The Feast is Mine!

For the first time in my fantasy football prize league era, I'm taking home the Superbowl trophy. I must say that it was a lot of fun and very difficult to do. There were a lot of witty team managers in the league fighting-it-out but in the end my team proved to be reliable when it counted. Here is my championship squad (honorable mentions):

QB-Joe Flacco
QB-Matt Cassel
WR-Calvin Johnson
WR-Mike Wallace
WR-Dwayne Bowe
WR-Vincent Jackson
WR-Donald Driver
RB-Jamaal Charles
RB-BenJarvus Green-Ellis
RB-Frank Gore
TE-Owen Daniels
TE-Dustin Keller
TE-Brent Celek
K -Matt Bryant
K -Sebastian Janikowski
D -CHI
D -NE
D -KC
D -DAL

What an awesome year for fantasy football! It was probably one of the most dramatic NFL seasons ever. I'm looking forward to next year being just as good.
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Dumping Players Rule

In a professional fantasy football league, where playing for a prize is on the line, a good foundation for sportsmanship is crucial. The league must have rules. Most of the rules in a fantasy football league derive from one basic principal; play to win or don't participate.

For example, team managers should not purposely lose to help another team, no team manager should own two separate teams, and no collusion - where one team makes a transaction to improve another team without trying to improve their own. Roster dumping is also an act against good sportsmanship that makes the list of don'ts.

In my league, the BFFL, it has happened a few times where one team manager has dropped many significant players into the free agent pool without picking anyone up. Each time it has been a team manager who did not make the playoffs. And each time this occurred during the first week of the playoffs.

This act can drastically effect the dynamics of a league at its most crucial period. For instance, team managers who have survived to the playoffs have done so by successfully managing a roster that's based on their draft and available players in a competitive environment. Bottom line: it's unfair, and totally unrealistic, for the remaining playoff teams to calibrate their roster by comparing their team with a whole new batch of available starters.

Why do team managers dump players? I'm not totally sure. Maybe it's an attempt to undermine the league in retaliation of not making the playoffs. Maybe its to make their good players available to a friend in the league since they won't be needing them. My concern is not to know, "why" but to uphold professionalism in my league and promote good sportsmanship.

Here are a few other fantasy football sites that cover the "dumping players" topic and confirm my understanding.

ESPN - RULES: FAIR PLAY / CONDUCT


Foxsports - General Rules


Spurstalk - Controlling League Laws


Antsports - Sportsmanship


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Fantasy Football League: Ladies Only

I find it pleasantly strange that so many woman are becoming true NFL fans. It seems where ever I am watching the game there are just as many woman around as there are dudes. They're cheering hard and getting just as pissed as men do. They're pigging out, wearing jerseys and talking trash. What's next? A street game afterwards. Are they pretending? What the hell is going on?

The biggest surprise came while recruiting team managers for my league this summer. I told my girlfriend that I may need to use her as a weight. Meaning, if I ended up with an uneven number of teams I would need her to join in order to even it out. You cannot run a league with an odd number of teams. But it looks like everything is going to be fine. I should have a round number of ten teams in the league. I told my girlfriend the good news that I would not need her to join. To my surprise she seemed very disappointed. Really?

I thought she was joking but she wasn't. I admit her argument seems reasonable. She has to deal with me hogging up the TV with football games every week. And if she was forced to watch football then she wanted some stake in the game. As you know, that is where fantasy football comes in.

She is not the only one. More and more I am asked by woman if they can join my fantasy football league. My female friends, my girlfriend's friends, my sister, the list goes on. So I'm going to put this female fantasy football craze to the test. I've created the perfect fantasy football league for ladies only. It's free and it's game settings are much more forgiving than my original league. It's perfect for beginners. I'm going to invite all the ladies and see what happens. What the heck. I'm interested to see how this thing turns out. Sunday night is now Ladies Night!

Max Moves = NO MAXIMUM. HURRAY!

In the past 2 seasons I've set the maximum number of moves to 10. Meaning that dropping and replacing a player on your roster would count as 1 move against your 10. The spirit of this setting was to prevent team owners from making too many rapid impulse moves. Team owners who do this are also known as free agent vultures. With the limit in place team owners would have to consider how the move would effect their team for the long term. Thus putting more thought into making moves.

It just wasn't popular. It made dealing with bye weeks and injuries too difficult for some team owners. The limit of 10 resulted in many teams needing just 1 more move at the end of the season but they were all tapped out. As commissioner I could not help but feel a little guilt over this.

The experiment I had in last year's league helped me realize a good alternative to setting max moves. When 2 of the team owners quit in the beginning of the year I came up with a plan to divide up the players on those teams. I set weekly waiver from Sun-Tue and gave everyone 200 pts in a free waiver acquisition budget. Then I dumped all the players from the 2 forfeited teams. This allowed everyone a few days to make bids on the players they wanted. It worked out pretty well. Hmmmmm.

This year I happy to say, "max moves are set to NO MAXIMUM." Instead I've set free agents to go on waivers every week from Sun-Tue. And everyone gets 1000 pts in their free waiver budgets. Hows that?

I believe this change will not only make everyone happy but it will also add another cool element to the league, the free waiver budgeting. Can't wait to see how it plays out.

