Some Fantasy Football League Ideas
This season will be my 11th playing fantasy football, and I've thoroughly enjoyed each and every one. I've learned a lot from all of the different leagues I've had the pleasure of being a part of, and one of the things I love most about fantasy football is how different each league is. There are so many options when it comes to scoring, settings, etc., and experiencing as many as you can to find what you enjoy most is key.
I'm not going to spend my time here writing about what's definitively the "right" way to set up your league or how to run it. People have varying opinions, and what works for one league might not work for another. But what I do want to do is provide some ideas or suggestions for anyone who wants to potentially try new things and find ways to improve their fantasy league experience. The league I run, the NFFL, is far from a perfectly run league. But my council members (I'll touch on this later) and I always do our best to find as many ways to make each season better than the previous. If you're serious about running a long lasting fantasy league, that should always be your mindset. For my friends and I, we take this seriously. It's something we're very passionate about and that's what makes fantasy football so much fun for us.
So if you're also serious about fantasy football and are open to some ideas, here are some of my suggestions on how you can improve your league. Chances are most of you have already done some of these, which is great. But if you haven't then take a look.
If possible, refrain from doing your draft online through your fantasy football website and hold an actual Draft Party. I understand that it might not be possible in every case because finding a date and location for every member to attend can be very challenging, or just impossible. Plus, organizing it can be tedious and a bit costly when you factor in food or, for some people, venue rental. Doing it online is just easier and more convenient, and there's nothing wrong with it. However, if you are indeed able to get everyone together and go through the work of organizing the party, it definitely is well worth it.
In many cases you'll have members who don't know many other people, or even anyone else at all. Holding a Draft Party is a great way to have all of the members get familiar with each other and have a good time. This in turn will help make things like trade discussions easier for them. Also, it's such an experience to draft in a room full of other people with you. It's entertaining to see everyone's reactions to certain players getting drafted for this amount of money (auction) or in this particular round (snake), or to get into a discussion as to how this person's team looks great so far while another person's team looks highly questionable.
It definitely is work to make happen, but holding a Draft Party will enhance the fantasy football experience for everyone in your league and be a good tone setter for the upcoming season.
This is something I decided to implement in my league a few years ago and it has been one of the most beneficial decisions to date. The Commissioner selects a few trusted league members to be designated as his League Council. Together, the Commissioner and this group of individuals will be responsible for discussing and deciding all league matters. Now, this isn't to say that the other league members can't give their input on anything. Everyone's voice should definitely be heard. However, sometimes when you attempt to get every single person's opinion on everything right from the get go, it can be time consuming and inefficient. You'll have people who don't reply, or people that want to dispute every single topic. By having the council decide on rules and policies first, filtering them out to the rest of the league afterward, and then discussing any feedback or questions they may have, you streamline the decision making process.
You might also ask, "Why does there have to be a whole council, why can't the Commissioner just make decisions?" By having a Council help make decisions and not just the Commissioner you're able to get enough varying opinions and insight into each issue. There are times when I've overlooked something or I need to understand the other viewpoint as to why the rule should be set the other way. Having at least one other person there to spot them out and give me that counterargument is invaluable. Also, there's less likelihood of the rest of the league complaining that the Commissioner's decisions aren't fair because now there's a group of people debating and reaching those decisions as opposed to just one person. Integrating the Council into my league has worked seamlessly for the past few years, and has been especially beneficial when we increased our league size from 10 to 14 teams a couple years ago. The key is finding and selecting the right people to appoint.
This one I'm a little less adamant about because I still do enjoy doing traditional snake drafts. They're a lot less stressful. But therein lies the argument for switching to an Auction Draft. If you're not too familiar with how an Auction Draft works, look it up real quick. Not only is there more strategy involved, but it's also more fair in the sense that the league members aren't at the mercy of what the draft order is. Every person has a shot at getting every and any player they want, they just have to spend the draft budget money to get them.
There are different ways you can form and assemble your team. You can spend most of your money on 2 or 3 top tier players, you can be conservative and draft a bunch of middle tier players with upside, or you can do a mix of both. And it's also hilarious to see two or three people get into a bidding war for a player. And a quick word of advice: be careful about bidding on a player just to hike up the price for the other members. If it's a player you don't really want but you end up with the final bid, then you just screwed yourself.
I got this idea from one of my friends. Get one person, whether it be the Commissioner or someone else, to write and post weekly Power Rankings for the whole league. He or she ranks the teams in order of best to worst and writes a review of each team's performance for the past week, or anything else they want to write about like trade recaps or lineup advice. It can be a lot of work and take up a good amount of time, especially if you're in a larger league like mine (it took me at least a couple hours to do each week). But if that person enjoys writing it, it adds another fun element for everyone else. And you'll sometimes get people who will argue where they're ranked, which is a funny debate to have.
