As we enter fantasy football season, it’s important to step back and take stock in your current fantasy football league. What are your plans for this coming yeare? Are you randomly joining a league where you know no one? Or are you in a league that you’ve been a part of for 15 years? Regardless of where you are right now with your fantasy football league experience, it’s time to reflect and determine if it’s where you really want to be going forward.
What makes a fantasy football league truly worthwhile? What makes it enjoyable and something you look forward to year after year?
What makes it epic?
Size
First and foremost, let’s talk about the size of the league. Yes, size matters. I know that is a lame cliché, but with fantasy football it is true. The ideal size for a fantasy league is 14 teams. Why? There are two major reasons. First, most leagues avoid the lame-duck week 17 when many NFL teams sit their starters. This puts your playoffs during weeks 14, 15, and 16. With the season wrapping up in week 13, it allows you to play every team once during the season. Nice and clean.
Second, with a 14 team league, the level of skill required is amplified. Your ability to draft a quality team, with backups, is tested as players go off the board quickly. It isn’t as diluted as a 15 team, 16 team, or larger league and isn’t as stacked as a 10 team league where everyone has a stud roster. It makes you work harder, but you can still field a strong squad.
Keep it Personal
Part of the fun of fantasy football is the camaraderie, arguments, and back and forth trash talking amongst friends. In order for this to truly be enjoyable, it should be people you know. Whether it’s family, friends, or friends of friends, you should at least know the people you are playing against. If you get into a computer-generated league and have no idea who’s on the other end of the computer, it just isn’t as fun. Our league includes people I’ve known for years outside of fantasy football as well as those that I met via the league. Even though I met them through the league, we do have a personal face-to-face history now that makes it much more enjoyable (more on this later).
Don’t Let Location Stand in the Way
Our league is international. We have owners that are on the west coast, owners in the south, owners on the east coast, and one owner in the military that has played from around the world. Talk about dedication! Having a geographically dispersed group adds a little extra excitement to the league too. Don’t feel you can only have a fantasy football league with people that are in the same city or region as you. Technology allows opening up your league to whoever you’d like from wherever they are based.
Similar Owners
It’s nice having a league made up of owners that are roughly the same age. Our league consists of guys hitting their 40s. This makes it much easier to relate to each other. We are at the same point in our lives and have the same historical view of football. It’s much harder being in a league where you might have someone’s kid or a baby cousin owning a team. Likewise, having grandpa owning a team and looking to draft Jim Brown won’t help either.
Keep it Consistent
Having the same owners every year makes the league so much better. You start to develop a history at a league level and with individual owners. You can think back to bonehead moves during particular drafts in the past, talk about a particular championship game, and relive old glory between heated rivals. The league becomes personal and enjoyable when it’s the same group of folks every year. Of course there will be turnover, but try to limit it by keeping the league exciting and fresh.
Factions
Our league includes various factions. There was an initial group of guys and then new owners were brought in by their contacts in the league. Some were childhood friends. Some were college friends. You get the point. What this means is due to the number of small groups of connections, factions naturally form. You’ll have a little extra motivation trying to beat owners from other factions and you’ll also have allies during arguments or other league matters. It just adds another nice dynamic to the league.
You Need Villains
It’s always good to have a bad guy around. Someone in the league that everyone wants to beat and someone nobody wants to win the championship. That person usually tries to get over on other owners, acts extremely arrogant, and believes they can skirt the rules. They may even try to bend the rules in their favor or orchestrate a questionable trade down the stretch with a team that was eliminated in week 4. While they can be a pain in the ass, they also add spice to the league and a little extra motivation each time you go head to head with them. And you have the added bonus of rooting against them whenever anyone else plays them. It’s kind of like the Lakers, Yankees, Cowboys, or Duke.
Trash-Talking
With consistent ownership, similar backgrounds, factions, and villains comes the inevitable trash talking. This is a healthy aspect to any fantasy football league. If you play fantasy footlball, you’ll need to have thick skin and expect any and everything to come up during a nice session of trash talking. Our league uses the message board extensively during the season. Each week owners square off and toss verbal darts across the room, tearing the scab off old fantasy wounds. And if you don’t have a championship yet, prepare to be abused relentlessly until you do.
Keep it Simple
If you listen to fantasy radio, read various fantasy publications, or visit fantasy websites you’ll often hear descriptions of extreme league setups. “We have a 10 team, ½ point PPR, keeper, 2 QB league, with one Flex that can be a TE or WR only, and each team must draft a rookie” Huh? Let’s just keep it simple shall we? I don’t want to over analyze my draft with a bunch of weird requirements then have to watch games on Sunday and try to decipher what I should be rooting for. Keep it simple people and enjoy the games with a clear head.
