A Draft Too Far?

I was perusing ESPN's fantasy football site before heading to bed last night and I notice that their mock draft lobby now includes an "auction" option. For the uninitiated, an auction draft differs from a standard FF draft in that team owners must use a pool of "auction bucks" to bid on the players they want to own. This approach is supposed to prevent the complaints that often come from owners who end up on the bottom half of the order in standard picks. For example, if Owner A REALLY wants Ladainian Tomlinson, but Owner A got the 8th pick in standard draft 10 team league, Owner A is out of luck. But in an auction draft, Owner A can outbid all comers to own LT. Of course, this approach will inevitably put a premium on the price of LT, and Owner A will have to be happy paying chump change for scrubs to fill out the rest of his roster.

Based on this doctrine of enhanced fairness, I can see the appeal of the auction draft. But in practice, it seems convoluted and unnecessarily drawn out. A standard draft is long enough as it is. How much longer will it take to nominate a player, then bid, then nominate a player, then bid, etc.? Of course I intend to find out. Sometime over the holiday weekend I'm going to participate in an auction mock on ESPN and see how long the process actually takes.

I couldn't imagine using the auction in a real league unless... It was a big money league. For those individuals who have the fanaticism and disposable income to pay a buy-in fee with more than two digits before the decimal, I think an auction league would be a very cool alternative to plunking down, say $200, and then drafting your team. Instead, have an auction draft with a fixed minimum bid for each round (round 1 nominees: $50 min. bid, round 2 nominees: $40 min. bid, etc.). Bidding with real cash would add a true risk/reward element to the auction draft and would almost certainly be a more gratifying means of building the payout pool. But unfortunately, my leagues don't function in that rarefied air. So I'll check out the auction method this weekend and post my impressions. It'll be a learning experience.