Fantasy Football Leagues
by John Clifton
Fantasy football leagues have all sorts of different scoring systems, league rules, schedules, and lineups, but most fantasy football leagues have a few things in common. I wanted to discuss what your local fantasy league is likely involve and what the big moments of each fantasy football season are going to be. You might join some alien fantasy football league out there somewhere with a completely different set-up, but you'll find the following elements in most fantasy football leagues.
Fantasy Football Commissioners
The fantasy football commissioner sets up the league site, organizes the fantasy draft, and informs the league owners about important rule changes and decisions. The league commissioner usually takes up entry fees at the league draft and pays out prize money at the end of the season. In many leagues, the commissioner does little else and has no power beyond what I've just stipulated. In other leagues, the commissioner is all-powerful and he can set the agenda for almost every decision made throughout the year, from scoring to trade approval to deadlines for lineup submission.
In my experience, if you have a good fantasy football commissioner, you're probably going to have a pretty good league. You might have problem players any given year, but troublemakers and ne'er-do-wells won't be back next year. Rules are administered fairly and categorically with no regard for who gets the advantage. League transactions are handled in a day's time, while money is paid out promptly at the end of the year.
At the same time, if you have a bad commissioner, it's hard to have a good league. The worst type of commissioner is the one who makes bad trades, then blocks his rivals from doing the same. A bad commissioner can find all kinds of ways to ruin the game. I had one a few years back who set up a first-come, first-serve waiver wire after the waiver priority went off, but he would make sure it was turned off after his moves were made. I would try to make fa pickups and be unable to (and others would note the same). Then we would notice his team would have several free agent pickups after he logged on, but when we tried to make our moves, the function would again be turned off. This happened in the three weeks prior to the playoffs, and he wouldn't respond to questions for days (until after Sunday games). Always, he would say he saw no problem on his end, and that he had no problem making transactions--even though the website mentioned free agency wasn't "allowed at this time".
Needless to say, no one returned to that league the next year. He had the gall to see who was interested in returning. That's just one of a thousand ways commissioners can cheat. The point being, if you don't have a fair commissioner, your fun is going to be ruined.
Fantasy Football Drafts
I discussed in other articles the work that goes in to preparing for a fantasy draft. The draft is the big day of a fantasy season. When drafting, you want to show up on time and with your entry fee ready to hand over. Most of the time, leagues take up a collection for whoever cooks the food, or to order in pizzas. Otherwise, you want to show up with a draft list or cheat sheet, a notebook for writing down draft picks, pens and yellow markers, and either a magazine or a bye week schedule so you don't draft guys on one or two bye weeks. That's what you need at a fantasy football draft.
Once the draft is underway, when you're turn comes up, make your selection in a timely fashion. Mark off players already drafted as you go, because it's a complete beating to have someone say, "Michael Vick" (gone), "Roddy White" (gone), "Adrian Peterson" (long gone) all day long. Having a draft list and marking off the players also lets you get an idea which positions are starting to get thinned out, and which ones you can wait until later rounds to select a player from. Drafting is about getting maximum value for each draft pick you have, not getting the players you want the most. If you draft a guy four rounds higher than he likely would have been drafted otherwise, you're lowering your odds of hitting on difference makers and raising the odds of your opponents doing the same. Bad drafting is drafting players too high than they should be drafted. You might get lucky, but the probabilities shift against your favor.
Fantasy Football Schedules
Once the fantasy draft is over, you play the fantasy football schedule. As mentioned earlier, the regular season schedule tends to be 13 games, after which a certain number of teams (according to division winners and wild card records) move on to the playoffs, much like in the NFL. The fantasy playoffs tend to be single-elimination until one team remains. You'll find other ways to determine a champion, such as total points on the season. While total points is the best way to determine who had the best team all year and the single-elimination playoffs often reward the lucky team more than the best team, playoffs are much better for keeping owner interest, because most people would fall out of the total points race a few weeks into the season--and many times the race might be effectively over by Week 8-10. To keep interest up and avoid collusion between teams who are out of the race, the playoffs remain the best determiner of a fantasy champ.
