Guys like Randy Moss, Eddie George, Ricky Williams, Peyton Manning and Tiki Barber were all college player keepers back then. People dont take advantage of how exciting the draft and the draft lottery can be. 66. In a 10-team league, they will meet twice a season and things can get interesting with public trash talk. NFL teams use their backup players, so why shouldnt you? For those unfamiliar with the term, a position week is where matchups are determined based on the standings. like if the matchups you want for a rivalry are in week 3 swap out that entire week for week 6 and put week 6s matchups in week 3. There is already so much luck in fantasy football. This is the time of year when owners who are in multiple leagues start to either think about adding more, or cutting back. How you choose to determine which owners are considered rivals is up to you and your leaguemates. Dont let fantasy football inexperience deter you from bringing those kinds of owners into your league. So if you have a Non-Playoff Team Playoffs, with the winner getting half their league fee back, then theyll have something to play for! Rivalry Week formalizes these matchups that may or may not serve as mini-Super Bowls to your owners. Let owners draft Team Offensive Lines, sort of like how people draft Team Defenses. Then award five Fantasy points if that offensive lines NFL team rushes for over 150 yards, passes for over 300 yards or doesnt allow any sacks! The matchups that you circle on your calendar are the ones that make it all worth it. The opposition was overwhelming, and rightfully so. Plus champ gets a championship ring on me. Customize the layout, handpick the fonts and colors, and organize your chart and schedule precisely to your liking. We had in-season supplemental drafts at different points. As I am sure many of you have noticed, there are owners at the end of the season who tank because, well, they just do not care anymore. That could mean the sixth place team by record gets the boot. Previous Changes That will truly determine the six best teams that should be in the playoffs which are then just Head-to-Head contests. Fantasy Football Commissioners: 4 Ideas to Spice Up Your League Its nice to get everyone involved again, and reward some Fantasy owners that didnt make the playoffs. Go to the week you want to be Rivalry Week and write down the pairings (Team A v. Team F, etc.). Think about how the NFL has shifted to division foes playing one another in Week 17, increasing the chance that the slate will impact the playoff field. Dont be just another fantasy league. Stand out from all the others by assigning a theme to it, like Seinfeld, Mafia movies or Saturday Night Live. Download the FREE "Rivalry Week" Rule Summary to share with your leaguemates now. [Yahoo Fantasy Football leagues are open: Sign up now for free]. The author, Justin C. Cliburn, has been the dedicated commissioner of his Yahoo Fantasy Football league the OIL since 2006. Have owners draft where in the first round theyd like to draft. Blood Battle and The Lantern Rivalry Fundraiser. We all had to learn somehow. An owner can correctly surmise that Team X will win big and choose to . Once again, in an effort to remove the good luck from bad teams and the bad luck from good teams, scheduling double-headers every single week will make the cream rise to the top. For instance, some great college keepers in recent years would have been Amari Cooper, Todd Gurley and Ezekiel Elliott. A change to a dynasty league could even be a tougher call vs. a keeper league. The majority of FBS teams are playing against their most bitter rivals, with stakes ranging from . ); Run the schedule maker and skip to the final week of the season; Assign team names based on the schedule for that final week; and then. The NFFC figured out that those lucky owners with the first few picks of the drafts were finishing much higher than those with later first-round picks. Both options have pros and cons, but we suggest having owners choose as to avoid any push back on your choices as Commish. When they make a shot, remove that cup, and they announce which pick they have! Michigan-Ohio State. And wed get detention for passing notes because texting didnt exist. Some league services, like CBSSports.com, has league histories, which includes stuff like the standings every year, the draft results, the owner records versus other owners, and assorted other records, like highest points scored in a season, etc. Charge an extra 25% for league fees, then add those monies into a pot that grows for four consecutive seasons. You play every team once and then what? A friend of mine said he knew someone who never played fantasy football but loves the NFL. Great fantasy leagues come in all shapes and sizes. Once rivals are paired, you can go in to the league site and manually adjust schedules accordingly. For quarterbacks, the solution is easy if your starting QB goes down, you continue to accumulate points scored by his backup. footballbabble.com Fantasy Football League