Driving > Disco

So, I'm in a Fantasy Football league in Jackson, TN with my brother-in-law and litterally 12 other people (a 14 team league? come on!). They do an in-person, big board, old school draft with stickers and yelling and all. Those are the best kind, but seeing as how everyone else in the league is from Jackson, they obviously do it there. This is like the 7th year I've been in the league. It takes an hour to get there from here (Memphis) both ways, and the draft itself usually lasts like 4+ hours, so you're talking about a 6-8 hour experience at the minimum.

I missed a draft two years ago cause it was on my wife's birthday (like her actual birthday). Then I missed last year because it was the weekend after my now 1 year old daughter was born. I don't even mind going up there, but with gas prices so high and the fact that I was already comitted to going to a friend's going away part, I decided to skip again. The last two times it happened, all the attending owners would check their lists and draft the agreed upon second best player at each position for my team. This year, I got nothing. Zero, nada, zilch. I have no players on my team. The commisioner was like 'well you can draft free agents now' and 'some people did not draft well in regards to bye weeks, so you can pick up their last minute scramble picks (where they have to drop someone so that they can pick up a player that is not on a bye).'

Long story short, I obviously have no shot at winning the season. Do I set a terrible lineup and purposely try to shoot the moon? (I could also just not put enough starters on the field and get the same result) Or should I go all out and try to trade anything of any value to teams that dont need it and try to tilt the results in their favor? Now I'm seriously debating just calling in and reporting that I'm too busy for the whole league. I mean, I don't want to totally piss off my brother-in-law, but in this day and age, when holding your draft online or via email/chat is so easy, why would they intentionally dump on my team like that? Any suggestions welcome.