Fantasy Football Trades
The fantasy football trade is easily the most controversial part of fantasy football. The commissioner of most fantasy league is usually one of the 10-12 owners, so it's a little like having Bud Selig as the baseball commissioner. Actually, it would be more like having the owner of the New York Yankees as commissioner, since the commish tends to be somebody in the thick of the playoff chase. So if you're a league where the commissioner approve trades, it's a little like having the Yankees having to approve all of the trades the Boston Red Sox or the Tampa Bay Rays make. Even when the commissioner is being fair and is trying to protect other league owners from collusion and unfair trades, he's open to the charge that he's abusing his power. This means that leagues often find alternate means of administering trade approval, often with disastrous results.
One method is to vote on every trade. Most of the time, this doesn't work, since multiple teams lose interest as their season falls apart and may not vote in league polls. Politics often play a part in league votes, since friendship issues or rivalry over the playoff chase might come into play. On top of all this, add the problem of perspective and personal bias. What seems fair to you as an owner in a trade might not seem fair when you're an opponent or rival, especially if one of the teams in the trade either doesn't have much of a chance to win, or hasn't participated much over the course of a season. Votes on trades are rife with potential controversy.
Some leagues shuck the duty altogether, having no obstacles to trades. I've seen this work and I've seen it become a complete disaster. The fact is, if two friends join a league and pay an entry fee--and one friend suddenly goes 1-8--it's a temptation to those two teams to conspire to get back that entry fee. The friend in contention can say, "Trade me Arian Foster and I'll pay back your entry fee out of my winnings." Despite the fact the two are cheaters, it's almost impossible to prove such things, so if you don't have a mechanism to veto such trade, the cheaters can get away with proverbial murder. I've seen leagues diffuse the responsibility, selecting a trade committee to oversee trades and voting on the decision. These committees might be drawn randomly or involve only the league elders.
However the case trades are governed, two teams should be allowed to trade players in a fantasy football league. This adds a lot of the reason people return to the site over the course of a season, to improve and build a championship-caliber squad. Despite the problems inherent, the trade keeps the league from getting stale and lets teams redress imbalances on their roster by trading depth at one position for talent at another.
Fantasy Football Free Agency - FF Waivers
The waiver wire or free agent pool in fantasy football is the only other way to build up your talent and depth after the draft. Once a week, free agency starts in most fantasy leagues, and it goes on until game time on most Sundays. You get to add players to your squad from those not affiliated with any other league team. You might think all the talent would have been drafted at the fantasy draft, but every year, a few difference makers don't get drafted onto fantasy teams. The NFL is an incredibly violent game, so injuries give opportunities to previously unknown players at the skill positions. Running back is especially dangerous, because an NFL runner is likely to get hit 20-25 tackled a game--something Emmitt Smith compared to being in a car wreck. Knee and ankle injuries rob players of weeks and even whole seasons, so free agency is an incredibly important part of fantasy football. Stay active and you'll be able to turn an average team into a good team, and a good team into a championship contender.
Fantasy Football Advice - Get Lucky
The most important thing to remember about fantasy football leagues and championship titles is the luckiest player win. The best team doesn't always win. In the playoffs, you have to have three good weeks (two if you have a bye) to win the title. If you have a drop-off or your opponent has an uncharacteristic spike in production, your good season goes by the wayside.
Even in the regular season, where the sample size is larger, luck still plays a factor. The fantasy football league schedule might pit you against teams when they have their best week of the season, or you might play teams on their worst weeks. I've seen the 2nd-highest point team miss the playoffs because they had the highest point-against total (something they couldn't control), while I've seen the 10th or 11th ranked team in points win their division. Not only does it have to do with facing a lot of teams with bye week troubles, but NFL matchups often determine who has a good week. If your star runner is going against the Pittsburgh Steelers or the Green Bay Packers on a key week, that's much different than having him versus the Carolina Panthers or the Oakland Raiders.
The ultimate luck factor in the NFL is injuries. You can draft a fantasy juggernaut and 2-4 key injuries at the wrong time can ruin your season. NFL injury reports are featured prominently on fantasy football websites for a reason. Even if your player isn't the one who gets injured, if your star wide receiver loses his Pro-Bowl quarterback for the season, or if your Pro-Bowl running back loses 4 of his 5 starting offensive linemen, even good fantasy picks can turn disastrous. So if your first (or 10th) fantasy football season doesn't go well, learn from your mistakes, chalk it up to all the bad luck you had, and hope you're in a redraft league.