Winning a fantasy football championship takes a lot of luck and
some skill. It should be the other way around. The reason it isn't
is many leagues have a ton of luck ingrained in the rules, which
affects knowledgeable players adversely and bad players favorably.
Yes, - sigh --, luck hits both sides equally, not that it has to,
but we will assume it does. However, the knowledgeable player doesn't
need luck to succeed, while the bad player does and we want the
bad player to be swimming in bile by the end of the season, not
taking a Ron Dayne-laden squad to the big dance because the rules
help them. So it makes sense for the knowledgeable player to strip
as much luck out of the league as possible. And now is the time
to do it before everyone is tied to the rules from previous seasons.
So, drag the Commissioner out of their beauty sleep and give them
a rude shake. Here's how to put some buckshot between Lady Luck's
beady little eyes.
Stay Away From Free Leagues
If it were up to me, I would drown all the free public leagues in
their own spit. Membership is important. Find leagues with solid
membership, not free public leagues. This may mean starting your
own league or finding a league over the Internet that is in need
of an owner. Free public leagues are great areas to see the bottom-feeders
of the game cavort in the wild. However, there are too many instances
of owners dropping out cuz their teams suck leaving ghost ships
that throw the rest of the league in a whirl. Sure, it makes it
easier to win games, but it makes it easier for all to win games
and that isn't what a knowledgeable owner wants. Plus, have some
pride. Anyone can beat a 12-year old kid that is still learning
the game; play against someone your own size.
Deep-Six Small Leagues
The size of the league makes a difference, too. The smaller the
league, the less you have to know about football to get a good player.
Any goof with a magazine can come in and pull off a killer team.
The luck factor diminishes, as the league gets larger and the choices
tougher. The best size is somewhere around 12 teams. Work hard to
get 12 teams in the league, even if you need to advertise to do
so. Now don't go disbanding, if you can't get it up past eight or
if the league is just a family league where fun is the first priority,
but keep working at expansion until you are comfortable with league
size.
Touchdown Leagues
Leagues score many different ways. Some count only touchdowns, some
minimize touchdowns for yardage, some play defense, some individual
defensive players, some with no defense, at all. The best way to
minimize luck is to play in leagues that are yardage heavy. The
players that get the most yards, generally, are the best players.
This means that drafting is a little more predictable and that some
mope that drafted Rodney Culver doesn't whip your ass the week he
crosses the stripe three times from the one. Leagues that are touchdown-heavy
involve a lot more luck. Many good players can't get into the end
zone while specialists, on good teams, get the overflow and end
up with value. Think of Barry Sanders, when thinking about touchdown
leagues. No, not the Barry that is sitting home watching "The
Price is Right", the Barry that wasn't allowed to carry the
ball near the end zone after lugging it all over the field. His
valet would go the last three yards for the score. Sanders is one
of the greatest players of all-time but he wasn't worth dog water
some years in touchdown leagues. Stay away from touchdown leagues.
Defensive Scoring
Many leagues have defensive scoring but most care only about touchdowns
scored by the defense. Defensive touchdowns are as predictable as
the accuracy of a Jake Plummer pass, which makes drafting a defense
a crapshoot. Knowledgeable owners don't want crapshoots. If you
are going to play with defense, start with individual defensive
players or IDPs. If that fails, lazy owners are going to balk at
more stuff to study, then go with more stringent and predictable
scoring for defenses, like points and yardage against. These are
predictable, to an extent, meaning a knowledgeable player will be
able to slot these teams, correctly, in the draft.
Draft More Players
Make the damn thing longer. Go for a minimum of 18 rounds and 20
might be better. Hey, the draft is the best moment of the year,
why rush it. The longer the draft goes, the weaker a bad owner gets.
They will start pulling out familiar names, not good names, and
that means a stronger bench for the good owner. Plus, many leagues
have a worst-to-first system for retrieving free-agents and a longer
draft will suck the life out of free-agency, meaning no fallback
for bad owners.
Free Agency
The most prevalent way of selecting free-agents is a worst-to-first
system that allows the bottom-feeders dibs on the best free-agents.
There are two ways to combat this. First, go to a bidding system,
which will confuse the bad owners. Second, and the better way, go
to a first come, first served system. The knowledgeable owners can
swoop in and pick off all the good talent as they sit comfortably
by the TV. Now if the league is still run with an abacus and an
old copy of USA Today, the Commissioner may not like the idea of
phone calls day and night but push for it anyway, they may not see
the bus before it hits them.
Roster Freedom
More than a few leagues like to predetermine the amount of players
at each position an owner can select. A minimum of two at every
position. Kind of like a Noah's Ark philosophy for fantasy football.
The knowledgeable owner should chafe at such inflexibility. They
probably want only one kicker, tight end, and defense. They have
only one quarterback from time to time and may want to pile on the
running backs. A restrictive roster means that for every find in
free agency a knowledgeable owner dredges, they have to give back
another. Keep your rosters free.
Play The Whole Damn Roster
Generally, only rotisserie leagues play the whole roster but it
makes sense for a knowledgeable owner to push for head-to-head leagues
with the same idea. A knowledgeable owner should have a deeper roster
than a bad owner meaning that scheduling luck could be minimized.
And, in some respects, it truly mimics real football.
Be A Revolutionary
Fantasy football leagues come in three different packages: head-to-head,
points, or rotisserie. Most fantasy football leagues are head-to-head.
Why? Because it is the most fun and mimics what is on the big screen.
The problem is that head-to-head leagues are the luckiest due to
scheduling luck. What is scheduling luck? People in the office are
ducking for cover, talk about opening Pandora's box. Scheduling
luck happens when a team loses a game when they have scored more
points than over half the league, that week, but have run into a
team that also has scored more points than half the league. Generally,
every league will have some poor mook who loses two games due to
scheduling luck. And we have seen leagues where some teams lose,
as many as, six games to scheduling luck. It can even out over time
but time is open-ended and there is no rule that says it must. The
easy way to get away from scheduling luck is to go to points or
rotisserie but that drags a league away from the fun of playing
head-to-head. The best way to handle the head-to-head luck factor
is to make scoring part of the game. In a quick nutshell - I will
expound on this in a later article - give the top half of the teams
in scoring each week a win along with any head-to-head wins. This
will reward high scoring teams that fall victim to bad luck and
doesn't reward low scoring teams that get a cheap win. It works,
trust me.
The knowledgeable fantasy football owner has a much tougher road
than his or her counterparts do in the other major fantasy sports
because of the luck factor that resides in fantasy football. Some
of that - injuries - is out of their control but most is embedded
in the rules. If you are serious about winning at fantasy football
then the first thing to do before reading 200 articles on the top
sleepers is to get the rules on your side, not the side of your
cousin Phil that stops at the 7-11 minutes before the draft for
a cheatsheet that was put together in May.