Remember earlier in this post when I said that there is no "right" way to set up or run your league? Well this is the one exception, and the one I'm most passionate about when it comes to fantasy football. One of my favorite Fantasy Sports writers to follow, Matthew Berry, talks about it in his article titled "Love, hate and trade etiquette" from November 7, 2014. Here's an excerpt from that article that sums up my viewpoint on this topic perfectly:
"No trade should ever be vetoed; only in cases when there is clear and provable collusion between two owners should a trade be overturned. Otherwise, a trade must stand. Always. No matter what. Part of the fun of fantasy football is that we all have different opinions on players. And no one can predict the future. A Week 1 deal of Calvin Johnson for Jeremy Maclin would have been laughed at, but in Week 10, the Maclin owner is loving life and the Calvin owner is hoping it's not too late to salvage something. So something that seems lopsided to you might not be lopsided in the future. Or seem lopsided to someone else. It's not your job to manage someone else's team. Everyone should be allowed to manage their own team, even if it's badly."
Thank you, Mr. Berry. The whole article is an amazing read on trade etiquette in general. If you want your league to get better, make everyone read it. And enforce it. But he's 100% correct. You don't see other teams in the NFL vetoing any trades. They can't because they shouldn't be able to, and that's how it should be in fantasy football too. I've seen and heard way too many scenarios where an understandably fair trade was vetoed by the rest of the league for reasons like "that would make the one team way too good" or similar. Sorry, but trade negotiating is a skill. And when you're able to negotiate well enough to get a trade done you shouldn't be penalized for it. People that veto a trade because it would provide tougher competition shouldn't be playing fantasy football. So do yourself a favor and make all trade approvals go through the Commissioner, not the league. And as the Commissioner, announce each trade to the league, make sure there's no hint of collusion involved, and if not put that trade through ASAP. There's no reason to have a 1 or 2 day waiting period for trades to process. Having bad trade policies can seriously ruin a league, so don't let it happen.
So start doing your research, setting your rankings, and practicing on mock drafts because draft time is just around the corner. I'll be posting much more fantasy football stuff on here all season long too.
Oh, and... Fly Eagles Fly!
I'm not going to spend my time here writing about what's definitively the "right" way to set up your league or how to run it. People have varying opinions, and what works for one league might not work for another. But what I do want to do is provide some ideas or suggestions for anyone who wants to potentially try new things and find ways to improve their fantasy league experience. The league I run, the NFFL, is far from a perfectly run league. But my council members (I'll touch on this later) and I always do our best to find as many ways to make each season better than the previous. If you're serious about running a long lasting fantasy league, that should always be your mindset. For my friends and I, we take this seriously. It's something we're very passionate about and that's what makes fantasy football so much fun for us.
So if you're also serious about fantasy football and are open to some ideas, here are some of my suggestions on how you can improve your league. Chances are most of you have already done some of these, which is great. But if you haven't then take a look.
Having an Offline Draft / Draft Party
If possible, refrain from doing your draft online through your fantasy football website and hold an actual Draft Party. I understand that it might not be possible in every case because finding a date and location for every member to attend can be very challenging, or just impossible. Plus, organizing it can be tedious and a bit costly when you factor in food or, for some people, venue rental. Doing it online is just easier and more convenient, and there's nothing wrong with it. However, if you are indeed able to get everyone together and go through the work of organizing the party, it definitely is well worth it.
In many cases you'll have members who don't know many other people, or even anyone else at all. Holding a Draft Party is a great way to have all of the members get familiar with each other and have a good time. This in turn will help make things like trade discussions easier for them. Also, it's such an experience to draft in a room full of other people with you. It's entertaining to see everyone's reactions to certain players getting drafted for this amount of money (auction) or in this particular round (snake), or to get into a discussion as to how this person's team looks great so far while another person's team looks highly questionable.
It definitely is work to make happen, but holding a Draft Party will enhance the fantasy football experience for everyone in your league and be a good tone setter for the upcoming season.
Appointing a League Council
This is something I decided to implement in my league a few years ago and it has been one of the most beneficial decisions to date. The Commissioner selects a few trusted league members to be designated as his League Council. Together, the Commissioner and this group of individuals will be responsible for discussing and deciding all league matters. Now, this isn't to say that the other league members can't give their input on anything. Everyone's voice should definitely be heard. However, sometimes when you attempt to get every single person's opinion on everything right from the get go, it can be time consuming and inefficient. You'll have people who don't reply, or people that want to dispute every single topic. By having the council decide on rules and policies first, filtering them out to the rest of the league afterward, and then discussing any feedback or questions they may have, you streamline the decision making process.