Schedules sportsbettingacumen.com 8, 10, 12, 14, and 16 team schedules Footballguys.com Schedules for 6-32 teams I dont work for Yahoo or anything, just a guy sharing my experience with the community. For the 2017 NFL season, heres how I see that draft of draft picks go down: This would be for non-keeper drafts. Commissioners have to harass them to set lineups sometimes in the final weeks. Make them change to 3x4, which works perfectly for 14 week regular seasons. One of the original goals of creating the flex position was to help make wide receivers more important, and trying to equalize the importance of running backs. You can make it so no players taken in the first round or even the first two rounds can be kept any year. Take advantage of those backups to the stars that sit for the NFL Playoffs! Consultation bracket winner get 1st pick in following year rookie draft followed by middle standing reverse order for the rookie draft I.e. To this day, I never really asked how he was able to do this, or even why, but my conclusion was he wanted to get what he deemed to be his ideal set of owners. The best week of the college football season is upon us. As the incumbent commissioner of an 11 year running FFL, Ive found that the vast majority of my job is to bring life to the league. Here's what I do: Go to the Football Guys schedule maker and run a schedule for your league size (without changing any team names). Drop a comment below and let everyone know especially me! So they can be owned for four years, essentially.). This is another way to combat the bad luck fantasy owners can experience over a short 13-week season. You don't currently have any notifications. This can also be solved by having Team QB instead of the individual player. The 2023 Women's Fantasy Basketball season has officially arrived! That would definitely make Sunday dinner at the in-laws (more) stressful! First place versus second place, third place against fourth place, etc. Keeping one or two players in a 10-team league should allow owners to come up with a similar set of keepers, talent-wise. Create rematches of last years playoff bracket or in final standings order. This might be easier said than done. In the end, you at least want to give your owners the feeling they have a say in rules, especially if you don't really know some of the owners as well as others. Its like when your tax refund comes in the day your car engine blows. Thats like penalizing the guys wife and kids. You dont want an owner who falls for a terrible trade to your leagues Evil Empire or disappears after an 0-5 start. The Third-Round Reversal rule makes it so that the third round is reversed what it normally is, and the second round order is essentially duplicated. Dynasty leagues keep the football talk going just about all season. If there are owners who do not have rivals, create rivalries! These rivalries could consist of matchups between: Basically, you just want to make each game to take on a little special meaning. Rule 4 -- The Psychic: We all know that luck often plays a bigger part than skill in the end result of fantasy football games. 21 Ways to Spice Up Your Fantasy Football League Once teams are eliminated from the Fantasy Playoffs, they often completely lose interest and pack it in. Here are a couple things that you can do to keep interest high throughout the season for all owners and maybe make things a little more interesting for you as well. Id rather have an inexperienced fantasy football owner who wants to be there and wants to do well versus an experienced owner who quits on his team after a slow start. The Footballguys Schedule Maker can handle league sizes from tiny (6 teams) to massive (32 teams). No matter the number of teams in your league, you should take the schedule seriously. Chief U.S. District Judge Jon Levy wrote in a letter to President Joe Biden last week that he intends to retire from regular active status by May 2024, "having attained the age and met the service . Use the same site (football guys) and the setup where Week 9 was the rivalry week. Open up the fantasy football schedule generator and explore professionally designed templates to get yourself started. Privacy Policy. Its a fine line, so you need owners who understand the process. Go to a restaurant or get together at someones home for beers, and do the drawing! The month of November is college football's fireworks show, and Rivalry Week is its grand finale. Its just another way to keep those in your league having fun and just makes your league better in the end. . There is nothing that generates more interest than a chance to win something. In 2004, nine running backs carried the ball over 300 times. Adding it to your fantasy football league would no doubt make things more interesting. I think having keepers is one of the biggest fears for owners who may not follow football closely or just may be new to fantasy football. Sell! and Who ate my sandwich!? I run a league website for us and have a page dedicated to rivalry week