Maintain Competitiveness
Make sure you have owners that are fully dedicated and engaged throughout the season. Nothing sucks more than having an owner mail it in half way through the year. Get owners that love fantasy football and are highly competitive. What you’ll notice is the overall quality of league play will increase and draw further engagement for years to come. Don’t let your league fizzle due to lame owners.
All of the above is pretty basic needs for having a great fantasy football league. But what makes a league epic? What will make your league stand out and make other leagues look on green with envy?
Two words…draft weekend.
Yes, I said draft “weekend”. The draft should be more than just a 4 hour online event between people hiding behind their computers. It should be special and it should be in-person. Here is how to take your league to the next level of awesomeness…
Have a Traveling Draft
Our league has a traveling draft. What exactly does that mean? It means each year we travel to a different city to conduct our draft ceremonies. We have had our draft in cities such as Atlanta, New Orleans, Chicago, Washington, DC, Miami, San Diego, and of course Las Vegas multiple times. In fact, Las Vegas is on steady rotation and is the host city every other year. At the conclusion of each year, the newly crowned commissioner (winner from that year) posts a series of polls with a list of cities. We narrow it down and select a host city for next year’s draft. The commissioner then goes about renting the necessary space and finalizing all the wonderful details. Our league is one of the only leagues I know that travels consistently and collectively solely for our draft. Sure some owners can’t make the draft every year due to other life commitments, but for the most part we usually have more than 10 owners at each draft. In addition, we have other friends who come for the draft just for the weekend festivities.
Have a Pre-Draft Party
As part of our draft weekend, we also go out the night before as a league. All the owners meet up for a dinner and (far too many) drinks. At some point during the night, we’ll put all the team names on small pieces of paper and draw them out of a hat to determine the draft order. One drawback of the pre-draft party is that most of the owners are hanging by a thread the next day during the actual draft as they try to recover from the amount of drinking the previous night. Remember we are a bunch of guys hitting our 40s, drinking requires a full day of recovery. You can use this to your advantage though and try to get your league-mates hammered at the pre-draft party so they can’t think straight the following day. Not saying that I’ve done this of course….ahem.
Hold the Draft as Late as Possible
I don’t get why leagues draft in July or early August. You should wait until the weekend before the season officially starts. There are way too many injuries to deal with during the preseason and you really can’t make an assessment on players until after the 3rd game. This results in having your draft over Labor Day weekend, which usually adds to the festivities. By traveling to new cities over a holiday weekend, you get to experience all the Labor Day parties. One drawback with having your draft out of town over Labor Day weekend is the inevitable battle with your spouse over not spending Labor Day with the family. It’s a tough balance.
Have an In-Person Draft
Get all of your owners together in the same room for your draft. The group dynamics, trash talking, and general camaraderie is greatly improved when you are all sitting together. Each owner will set up there area with all of their cheat sheets, books, and strategy documents while at the same time strategically shielding their pages from other owners. There is a nice vibe when you look around the room and see all the owners setting up shop. Also, with an in-person draft, you can have a third party run the official draft board. In Vegas, we have the added luxury of Hooters girls running our board. Nothing wrong with that. At the end of the day, there is really no comparison between having everyone in the same room versus people drafting online from their homes.
New Commish
Some leagues like to have a dictatorship. The winner of our league becomes the commissioner the following year. This adds extra incentive for owners and allows them to go on minor power trips. They get to revisit any rules they would like to put up for league vote and run the league for the year. They get the added bonus of having other owners bow down and call them Commish for the whole year too. It keeps the league fresh by giving each owner the opportunity to run the league…that is if each owner ultimately wins the championship. We still have owners in our league that are looking for their first championship….I have 3 titles. Yes, that is not-so-subtle trash talk to any league members that might be reading this.
Have a Trophy
Make sure you have an object everyone is chasing. It could be rings, beer mugs, whatever. We have a big trophy with all the past winners etched into the sides. The winner gets to keep the trophy for the year as they serve as commissioner. There is an official ceremony at the beginning of each draft where the outgoing commissioner hands over the trophy to the newly crowned commish. This again adds to the pageantry of the weekend and the fun of the overall league.
Money, Money, Money
And of course, there should be money involved. Each year we put up enough money to cover draft room expenses, weekly high point winners, and 1st and 2nd place prize money. Beyond the glory of the trophy, you should also have some monetary rewards in place. You’ll want to take into consideration the financial status of each owner, but even if each team just puts in a fair amount of money, the pot can grow pretty quickly. There is nothing like getting the check, the trophy, and the commissionership the next year knowing you’ll be traveling to a new city to hang out with friends.
Those are the key ways you can differentiate yourself from the pack and make your fantasy football league epic. Don’t spend another year wasting away in a computer-generated league where you don’t know anyone and half of them stop playing by Thanksgiving. Up the ante, grab some competitive friends, and start something you’ll look forward to and cherish for years to come.
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