or anything of that nature.
Draft Tidbits
This coming Sunday or Monday I will send the PrimeTime Draft room link to everyone. I kind of poked around it a bit and there isn't anything different that I can see from last season. I do have our team helmets loaded which you see when a pick is made. I'm asking for everyone's patience on draft night. There may be a delay or two along the way. I don't expect major issues but you never know. If anyone else thinks they may have availability issues let me know asap. Thanks.
No changes at this time in the logistics of the draft. We are still looking at Paz' place in the Heights at 6:30 local time on Labor Day. I'll let you know if I need to push it back a bit.
Roster and Waiver Things
We will have the roster capped at 17 this season. As we've been doing for the past few years we will have a 16-round draft. The morning after the draft the league is open for First Come, First Served waivers and that's when you can add a 17th player. That window runs through Thursday evening before the NFL openers. There is no other waiver window during that first week. Once the FCFS period ends you can begin bidding on players and those bids will be processed the following Wednesday, September 11. Our regular weekly waiver two-window calendar runs as usual from that point.
EDIT (Aug 16): If you draft a player on IR, or have second thoughts on a player you grabbed, the FCFS window mentioned is when you can replace him/them. It's not just for adding a 17th player. Note that as of a couple of years ago I no longer reimburse the $5 FCFS waiver money spent in Week 1. When we went from $300 to $350 I figured that was one task I could eliminate from my list. /EDIT
Weekly and yearly player pick-up maximums remain the same as in prior years. Each team begins with $350 with the 2023 Second Season winners having a bonus. FCFS pickups are always $5, and blind waiver bids have a $10 minimum with $1 increments. In the postseason clubs are awarded $10 in extra waiver cash every week they survive.
We will have two IR slots this year with players having to be officially listed as IR in the NFL to be eligible for one of those slots.
And so on...
There are no rule changes this season other than the roster reduction (18->17) and IR slot increase (1->2) mentioned over the summer. Rules and regulations are found on the league page. I'll have more info for you as we get closer to the draft. All but two owners have paid for 2024. If you try to use the league message board and can post there you know I have received your payment. Thanks.
I've had a project in the back of my mind for a while and digging through the archives to find our draft locations prompted me to go ahead and look into it. Pulling up old Hughes News Championship Editions had me stumbling over Dan Marino's name quite a bit.
I knew he had been the starting QB in six Hughes Bowl-winning lineups and I was curious if anyone else was even in that ballpark. The answer is...yes and no. Here are some random facts I pulled from my research...
1) Among QBs, only Drew Brees has more than two title game-winning starts. He had three.
2) Four other quarterbacks had two. Ben Roethlisberger and Tom Brady (both understandable), Rich Gannon (well, Okay), and Jeff Garcia (Jeff Garcia?!?) Yup.
3) Surprisingly, no running back has ever been penciled into winning Hughes Bowl lineups more than twice. Nine guys have reached two. Marcus Allen, Ricky Watters, Jonathan Taylor, and Pete Johnson are among the bigger names. Ryan Grant isn't, but he made the list.
4) When guys drafted Marino they usually made a point to go after his pals Mark Clayton and Mark Duper. Clayton came along with DM on four title-winning appearances, Duper was on three. Keyshawn Johnson helped three owners bring home the big prize as did the much less heralded Stephone Paige. But one other receiver deserves his own paragraph...
4) Tony Gonzalez, a tight end in a league that hadn't required one for its first 43 seasons, was officially part of four Hughes Bowl championship lineups in addition to being the tiebreaking player whose 24 points propelled the 2004 Nationals over the Giants in the only Hughes Bowl ever to end deadlocked.
5) The ageless Gary Anderson kicked for the winning side in three Hughes Bowls. A handful of others have done so twice.
I'm still tweaking the data, correcting some spelling errors, and adding better IDs to some players with the same last names. But you can see the work as it stands by going to the league site and clicking Champs Lineups in the EHFL Links module. Or just go here.