matchups with overall points differential, game highlights, and a record of funny bets that resulted. If not, you and your leaguemates are definitely missing out. Hes fun dad! When people are considering new Fantasy Football league ideas, new scoring rules ranks among the most popular changes theyre willing to make. And the custom schedule maker makes it so much easier to institute a rivalry week. If you have a successful fantasy league already, with 10 or 12 reliable owners coming back year after year with a waiting list of people hoping to join the party, then maybe its time to expand. Take a step back and enjoy it! From 12-18 weeks, you are covered. It doesn't mean they are bad owners. Considering we have been taught to avoid Week 17 in our Fantasy Playoffs because stars sometimes get benched for rest and there are too many uncertainties to make that week the Fantasy Football Championship week. The commissioner will set up two double-headers bookending the bye weeks so that Fantasy teams will have full rosters to go up against two teams each before and after the bye weeks. Keep stats over time and try to fan the rivalry flames. Some of my favorite leagues are leagues that have a different flavor and arent just the typical leagues that havent changed since 1995. If your backup players score more points than your opponents backup players, then your final score that week gets a bonus six points tacked on. For those unfamiliar with the term, a position week is where matchups . Twitter is underutilized by many Fantasy owners. So lets make it a week where every owner picks a team on FanDuel or Draft Kings and they all play against each other in a DFS Pro Bowl! Manually set schedules to pair rival owners for matchups during the chosen Rivalry Week. Having a couple of keepers is probably the best way to go, at least to start with a change. Ideally, youd have both of these Fantasy drafts happen at the same time, with all of the owners together at the same location. $150 league fee. In the past 20 years, players like Kurt Warner (1999), Alfred Morris (2012), Justin Forsett (2014) and Dak Prescott (2016) all ended up being great waiver-wire pickups at the beginning of their seasons. Eliminate the frustration of having a player go off on your bench and not help your team. It will no doubt put more emotion into the game. Related: 100 Funny Fantasy Football League Names. Great Fantasy Football league ideas have come across my desk over the past 27 years of play, and many of them, I have personally instituted in some of my leagues. In this way, though, theres regular Head-to-Head play, like were all used to, but the top six scoring teams get an extra win added to their standings, and the bottom six scoring teams get a loss added. So if you have a $100 league entry fee each season, that number goes up to $125, and the payout goes from $1,200 in that fourth year to $2,400! Additionally, this Rule is literally made to pair with other. We set rivalry week to take place in the last week of the regular season, and it has been an absolute hit! Add the amount generated to the pot for an even bigger prize for the winner. The guy who invented beer probably didnt have to buy another beer in a bar for the rest of his life. The big league would get the big table, and the smaller, minor league would have to do their draft at the kiddie table. Humiliation can be a great motivator! Punishments for last place in a fantasy football league have become common practice. Pretty much every NFL position can score you points in Fantasy Football, outside of offensive lines and punters. In every fantasy football league, there is always an owner who makes twice the amount of transactions as the closest owner or there is an owner who makes zero transactions. Fantasy guru who has mastered the art of the picking from the 11 slot. There is certainly a point where too many starting roster spots drastically increases the luck factor. This means the best teams would win more than they lose, and the other way around. ): In many of these cases, the commish should go back and list off some nominations for each of the awards, so people dont have to do a ton of research. Rivalries are one of the major reasons why we love sports. Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience. Luckily, you dont have to worry about wearing your players out by making them play two games in one week! For instance, Im in a Seinfeld league, where all the divisions, teams and even the championship game (The Festivus Bowl!) Rivalry Week's spiciest games of the weekend, ranked - Sports Illustrated Im in a few leagues that use Week 18 as a final, and while I never mind a challenge, this is a wild card that can really throw off fantasy lineups as NFL teams rest players for the playoffs. A bonus TD! By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. I have also written an article with tips to host a live draft. Since Week 17 is generally regarded as a throwaway week in fantasy much like how the Pro Bowl is viewed in the real NFL why