You might also ask, "Why does there have to be a whole council, why can't the Commissioner just make decisions?" By having a Council help make decisions and not just the Commissioner you're able to get enough varying opinions and insight into each issue. There are times when I've overlooked something or I need to understand the other viewpoint as to why the rule should be set the other way. Having at least one other person there to spot them out and give me that counterargument is invaluable. Also, there's less likelihood of the rest of the league complaining that the Commissioner's decisions aren't fair because now there's a group of people debating and reaching those decisions as opposed to just one person. Integrating the Council into my league has worked seamlessly for the past few years, and has been especially beneficial when we increased our league size from 10 to 14 teams a couple years ago. The key is finding and selecting the right people to appoint.
Switching to an Auction Draft
This one I'm a little less adamant about because I still do enjoy doing traditional snake drafts. They're a lot less stressful. But therein lies the argument for switching to an Auction Draft. If you're not too familiar with how an Auction Draft works, look it up real quick. Not only is there more strategy involved, but it's also more fair in the sense that the league members aren't at the mercy of what the draft order is. Every person has a shot at getting every and any player they want, they just have to spend the draft budget money to get them.
There are different ways you can form and assemble your team. You can spend most of your money on 2 or 3 top tier players, you can be conservative and draft a bunch of middle tier players with upside, or you can do a mix of both. And it's also hilarious to see two or three people get into a bidding war for a player. And a quick word of advice: be careful about bidding on a player just to hike up the price for the other members. If it's a player you don't really want but you end up with the final bid, then you just screwed yourself.
Writing Up Weekly Power Rankings
I got this idea from one of my friends. Get one person, whether it be the Commissioner or someone else, to write and post weekly Power Rankings for the whole league. He or she ranks the teams in order of best to worst and writes a review of each team's performance for the past week, or anything else they want to write about like trade recaps or lineup advice. It can be a lot of work and take up a good amount of time, especially if you're in a larger league like mine (it took me at least a couple hours to do each week). But if that person enjoys writing it, it adds another fun element for everyone else. And you'll sometimes get people who will argue where they're ranked, which is a funny debate to have.
Enforcing Trades The Right Way!
Remember earlier in this post when I said that there is no "right" way to set up or run your league? Well this is the one exception, and the one I'm most passionate about when it comes to fantasy football. One of my favorite Fantasy Sports writers to follow, Matthew Berry, talks about it in his article titled "Love, hate and trade etiquette" from November 7, 2014. Here's an excerpt from that article that sums up my viewpoint on this topic perfectly:
"No trade should ever be vetoed; only in cases when there is clear and provable collusion between two owners should a trade be overturned. Otherwise, a trade must stand. Always. No matter what. Part of the fun of fantasy football is that we all have different opinions on players. And no one can predict the future. A Week 1 deal of Calvin Johnson for Jeremy Maclin would have been laughed at, but in Week 10, the Maclin owner is loving life and the Calvin owner is hoping it's not too late to salvage something. So something that seems lopsided to you might not be lopsided in the future. Or seem lopsided to someone else. It's not your job to manage someone else's team. Everyone should be allowed to manage their own team, even if it's badly."
Thank you, Mr. Berry. The whole article is an amazing read on trade etiquette in general. If you want your league to get better, make everyone read it. And enforce it. But he's 100% correct. You don't see other teams in the NFL vetoing any trades. They can't because they shouldn't be able to, and that's how it should be in fantasy football too. I've seen and heard way too many scenarios where an understandably fair trade was vetoed by the rest of the league for reasons like "that would make the one team way too good" or similar. Sorry, but trade negotiating is a skill. And when you're able to negotiate well enough to get a trade done you shouldn't be penalized for it. People that veto a trade because it would provide tougher competition shouldn't be playing fantasy football. So do yourself a favor and make all trade approvals go through the Commissioner, not the league. And as the Commissioner, announce each trade to the league, make sure there's no hint of collusion involved, and if not put that trade through ASAP. There's no reason to have a 1 or 2 day waiting period for trades to process. Having bad trade policies can seriously ruin a league, so don't let it happen.
Having Fun
This is self-explanatory. When it comes down to it, this is a game based on a game. It's supposed to be fun above anything else. And that's all my post is trying to do, help you make your fantasy league as fun as possible. There are still several other things we do in my league that I haven't discussed, but I strongly suggest trying different things and finding what works best for you and everyone else in your league. Just please, make sure you have fun. Because if you're not having fun playing fantasy football, then you're doing something wrong.So start doing your research, setting your rankings, and practicing on mock drafts because draft time is just around the corner. I'll be posting much more fantasy football stuff on here all season long too.
Oh, and... Fly Eagles Fly!
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