Note: The Draft Locale info is linked over on the right side column under Important Links--->
June 15 Update...
Over the last few days, I have been talking to Mike Padilla and he mentioned that he had memories of drafting at Mark Kuhlmann's home. After some back and forth we are confident that the draft in question was 2005. Mike at that time was a 'co-owner' of the Strawmenn with Mark's widow, Sheri. Sheri had run the team as Mark's health declined. When Mark passed in 2004 Mike stepped up and was the defacto owner/manager. I have directories from as late as 2008 that list Sheri as a co-owner but by 2006 this was Mike's team.
As for the draft in question, Mike's memories made sense and aligned with Moose's comment that he recalled drafting at 'someone's house' other than the ones I had already listed. Hogan also had vague memories of a draft at a place I had not come up with.
As for me... I remember being at Mark's home for Hughes business, but I didn't think it was a draft. I spent quite a bit of time at Mark and Sheri's and we often talked football and golf. But Mike mentioned that he was there making decisions with Sheri and it all made sense.
Filling in the 2005 blank (there is a chance it was 2006) narrows down the number of 'open dates' in our draft history. Hopefully, I can nail them all down at some point.
June 25 Update...
Based on the information I received from Bobby and a couple of hunches I received from myself, I filled in all the locations for our drafts through the years. A couple of dates (marked with an asterisk) are my best guesses with my limited sources of evidence. I am certain that there are no unaccountedsitesalthough the years may be incorrect.
I got this picture from Dan Scofield in May. It's a shot of his 2016 draft setup as he made his selections from Cuba. Yup, Cuba! I love stuff like this. I know Jack has drafted from a ship out on the Seven Seas. Years ago Rick drafted from various rest stops along the thruways from NY to Massachusetts. In 2019 Dan drafted from an isolated cabin in the Maine woods.
That's the thing about the draft. You never know what might happen. This is why I worry that the whole thing might go to shit that night and leave us scrambling. You may recall that last year I tried out a new draft room, Primetime Draft, and hadn't realized that the customized settings for our league were specific to one computer..my desktop, not my laptop. Oops! A lot of work down the drain and I was scrambling to manually set the thing up minutes before the scheduled start time.
I did a little draft history reminiscing in 2015 on the old blog site. Let me update it here with thoughts about the locales and some memories of each. These are not in any particular order.
Oh, before I get into this, you can see the info on each season's draft along with some notes, by clicking the Draft Locale link over on the right column.
'Club' Westcott... Jimmy O and I lived in the Memorial Club apartments on Westcott near Memorial Park for a few years. It was the site of our first draft and came when my life was 'in flux' to say the least. That 1980 draft was held in the middle of Tropical Storm Danielle and several of the crew came directly from a flag football game—quite a mess. Steve Heinan aka Buster drafted Wendell Tyler early. Tyler had broken both legs in a car wreck not long before that but not everyone had access to (or paid any attention to) that sort of news back then. That pick caused Heinan a lot of grief but it paled compared to a more infamous pick a few years later. More on that pick in a future post. But here's a photo preview:
We had eight owners that first night but added a ninth, Gary Hamman, who picked a roster from the NFL leftovers the next day and didn't do badly with them. He won a couple of money weeks with guys he selected at a table at Otto's on Memorial Drive while a bunch of us drank beer and ridiculed his picks. It turned out that Gary put together a better squad than several of the owners who had been drafting the night before. Three or four of those guys didn't win a dime that season.
A point of historical order...Earl Campbell was the first-ever Hughes League draft pick. He was taken by the Bushwackers, a team owned by Mike Fauser and Mike Andrich which only played that first season.
Staffordshire 'Arms'... located on Staffordshire Blvd. which ran (back then) between Holcombe and OST, our Parkwood Apartments unit was the apartment version of a double-wide trailer. It was huge. The buildings, all four-plexes, were made of limestone (just like most of UH) and built to survive a nuclear attack. Our apartment consisted of the whole top floor of one 'four-plex' buildings.
