The Commissioner's Draft-Night Checklist

A free, honest checklist for the person who runs the league. Built by the DraftScout team. Print it, keep it on a second tab, or read it on your phone next to the draft board.

How to use this: work top to bottom. The Before section is the part that actually decides whether draft night is smooth — do it a few days out, not the night of. The Draft Night section is your real-time run-sheet. Post-Draft is the half-hour after the last pick that your league-mates will thank you for later.

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Before draft night (do this days out, not the night of)

1. Confirm the league's roster settings — positions and flex slots — and write them down. Everyone drafts to a different idea of the format; the commissioner sets the single source of truth.
2. Confirm the scoring format — PPR, half, standard, TE-premium, superflex, IDP — and make sure it's set before anyone picks. Scoring is the one setting nobody forgives you for changing after picks are locked.
3. Confirm the draft order — snake or auction, and the exact order. Know before night one whether the order reverses each round (snake) or stays flat (auction).
4. Lock the roster/scoring settings in your platform once they're agreed. "We'll fix it later" is how leagues break.
5. Pick a draft time that works for remote owners. Send a poll at least a week out, don't just pick one on a whim.
6. Confirm your league size is set and matches how many people you expect. Adding a team mid-draft is a nightmare; removing one is worse.
7. Send the calendar invite with the link inside it, so nobody has to hunt for the thread.
8. Set a backup players list — at least two alternates who'd join if a manager no-shows. Real leagues plan for this.
9. Give managers a deadline to confirm their spot — 24–48 hours before the draft.
10. Test the draft tool you'll use, ahead of time. Do a 2-minute mock run so you know where the "lock" button is and where timeouts happen. Don't learn the tool mid-pick.
11. Decide the pick timer (e.g. 60–90 seconds) and the no-show policy before night one, and tell the room.
12. Decide how the timer is enforced when someone lags — auto-pick on best available, or the next manager goes. State it once, clearly.
13. Line up a co-commissioner or neutral timer who can run the draft if your Wi-Fi dies. Drafts don't pause for your router.
14. Confirm keeper settings if your league keeps players — how many, at what round cost, and who's declaring them before the draft locks.
15. Collect keeper declarations before draft night, not during it, or the whole board gets contested.
16. Set the roster size / draft rounds — how many total picks. Your draft app or platform should agree with the roster you confirmed in item 1.
17. Check your auction budget if you auction — default is $200. Tell the room the budget so nobody shows up planning on $150's worth.
18. Prepare your platform for remote drafting — confirm every owner can join from their own device, not just the guy in the room with a laptop.
19. Write down the league ID / join link and where waivers/FAAB run. You'll need it in the post-draft section.
20. Set your first-round (or first-nomination) order in advance. Don't solve it live.
21. Make a call on tie-breakers for draft order — random, reverse standings, all fair if announced ahead.
22. Pre-download water / snacks / coffee if you're hosting in person. Boring, real, matters.
23. Charge everything — laptop, phone, portable charger. A dead device mid-draft is a real failure mode.
24. Back up your roster/scoring settings — screenshot or a note — so if the platform glitches you can prove what was agreed.

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Draft night (your real-time run-sheet)

1. Open the draft room 15 minutes early and confirm it loads for you before anyone else arrives.
2. Do a quick roll call — who's in, who's pending, who's missing. Flag the missing names to the room immediately.
3. Start your pick timer (the one you set in item 11) and announce the rule once: "X seconds, then we auto-pick."
4. Keep a visible roster count so the room knows what each team still needs. Your draft assistant does this; a notepad does it if not.
5. Narrate the key moments — "we're in the RB run," "the TE tier just went" — so remote owners know what's happening even if their audio lags.
6. Watch your own picks carefully — a commissioner who drafts badly while running the draft is a distraction to the room.
7. Stay neutral on trades until after your own turn. Don't negotiate incoming trade offers mid-clock.
8. Keep a running list of unpaid / pending issues on a second tab, don't derail the draft to fix them.
9. If someone's connection drops, keep the timer moving and note the pick for them — pick for the room, not the one lagging device.
10. Backup plan for a total outage: you have one from item 6/13. The backup plan is: hand the timer to your co-commish, retry your connection, and if you're fully out, draft from your phone's data — not the venue Wi-Fi.
11. Confirm each pick as it's made — one person calls the name, everyone else confirms before it locks.
12. Watch the draft clock for the last rounds — late picks get lazy; keep the room honest.
13. Announce when the draft is complete clearly — "last pick, board is full" — so nobody sits waiting to be told.
14. Right after the last pick, save / export the draft results to the league's source of truth before anyone edits anything.
15. Take the 10-minute breather — then move to post-draft while it's fresh.

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Post-draft (the half-hour that sets up the season)

1. Update the waiver wire / FAAB settings for the season — claim process, budget, refresh day/time. Do it now, not in Week 2.
2. Set the weekly matchup schedule and confirm bye weeks are reflected in the platform automatically.
3. Note keeper implications immediately — who's eligible to be kept, at what cost, so it's locked before manager memory fades.
4. Flag trade implications of the draft — rookie pick trading, future-round picks, anything a trade could touch. Confirm the platform handles it.
5. Post the final rosters to the league group with the draft order from every team, so managers can review.
6. Send the "anything to overturn?" window — a short, hard deadline (e.g. 24 hours) for a manager to dispute a mis-set setting, then it's locked.
7. Confirm waiver priority is set (e.g. reverse draft order) and tell the room how it works this season.
8. Schedule the first waiver run / add cutoff so nobody misses it.
9. Verify keepers were applied in the app and note when they lock — don't assume your platform applied them.
10. Set a reminder to review scoring settings once more after Week 1 has real data, before managers get attached to numbers.
11. Send a short recap message — who drafted whom, when waivers open, what's locked. One message beats ten scattered ones.
12. Archive the draft record somewhere the league can find it all season (standings tab, doc, group pin).
13. Collect feedback on the draft app/tool you used — what glitched — so it's fixed before the in-season waiver grind.

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Put the checklist to work with a tool that runs the draft clean — Start your free draft → One free draft, no card required; setup and save are free and unlimited.

Prefer the checklist as a downloadable reference? Grab the free Commissioner's Checklist and have it delivered to your inbox. And if you're footing the bill for the whole room, the DraftScout League Pass covers every manager for one flat fee per season.

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A note on the tool you draft in (honest, from us)

DraftScout is a draft assistant, not a league-hosting platform: you enter your roster/scoring settings, run the draft pick by pick (snake or auction), and when it's your turn it surfaces the best available pick with a short, honest reason — plus keepers, custom/IDP positions, fade lists, and bye weeks on every card. Setup auto-saves free (and follows you across devices if you're signed in); your one free draft covers a full snake or auction draft, and unlimited drafts + the in-season start/sit and waiver advisors come with a paid tier. It doesn't replace your league platform for waivers and scoring — it's the tool that makes draft night run clean while you run the room.

That part of this checklist that asks you to "confirm" settings and "know the format" is the real work; a good draft tool just makes the execution easy.

The DraftScout Team — hello@mail.fantasydraftscout.com