not have a DFS Pro Bowl Week, inviting your entire league to play a Daily Fantasy tournament for that final Sunday. As you can see, there are endless ideas to improve your league and staying on top of things will keep people coming back for more. We also have 4 divisions of 3 teams and we play division twice and everyone else once and I usually use the footballguys generator as well. By adding single points for any first downs made by a running back, wide receiver or a tight end, you even out the scoring between RBs and WRs a little bit more. North Carolina-Duke. Other League Ideas: Last Place Punishments | Fantasy Football Team Names | Drafting Under the Influence | Ways to Keep Managers Engaged | Live Draft Tips |. Each owner would have to make some hard decisions as to which players that they must drop or trade. Here are five rule changes your league should consider implementing in the upcoming season. A dynasty league will keep you more active thanks to the NFL Draft and then what should be your rookie draft a short while later. Now that we have 18 weeks of an NFL regular season, allowing for a 14-week fantasy regular season, consider doing two half-seasons. This is especially great for keeper leagues, which then adds some strategy on which players they hold over aiming for a Year-4 double payout! Maybe theyre your spouse. In college football, rivalry week is always a fan favorite, unless of course your team never wins. The reasoning was that while a late-pick owner got two of the top 15 players, as opposed to just one for the early pick owner, it was the fact that those early pick owners got three of the top 25-30 picks that made a much bigger difference. I would highly recommend implementing this in all of your FF leagues. This should also initiate some interesting lineup strategies as people forego sleepers at running back and wide receiver in favor of a backup quarterback or two. The longer fantasy football exists and the more popular it becomes, the better the community will get at improving the game and making it more enjoyable for everyone involved. Jul 14, 2021 - This Craft Supplies & Tools item by someka has 5 favorites from Etsy shoppers. Battle Royale Week One of my leagues experimented with this for the first time in 2018 and it was a huge success. For example, if Odell Beckham Jr. is your team captain, and he scores 32 points against the Eagles this week, youll get an additional 16 points added to your final Fantasy score! Rivalries are one of the major reasons why we love sports. Give it a try! Make the smaller leagues entry fees about one-quarter of what the fees are for the big league, helping keep that league stocked with potential. Having a draft is spring is a great jump start to the season as by the time your rookie prep and draft are over, it's just about time for camps to get started. You can also find it by searching Edit Playoff Seeds. Obviously, its impossible for that to work, but thats not the case in fantasy. As the NFL changes, our fantasy leagues must change alongside it. Some are wondering whether this is Lane . But if you're looking to keep your league engaged, a dynasty league could be a way to go. How Many Top Fantasy Football Rookies Are 1st Before & After the Season? My leagues have experimented with two rivalry week ideas. Rather than allow teams to make free-agent pickups in the first two weeks of the season, hold a special Week 3 Free-Agent Draft, with the worst team getting the first pick in each round. You should be in several different leagues every year, including one dynasty league, one keeper league and one IDP league! Then go back into the schedule maker and input the team names into the slots that will be paired up during Rivalry . As a commissioner, the thing I hated most come playoff time was a manager complaining that he only missed the playoffs because he had to play X twice while Y didnt play X at all and instead got to play a horrible team like Z twice. Back then, with all the bell-cow backs that existed, the best strategy was to begin your draft with as many running backs as you were allowed to start. You could also make a rule that you cant name a player as captain more than twice in a season, making it more strategical. However, if youre part of a league with people you dont know very well, you could use the previous season as a guiding light. If you award a second win to the teams that score in the top half of the league that week, then the best teams get two wins, the worst teams get two losses, and the unlucky teams split the difference with a win and a loss that week. So consider mixing the two, and doing a combination auction/draft for your player entry system. Do it for your fantasy leagues, allowing each team to name a team captain each week, allowing that players score to be multiplied by 150 percent. Part 5: Setting the schedule. Each season, have teams put in an extra 25 percent of the entry fee, which then goes into a pool that pays out to the champion four years from now in the Super-Duper Bowl!