First Round of Duties: Registration and Draft Order

It's been a long off-season for the Baltimore Fantasy Football Gurus (BFFG). The 2010 fantasy football season is near! I can hardly wait to enjoy my favorite spectator sport and feel like part of the action.

I've already started recruitment. Four others have joined me. Three more teams are needed to make the league's minimum of 8. I feel confident that I will always gather enough teams to make the league minimum. The goal is to achieve the maximum amount of teams, which is 16.

Sixteen teams is the target. This is the ideal number because it mimics one half of the real NFL. With 16 teams I can divide the league into 4 divisions of 4 teams each. Each division winner wins a playoff berth. The top 2 division winners are awarded first round byes. And there would be 2 wild card teams, which can come from any of the 4 divisions.

Once I have all the teams registered the next commissioner duty is to set the draft order. Last year I blogged about a special method to handle the draft order. The idea was to have this year's draft order be determined by the final standings from last season. I came up with this idea in hopes to entice teams to stay involved in the league even though they my have little to no chance in making the playoffs. For instance, the first team cut from the top 6 would have first pick. Then the remainder of the picks would follow sequentially to the last place team. Next, the playoff teams would follow in reverse order of their standings, similar to how the real NFL determines it's draft order. Finally new teams would follow the defending champion in order of who registers first. Sound confusing? Maybe it is, just a little.

Some of the team owners from last year said they would rather have the draft order be determined randomly. Their argument was that since we were not doing a keeper league nothing should carry over to the next season. Therefore, in order to truly start from scratch, the draft order should be random. Despite my efforts to debate my magical plan, I'm starting to think they were right.

So I'm thinking of going with a random draft order every year. Why not? The draft order really doesn't matter all that much anyway. Case in point, the BFFG defending champion had the last pick in last year's draft. So maybe I don't need a complicated scheme to determine the draft anyway.

There's another deciding factor for switching to a random draft order. The team owner who should have the first pick says he can't join this year due to other personal obligations. Huh. And there are others from last year who also say they're out. I'm actually looking at many new team owners. So it's probably for the better. I plan to inform the team owners that the draft order will be random. Hopefully all will agree. I'm sure I'll hear a few say, "I told ya."

Fantasy Baseball 2010

Image via Wikipedia

Fantasy baseball registration for 2010 has begun and I'm on a mission to make my league better than ever. I'm going to experiment with a mix of settings, roster positions and stat categories that should cover all the bases (that's me trying to be funny).

Size Matters
I'm hoping to foreshadow my FFL's size and playoff structure with this year's FBL settings. I'm shooting for 16 total teams, 4 divisions, 6 in the playoffs (comprised of the 4 division leaders and 2 wildcards).

Rosters
I'm primarily sticking with the Yahoo default roster; individual infield positions, 3 common outfield, 6 pitchers and 4 bench. The batting lineup will be 8 deep. The pitching staff will allow for any mix of starters, relievers and closers; but will entice managers to have a few more pitchers from the bullpen than ever before.

Scoring
The scoring structure is always what I spend the most time contemplating on. As always, it's a H2H league. I usually start off brainstorming on new ideas for scoring each match up, then back-out at the last minute and revert to the Yahoo default. This year I'm sticking with my game plan and there are several new stat categories that I think will make this FBL better than the ones before.

Total Bases
Not to be confused with Stolen Bases. Total Bases can only be scored as a result of a Hit. I replace Home Runs with this stat with the idea that there is usually never any reward for a player to hit for multiple bases. Players who hit Doubles and Triples didn't help your team out in my past FBLs. Total Bases covers both multiple hits and Home Runs, it refers to how many bases a player gained as a result of a hit. This is how it works: TB=1B+(2x2B)+(3x3B)+(4xHR). All the top home run hitter do well in this category and I think it will be good to finally include those hitters who hit for multiple bases as top priorities for your line-up.

Putouts & Assists
I once experimented with the Fielding Percentage stat in hopes to include fielding into my FBL. It proved to be a boring stat and pretty much irrelevant to what having a good team should be. I still feel a desire to include fielding in my FBL. Fielding is too important to leave out. Putouts and Assists will award points to those players who matter most in the MLB and its inclusion into this FBL will give manager more to think about and make it more fun. Here is what a Putout and Assist are:
A Putout is recorder when: tagging a runner with the ball, tagging a base, catching a 3rd strike, and catching a fly ball.
An Assist is recorded when: a player touches the ball prior to a Putout.
Interesting fact: Albert Pujols recorded the most Putouts with 1473. Aaron Hill had the most Assists followed by Miguel Tejada.

Holds
The final new stat category to mention are Holds. In my previous FBL there was not much need for relief pitchers aside from a closer. Even stocking up on quality bullpen players like Hideki Okajima, for strikeouts, would let you down because you would likely sacrifice too many Wins and Saves by having him on your team. Having a category for Holds requires managers to think more about their pitching staff. I'm hoping the result is that manager will construct a realistic pitching staff on their team. Here is the definition of a hold:
A Hold is recorded when a reviler gives way to another reviler without giving up the lead in a Save situation. That pitcher must also record 1 out.
So if the O's are up 3-1, Gutherie is pulled for Johnson, who is then pulled for Ray, who earns a save with a O's 3-2 win; Johnson would earn a Hold.