Web Site Review - Fleaflicker.com

SBNation is running a promotion using AOL's new in-house fantasy football commissioner service, fleaflicker.com.  As the SBNation fantasy blog, I felt it's our duty to check the system out so we're going to host this year's Fake Teams FFL league on Fleaflicker.

I recently set up the league and so far, I am really impressed.

Pros

- Free

- Intuitive interface

- Can handle any sized league from 8 to 24 teams, as long as it's an even number.

- Clear and straightforward help documentation

- Fully customizable scoring, including different scoring for different positions.

- Allows the use of decimal scoring

- Allows the use of Individual Defensive Players (IDPs)

Cons

-Rosters (starters+bench) are capped at 15 players.  If you want more starters, the number of bench spots shrinks.

I've played in FFL leagues with some seriously strange scoring and even I'm impressed with the flexibility and customization options available.  Right now Fleaflicker blows away Yahoo's free game -- and it's better than Yahoo's pay service too.  In fact, it's arguably better than ESPN's pay service.  It's not as good as Sportsline, but considering this is free and Sportsline charges 120 bucks, it's probably close enough for most people.

Now there are some people who say "the proof is in the pudding".  Those people are wrong and sound stupid, because the actual saying is "the proof of the pudding is in the eating".  That's not only true for pudding, but also fantasy sports sites.  Fleaflicker looks very good now, but what happens on the first Sunday of the season, when every single owner is trying to access their team at the same time?  Will the servers crumple like Tom Cruise's career?  Will the live scoring work? Will there be thousands of unhappy customers?  Hello, ESPN.com on line one.

If that's the case, I'll be the first to say the site stinks.  But for now, as far as getting a 16 team league set up with IDPs and scoring that I want...it's pretty damn sweet.