Sam, Moose, Jimmy, myself, maybe Hogan, and/or Hamman lived here at various times with some non-Hughes owners. Each draft we held here was a Labor Day affair and we took a 'barbecue break' most years to grill out back. Of course, Labor Day always meant the Jerry Lewis Telethon with Jerry getting more hysterical and incoherent by the hour. And the Telethon always meant that we were treated to Charo. Watch this video from the '83 Telethon (I bet you can't watch the full 4 minutes!)
Staffordshire was the scene of what is probably the single greatest draft moment of this or any other league's history. I alluded to it above and you likely are aware of it... Gary Hamman's pick of David Overstreet. That would have been a great pick had it not been for the fact that Overstreet had drawn his last earthly breath 74 days prior. I'll take a deep dive into the life and career of David Overstreet soon.
That pick eclipsed Hamman's pick, in 1981, of the Vikings Jarvis Redwine. Redwine had been a standout at Nebraska but did next to nothing over three NFL seasons. In 1981, when Hamman made him a first-round EHFL choice, he went for 20 yards on five carries over three games played. His son, Jarvis II, is currently employed in the personnel department at Nebraska.
Here are our 'main' drafting sites through the years and a few notes on each...
Barry's Pizza on Richmond in the Windsor Center...Steve Barenholtz ran this place and we used it in 1983. We tossed Joe Pogge's girlfriend out of the draft (Joe was unable to make it there himself) and Joe was rightfully pissed about it. Paz was on hand for the draft and he was instantly granted a franchise. He led his Blizzard to a 5-9 record without having prepped for the draft but went 16-10-1 over the next couple of seasons.
Moose's house on Elm St in Bellaire and Sam/Moose's house on Endicott, also in Bellaire. I don't remember which one, but one of these places was where we first used a speakerphone to communicate with our out-of-town owner(s). It's also where
UH Intramural offices and UH Intramural conference room. These drafts were hosted by Mark Kuhlmann. We drafted in the intramural offices themselves or in the conference room across the hall. Mark usually got a student intramural worker to 'run' our cardboard draft board. For a couple of years, we had food brought in by Paz and Keith which was nice.
Bobby's MHMRA Offices on the Southwest Freeway This place was the beginning of our 'big time' drafting. Bobby hosted and provided computers for each owner as well as some nice groceries! It was quite a step up for us.
Bobby's Offices in the Med Center at Texas Children's...The Meyer Building on S Braeswood near Greenbriar We were here in 2008 and possibly 2007. Bobby had changed companies so we moved along with him. I honestly have no memory of what this particular place was like and so I'm thinking it was a one-year spot after Bobby began working for Texas Children's.
Bobby's Offices in the Med Center at Texas Children's...The Feigin Building. The highrise on the Med Center campus itself and probably the most NFL Draft-like spot we have ever used. Lots of elbow room, multiple computers, and $487 per hour parking! I felt like Pete Rozelle! I said then and I'll say now... no fantasy league anywhere had a more professional setup than we did in the Feigin Building.
The specific transition years from MHMRA to the Meyer Building and on to the Feigin Building is murky but it happened when Bobby changed jobs so I bet he can shed some light on it.
Mike's office (and eventually his house) on Heights Blvd Paz volunteered to host the draft in 2015 at what was then his Houston business office on Heights Boulevard. I had started to feel guilty about putting the burden on Bobby every year so we began what was going to be a rotation between the two sites. Paz had a nice layout with a big conference table and plenty of available owners's desks. He served up a nice spread including Torchy's Tacos which became a regular thing. We have been there for four drafts over the years and it's become our primary draft home since Bobby's retirement.
One-offs and oddball places...
Kuhlmann's Home in the Heights... See the Update of June 16 at the top of this post. This was a one-time site we used the year after Mark's passing.
