Draft day is the single most important day of the fantasy football season. Its usually the only day the entire league gets together, socializes and eventually gets down to business of selecting the team they hope will win them a championship.

Draft day is usually pretty hectic for a league commissioner. During the draft the commissioner is most likely stuck writing each team’s selection on a elementary school grade poster board and scrambling to make their own team picks in between other’s choices.

Frankly, I got tired of the small board and the writing in team choices. So I decided to construct my very own draft board with the intent to be reused for multiple leagues in one season and over years of time.

Hit the title/read more to continue reading on how to make your own Fantasy Football Draft Board…

Items you will need to construct your own reusable fantasy draft board are:

• 1-3 Poster Frames (the cheap ones from Walmart/Target are the ones I used; they are about $10ea depending on the size of the board you want)
• Box Cutter
• Scissors
• Sharpie
• Measuring Tape
• Packing Tape

Need a Preprinted Kit? Gotta Order Soon!

I bought a fantasy football draft kit from CBS which included a draft day worksheet, color-coded player labels (which has the bye week and team name on the label along with the player names), a sharpie and most importantly a draft sheet that measures 56 x 36.

The draft sheet has the rounds that run left to right at the top and your league team names that run top to bottom. I would like to add that all of these things could be made at home but would take some time to make and be about the same cost in supplies as the kit itself. (The kit is $25)

Need a quicker draft board?

Download our already made draft board [pdf link] and send this file to a local Office Max or Kinkos and get the board lamenated. It will probably cost about $25 to have it printed but if you get it lamenated, you can use a dry erase marker on the board for use in multiple drafts over years and years.

Got Your board, now let’s get started…

The first step was to remove the black frames around the poster boards and measure where the boards would have to be cut. Because I wanted the board to be slightly bigger than the sheet I measured a few extra inches around the border of the poster board. The size of the poster boards wasn’t an exact fit to the draft sheet so I cut one of the boards to make it fit perfectly to allow the extra inches on each side.

Once the poster board is cut it is time to start taping the pieces together with packing tape. Make sure to wrap the tape around the frame several times over a good 4 inches of where you want the board to stay flush to provide enough stability to the entire frame. Next is to cut the plastic cover to match the boards.

This was most difficult and time consuming part of the project. I didn’t really have a tool that would cut the board without making the plastic glass chip and fly all across the room (any tips are greatly appreciated!) but scissors were decent to use if you don’t mind shards of glass flying in your face. Finally cut the black edging of the frames to complete the sizing of the project.

Everybody loves flair, try adding some!

One option that I plan on doing is attaching a small magnents to each space on the draft board, laminating the labels and then attaching a small magnet to the backing of the labels. This makes the entire draft board customizable and usable for several years to come. If you don’t mind making a new sheet every year you can skip the steps of cutting the plastic and making the labels.

Attach your draft sheet to the board, make sure it is centered, place the plastic cover atop the sheet, attach the edges and now you have your very own, reusable, custom draft board. The plastic covers usually can be written on with a dry erase marker filling the void of players that may have been missed if you decided to use pre-made labels or if you want to continue to write your draft picks in.

Update on this board:

After using this particular board for a few different drafts, it wasn’t as sturdy as I thought it would be. While its perfect for one draft because of the size, if you need a board for more than one FF draft, I recommend only using one poster board and making the draft slots as large as you possibly can.

Have you made a Fantasy Football draft board? Got some tips to share? Let us know in the comments…