OneNote 2007, a UMPC and....fantasy football?

Just another use of a UMPC along with Microsoft OneNote; seasoned OneNote'rs might skip this, but I like sharing different uses of the application, especially with a UMPC since it can basically go anywhere. Previously, I used this approach on a Home Depot trip. Last night, I applied it to the Fantasy Football draft and found it extremely useful. You fantasy league players know the pains of carrying several draft cheat sheets and sorting though mounds of papers telling you that you should "Forget last season, this year [insert player name] will be the man for his team as well as the sleeper in the league."

Riii-iii-ght.....I like my method with OneNote much better; especially when the League office has an open WiFi connection to check on player injuries and updates....

Instead of dropping some dough on Fantasy Football magazines, I found that there are plenty of free draft analysis sites available, so why not just use them? I could have used a dartboard and player rosters too; one of these years I might try it.

I set up a new Notebook in Microsoft OneNote 2007 Beta, since you can have multiple notebooks in this version. Armed with my "Football" notebook, I proceeded to create folder tabs for each position as shown. There's an "Overall" tab because the site I used had an overall ranking of all players in the draft, regardless of position. The "My Team" tab is just a spot for me to ink my players names and positions. I could have done this by using a unique highlighter pen on my other tabs, but I wanted a consolidated listing of my team.

I opted not to use the built in "Send to OneNote" feature within IE 7, simply because some of the lists were too long, meaning I'd have to scroll during the draft. It would be easy enough to scroll around, but I wanted to minimize activity since the draft clock is always ticking. Instead, I used the Tablet PC Snipping Tool to grab the recommended picks and placed the clippings in the appropriate notebook section.

Armed with my strategy, I grabbed the 4th spot of 12 in the league and proceeded to run down my notebook by position. I changed my pen to a yellow highlighter in OneNote and as each player was chosen, I immediately "crossed them off", both on the position page and the overall page. When it was my turn to pick, it was easy to scan down the lists and see the best players remaining at each position. Hmm...I already have the number one rated TE in Antonio Gates, but I see folks passed Chris Cooley up and I'll need a TE for week 3 since Gates has a bye.....got 'em!

Oh and let's not forget the instant search capability of OneNote. Even though all of my data was essentially in images of screen clippings, I could easily search for any player and OneNote found every instance of them in my notebook. This was helpful to quickly see where a player was ranked on his position page as well as the overall page. Hmm...how is Warrick Dunn looking this year?

This approach with OneNote might not have got me the best team in the league, but I wasted no time in my picks; while others were flipping loose pages and scanning through their magazines, I had everything I needed in my hands and I don't think any of my picks took more than 10 seconds to choose. Again, this approach isn't rocket science, but the intention is to show unique uses for mobile technology in the hopes that you can apply your own mobile tech solutions.

For the record, here's my team; they're all on the bench until I pick my lineup...

Comments

[Dave Zatz]

That's a pretty kick-ass team! How many people are in your league? I'm in a 12-person league and I found it hard to get that kind of balance. I am hoarding quarterbacks though and ready for trades when people lose their starters. ;)

[Kevin C. Tofel]

This is a 12 person league as well....c'mon Dave, the point was the mobile TECHNOLOGY, not my pigskin prognostication! ;) Then again, I did do OK with my picks, didn't I? :)

[unknown]

I used the same basic system with EverNote. Worked great!