Official BYB Fantasy League announced

As I said in a FanPost a week or so ago, something was in the plans for an official Bless You Boys league.

I can now tell you what it is!

SB Nation has partnered with CBSSports.com* in fantasy baseball this season. What that means is this: We get to run our league on the CBSSports.com's Fantasy Baseball Commissioner League software at no cost. This is pretty exciting news to me because I've always used free leagues in the past and look forward to running a league on a premium service like that.

* Legal disclaimer: CBSSports.com is an SB Nation partner and paying sponsor of the SB Nation baseball communities.This post is one of a series of sponsor endorsed posts related to the CBSSports.com Fantasy Baseball Commissioner League.

More on the BYB League in a moment, but first, a word from our sponsors.

As part of this sponsorship, you can save 50 percent off the cost of running your own fantasy league on the Commissioner League site as well.

If -- like me -- you're new to the CBSSports.com League, it's the web's most powerful fantasy league manager and winner of eight of nine Fantasy Sports Trade Association awards for "Best Fantasy Baseball Commissioner League Management Product." Features include:

• Customize entire league the way you want...rules, scores, teams + more
• LIVE scoring & stats so you can follow along as your teams rack up points
• Keeper league capability to carry on the tradition for many seasons to come
  
• Expert analysis provides up-to-date information on all players & teams
  
• Live chat/league messenger to trash talk with your competition
  
• 14-Day Free Trial included

The last part is key. Try it. If you don't like it, no worries! Just be sure to use this link if you want to check it out.

OK, now more about the BYB League.

I've always been intrigued by the auction format. Now, I can run the league in auction format. From the looks of it, the draft should take no longer than a traditional online draft, depending on the bid settings. But it will be a bit more involved because you gotta figure out how it all fits into your budget. But it will prevent anyone from having the bad luck of being randomly assigned a bad draft spot. By the way, this isn't real money we're bidding on players. It's just a way of creating an "economy" for the draft.

I'm thinking maybe 12 people for this league. The league setup options allow me to do all sorts of stuff. Head to head leagues, divisions, rotisserie scoring, head-to-head scoring, etc. So I want to judge interest and experience.

Please e-mail me your interest. Use the letter icon at the bottom of this page. The subject line should be Official BYB League. And because I want to make sure everyone is going to be active and we all have a good time, please tell me a bit about your fantasy background, how many seasons you've played, etc. The most important thing to me is that everyone in the league remain active. Every year, fantasy baseball sounds exciting to everyone. By May or June, a quarter of the league gives up. That's just not fun. I want people in it all year long.

The reward? I'm going to talk about the league from time to time, maybe weekly as a fun weekend post. Trash talk and accolades will haunt or reward you. Be prepared.

By the by, this shouldn't keep anyone from setting up BYB leagues of their own using different formats. I just encourage you to use CBSSports.com's League to do so!

I hope to get things set up over the weekend, so try to get your interest into me sooner than later for the Official BYB League!