Russo's Pizza... This remains the most 'mysterious' of our draft locales. I'm halfway convinced that I've been hallucinating about holding a draft at such a random location but recently Hogan says we were out there. Moose, on the other hand, says he's never been to a Russo's. Maybe it was some other pizza joint. Whatever it was, the spot was way out west towards Mission Bend/Pecan Grove/Sugarland, maybe off Bellaire or Beechnut. The year was 1987, '88 or 1990. Those are the only dates I can't find concrete evidence for.
If Russo's fills one of those empty dates then the other two are very likely to be drafts held at Staffordshire or the UH offices. There's also a chance that we held a third draft at one of Moose's homes.
I have a league newsletter from the summer of 2000 inviting everyone to the draft to be held out here at my home. But that was changed because I have blog posts thanking Bobby for his hospitality. We never drafted from my place here in Channelview.
An email draft in 2002....my emergency gallbladder surgery forced us to scramble since the surgery was either on the date of the scheduled draft or a day before. We were still a year away from using the Myfantasyleague platform, so no live draft room alternative was available. We did everything via email and phone calls. It sure wasn't fun but, as always, we made it work.
Online 'live' drafts...We've held three fully online 'live' drafts over the years. In 2017 Hurricane Harvey played havoc with the Houston area and people were still dealing with the aftermath so we all drafted on our computers from home or wherever. In 2020 & 2021 COVID made getting together less appealing so we muddled through with an online draft and we had some Zoom participants as well.
So there we are. Headed to our 45th annual draft at a place still to be determined. As noted above I have every draft site nailed down with a few 'date' gaps. Hughes League research is always a fun way for me to waste spend time! 😼
Here are some draft room pics I came across while doing this deep dive. Enjoy!
This next one is Dan's 'Cabin In The Woods' LOL
Rick checked in via Zoom or Facetime or something.
The next post here will be a look back at the infamous (and somewhat mythical) David Overstreet pick. I'll also have some additional thoughts on things like supplemental drafts and other league gatherings. Meanwhile, enjoy some girly photos.
Yes, indeed Hughes crew.. we are a full 'Go!' for at least another year. The league page is ready for your inspection, all the data/history links have been updated, the new banner has been tweaked, and a draft date has been VERY TENTATIVELY set for Monday, September 2*.
*=After setting this date I realized that this is Labor Day. That may not work for some people. But we have time to adjust. The normal date would be Tuesday the 3rd but I have something scheduled for that evening. (See the music corner below 👇 )
As promised, there has been only one rule change this year: a reduction to 17 roster spots from last season's 18 with an increase to two IR slots. I hope we can roll along without changes for a few years.
You can get to the 2024 page with the link to the right or by a simple edit to your bookmark, changing the year to 2024. I will be paying for the league ASAP. And I will ask for fee payments from you sometime soon. Thanks in advance for your prompt attention to that little matter. The cost will be $18 per owner. That's based on my cost as follows...
League Fee to MFL (another price hike from them, this is 'early bird pricing!)....$90
Trophy including engraving + shipping (my average cost over the past four years)....$97
PrimeTime Draft (first used last season, including a $5 returning user discount)...$25
That is a total cost of $212. So calculating each owner fee...$212/12=$17.67
I had considered changing platforms to ESPN but that would involve tweaks and compromises that I'm not anxious to deal with.
I think I'll stay with MFL as long as I can continue to use free hosting services for pics and the data pages I put in the EHFL Links module. Nowadays free internet services are becoming scarce. If I ever have to give up my customization options I might as well go to a freebie site like CBS.com or Fantrax, etc.
As for this news site...I will continue to post here but maybe not as often as I have in the past. These posts get minimal traction and much of what is here I also send out in emails. Or I may quit emailing and just hope everyone checks here for info and updates. We will see.
If you are contemplating dropping out I'd appreciate a heads-up. Otherwise, get your usual shitty draft prep lists ready and I'll see you in September.
Oh, and if you have updated contact info please send it my way.
You may have noticed that this post is chock full of banners. The one up top is a riff on the first banner we had when we ventured online all those years ago. The ones below are some I came up with as I was deciding about returning for 2024.
