It’s been a bit slow going as we try to balance making updates to the site with not really having a ton of man power to devote to what is a side project, but the Omnifantasy site is back up and running, and 2023 drafts are ready to go.
A few quick things that are relatively new to the site:
We’ve added World Baseball Classic (WBC), women’s tennis (WTA), the women’s World Cup (WC, which replaces last year’s men’s version), and the XFL for leagues of 8 people or fewer.
We’ve added a draft timer and autopick function as an option you can add to your league when you go to create it from the link on the main Omnifantasy page. Two important notes with this are we don’t have a notification system, and we don’t have a system for changing picks once they’ve been entered, so if you choose to do a draft with a timer/autopick function, timeouts will be final.
We’ve made a slight change to the golf scoring. Previously, we’ve always included the PLAYERS Championship as a fifth tournament, along with the four majors, because of its purse size, prestige, and status as the “fifth major” that always ensured a strong turnout among the Tour’s best. With the advent of the LIV Tour, things have gotten complicated. Each of the four major tournaments are run by entities separate from the PGA Tour, so the LIV golfers have statuses for those tournaments that are up in the air — two majors have already indicated qualified LIV golfers can participate, while two others are undecided. The PLAYERS, however, is a standard PGA Tour event, and will definitely not include LIV golfers. Thus, one of its main reasons for inclusion as a high-turnout event no longer fits, and we will be removing the PLAYERS Championship from the Omnifantasy equation. Golf will simply be the four majors, as tennis is. This is not yet reflected in the Rules but will be.
I’m not sure exactly when we made this change, but if you scroll to the top of your Draft results page, there will be a link to a “Draft Breakdown,” which lists which sports each manager has selected, and how many from each sport have been selected overall. That was a frequently requested feature that does exist but is slightly hidden.
If you want to roll over a league from 2022 with the same settings, go to the main Omnifantasy page, navigate into your league (you may have to uncheck the “Hide Old Leagues” option), and there should be a link offering the option to roll over your league at the top of the page.
While the site works and is ready to go for 2023, there are still quirks to keep in mind while creating your league. Some notes:
Draft order will be randomized on creation of your league and isn’t editable.
Please be careful to spell the Twitter addresses of your leaguemates correctly when you create the league, because those are also not editable and the league will need to be recreated if there is an error.
We’ve gotten a ton of requests for changes and improvements, and they fall into a couple of different categories, either being ones we’ve considered before and have a valid reason to not pursue (while Omni hasn’t existed on the web for its entire life, it’s a decade old at this point) or others that we’d like to add but haven’t been able to get to. Just getting the site to the stage it is at has been a labor of love, and I’ve hoped to smooth out all the sharp edges, but the reality is that’s a lot of man power and just hasn’t been possible behind the scenes.
My response last year was to be very available for individual users’ needs, manually making direct changes to leagues in the database. To be frank, that was incredibly time-consuming last year, and it’s not something I’ll be doing this year. Once realizing these changes weren’t going to be ready, I’d hoped to be able to recruit people to essentially help with these manual fixes as needed. I’ve come to realize I don’t really have the time to explain the processes I do, which aren’t exactly difficult but do require a deft touch because you’re editing the database directly. It’s possible that could change, but for now, I don’t foresee having the time to make those manual changes, and we also will not have some of the requested automated processes, either.
As it stands, your participation on the site is more or less contingent on the understanding that it might not go perfectly. That said, if you create a league following the instructions we’ve provided, have leaguemates that are willing to stay on top of it for the week or two that you’re drafting, and do things reasonably carefully, the site will manage your league for the rest of the year, as it always has. It’s functionality hasn’t deteriorated; if it worked for you in the past, it will again this year. You can always go to omnifantasy.substack.com to view the dozen or so posts over the past couple years, which include more information about how to get the most out of the site.
Good luck and enjoy drafting your Omnifantasy 2023 leagues! I’ll have a follow up email shortly with more information on the end of the 2022 Omnifantasy season, and what we’ll be doing with the Omnifantasy Cup for 2023.
So excited for another season of Omnifantasy.