[Rain Man]

Let's start working backwards now from Opening Day.

Week 1 starts on September 10th.

During that time, we need to finish the veteran draft, do the rookie draft, do the remainder round, and then have enough time to finalize our rosters.

So working backwards...

September 10th - Opening Day
September 7th - All 53-man rosters must be finalized
September 2nd - Remainder round must be done in order to give people time to finalize their roster
August 27th - Start remainder round to give us about 8 hours per pick. Other drafts need to be done by this date.
August 1st - Start rookie draft on this date. 7 rounds. 8 hours for first round, 6 hours for second round, 4 hours for 3rd through 5th round, 2 hours for 6th and 7th rounds. And folks, this'll be hustling. (However, since we have three teams that are loaded up on picks, it could conceivably go fast if those teams move fast.)

We've got 9 more rounds of veteran draft, so I'm going to make the call that we won't finish the veteran draft before we need to start the rookie draft. I think it's more fair to start the rookie draft on August 1st in a new thread and run the last part of the veteran draft concurrently. As an alternative, we could crank up the veteran draft to perhaps a two-hour limit (30 minutes if you're already behind, and the clock stops between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. central), but even then it'd take 23 days to cover 180 picks, which would mean we'd more or less have to do a live draft for the rookies with maybe a 1-hour limit for the first round and 20 minutes for subsequent rounds.

What do you think? I'd rather run the two drafts concurrently.