...go the spoils. And so it was this past Saturday when the Houston contingent (6 of the 7 of us anyway) gathered at Cactus Cove for some fun stories, friendship, and refreshments, as we presented Mike with his hard-earned 2023 EHFL Championship trophy.
I wasn't alert enough to snap some pictures(!!) but Mike was good enough to post this one showing him as he displays the hardware. He also took home a framed copy of the Hughes News Championship edition and a few Hughes-branded knickknacks I accumulated over the past year.
Cactus Cove turned out to be a good location for us with large tables, plenty of TVs (we watched some of the UH-Cincy hoops game), and reasonable (and tasty) food and drinks. I'd rate the day as a success. The only thing lacking was the presence of Bobby B. who wasn't able to attend due to a bout with back issues. Bobby very generously kicked in towards our tab. Hope to see you soon, Bob.
The Owner Get-Together is my favorite league-related event. Draft night, with all the things I figure will go wrong, is too stressful and I don't get to appreciate the fun of it all. But this annual thing is always a good time. This year's event was made even better by a guest appearance from my granddaughter. Thanks to Keith for snapping this shot.
More Year-End Stuff:
Second Season Contest... Jack and James took the top two spots in the contest and will be rewarded with bonus waiver cash for 2024. That is if we return to MFL. More on that below.
This is the second straight year for a Scofield to win the contest. Dan took it last year. And it's James' second consecutive money finish. The site has a parallel playoff contest that doesn't restrict you to one player per playoff team. So if you want to go all in on a particular NFL playoff team you can. I might try opening up both types for us next year. We could pay the winner of each one.
Rolling Over to 2024... Last night MFL made the 2024 sites available. I went through the process to 'roll over' our league to the new season. That doesn't mean we will stay with MFL. Nor does it mean we will even continue the league at all. I won't pay for the season until I've decided on what I want to do going forward. The new site is available here. You can also easily get there by changing the year in your bookmark from 2023 to 2024 since the rest of the URL remains the same.
If we continue to play and move to another site I will figure out a way to reward the Second Season contest winners. It'll depend on the available waiver systems.
2024 Changes... Other than dropping a roster spot and adding a 2nd IR slot I seriously doubt we will make any changes, especially if we are on MFL. If we move to a different platform all bets are off as we may need to adapt to what is available wherever that happens to be.
I may experiment with a different template for MFL in case we stay there. I've had some issues with both of the 'hosting' sites I use, Imgur for photos and OOOwebhost for the stat files and a few other things. It's become a pain to deal with those sites and a new standard template might help me out.
Worst to First Quirks... I recently did some cleanup of a few of the stat pages (the ones found on our site in the Links module). As I was tweaking the All-Time Standings report it struck me that The Legend and Pirates both went from last place in their divisions to first from '22 to '23. In fact, they went from last to the top two seeds. Being the stat nerd that I am I knew I had to dig deeper and see how common that division jump was over our history.
I was surprised to see that it wasn't all that uncommon. Thirty-four clubs have made the jump from 'worst to first' since 1981. A caveat here...I went through the stat sheet pretty quickly and a team might have gotten past me. I was looking at win/loss only. Ties for the best record or worst record in a division both went into the mix.
No need to list all the instances I found but I came across a few things worth mentioning...
-In 81/82 the Nationals went from last in their division to become an undefeated championship club.
-In 83/84/85 The Giants went from 3-11 to a title and then back to last in their division.
-In both 94/95 (Knightriders & Attica) and 97/98 (Strawmenn & Giants) two teams pulled off the worst-to-first trick. Attica and the Strawmenn were champs on the back end of those. The Flyers (95/96) were another team in that decade to go from last to a title.
-In 06/07 all THREE last-place teams (Bombers, Bliz, Nats) won the division on the rebound. The Bombers won the 2007 title.
-Two teams have reversed their fortunes for the better in each of the last three seasons. Flyers and Sticks in 20/21, Heroes and Strawmenn in 21/22, and as mentioned previously, Legends and Pirates last season.
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