SDMB Dynasty Fantasy Football interest list

The Game Room
1

In our general discussion FF thread, we were trying to think up something new or different to do for a league this year.

VarlosZ had the idea a dynasty league, and I’m definitely interested.

Dynasty leagues work by having you retain your roster from year to year. Every year, the FF draft only covers new rookies coming into the league. Benches are typically deep so that you can develop your own talent (so to speak).

There are different strategies you can use - the value of productive but old players drops relative to a normal league, so you could try to make a team of aging stars, or you could take the long view and load your roster with promising young non-starters, or anything in between. Trades play a greater role (I’m assuming) since with the deep league there will be relatively few productive free agent pickups.

You’d really develop a feel for your team over the years, as you’d have the same core players. And the potential to find long-term diamonds in the rough is very appealing.

This is a long term league. On the SDMB, the keeper league has been running for 7 years now, the All-pro league for 4, and the auction league for 3, with largely the same people. So I think we’ve got enough reliable, long term players to make this work. But I’m not sure how many are interested. Which is why I created this thread.

We’re initially aiming for 12 players - that is, IMO, the ideal number for an FF league - and it lets us do some cool scheduling with the new divisions features. 3 divisions of 4 teams each, 3 division winners go to the playoffs along with 1 wildcard. You play everyone in your division twice, and everyone else in the league once.

Who would be interested in joining this league? Between VarlosZ, Ellis Dee and I, we have a lot of experience with the SDMB FF crowd, so we’d issue invitations first to those people we knew to be reliable players who’ve shown a long term presence on this board. But depending on how much interest we get from them, we’d be willing to accept people without as much of a track record if you’ll give it a legitimate effort to be in for the long term.

2

I’m extremely interested, but how do you do a draft for this? It seems like auction is most fair, but I’ve never done one of those online.

3

You could do a conventional or auction draft, I can’t see why this format would present any limitations on drafting. In year 2 and onwards, you only draft rookies. There may be a site setting somewhere that recognizes the league to be a dynasty leagues and only makes rookies draftable, but I’m not sure.

4

The fantasy team limit at Yahoo is four right? So we’re assuming this league would be done on a different site?

I’m interested, depending on the details (hosting “cite?!”, draft day, scoring, etc.) I’m probably over-extending myself with my four current teams, but I’d like to give a league like this a shot. I certainly could split the hours a day I spend with fantasy football by one more team, it sure can’t hurt.

5

The limit per account is 4, but you can have more leagues on multiple accounts. We’d probably stick to yahoo, but I’d be open to trying ESPN, their software looks decent.

Draft would probably be crammed onto Sunday, Tuesday, or Thursday after week 3 (IIRC, 30th through 3rd) I’m guessing.

6

How many people are in all four current SDMB FF leagues? Probably not more than a few right? Of course, some of us are probably in one or more non-SDMB FF leagues on Yahoo.

When the time comes we’ll have a discussion about it. My first thought would be that it isn’t much more of a hassle to have two accounts on Yahoo than to have one on Yahoo and one on ESPN, but perhaps I’m not thinking it through. Presumably you can have two Yahoo accounts linked to the same email address, right? Because if not, then it might be a pretty big hassle and we’d need to use ESPN or another site.

7

I’m not sold on the concept of a dynasty league. Have a bad draft and you’re screwed for years. Plus, the biggest draw of FF is the live draft, and a dynasty league kinda takes the draft out of the league. At least it sounds like it does; I could be wrong.

Give me a feel for how subsequent drafts would look. Let’s pretend we’re in year 4 of a dynasty league. Who would be the top 12 prospects in this year’s draft? Vick might be one, but who are the other 11 that’d fill out the first round?

8

Vick would presumably be a free agent (or perhaps not, I guess it depends). Normally, the draft would be composed entirely of rookies, so the first round of the draft would probably go something like:

Knowshon Moreno
Chris Wells
Donald Brown
Michael Crabtree
Mark Sanchez
Matthew Stafford
Jeremy Maclin
Shonn Green
Percy Harvin
Hakeem Nicks
Kenny Britt
Brandon Pettigrew

The virtue of the league is that it forces you to plan for the long haul (unlike a keeper league, in which a good enough draft can make you the best team in the league even you have no keepers), and that everyone has to be active in the trade market, since it’s the only way to make meaningful upgrades to your roster aside from the draft. Now, I don’t doubt that this isn’t for everybody, but I think that even if you have a bad team, there’s enjoyment to be had in using your resources to position yourself for contention in one or two years. Likewise, while a 16 Round draft is preferable to a 6 Round draft, all else being equal, that’s one day of the year that’s worse, while what you get in exchange is a trade market that should be more vibrant and interesting, and a greater sense of continuity; these are benefits that last the entire season.

. . . I think – I’ve never been in a dynasty league. Seems like it would be interesting to try, however, since all of us are already in several other, more traditional leagues.

9

I’m very interested.

There are ways to run this to ameliorate the “one bad draft” syndrome that Ellis points to (though none will eliminate it totally).

  1. The annual draft will, presumably, be worst-to-first.

  2. A cap on the number of people you can keep each year; seven sounds about right. You can keep *most *of the guys worth keeping, but the top teams are going to be shedding some useful parts each year.

  3. Fantasy contracts. All players are on four (or three or five)-year deals; when year five hits, he’s a free agent. You can only resign one FA a year. The rest go into the draft pool. If, come 2014, you have Knowshon and Stafford and Pettigrew all hitting FA … tough titty for you, pick one. The other two go back into the draft. This hopefully ensures that every year there are a few in-their-prime studs available at the top of the draft for the last-place teams to pick up.
    To prevent people from tanking for draft position next year, and to provide some compensation for the shitload of work the commissioner does, I think most leagues like this involve some cash. Nothing massive, but a $50 buy-in would create a pretty healthy pool to draw from, with payouts either for each win or for standings position. Just a thought.

10

I’m interested.

I’m a little wary that this is the type of league where you can’t do good unless you know the third string quarterback for Louisiana Tech.

11

Interested, though it depends on which host we use- I can’t stand ESPN’s interface.

12

Count me in.

13

I’ve been in a dynasty league and, putting aside the need for owners who will stay interested for multiple years and not pull out if their team sucks, the downside is as Ellis noted, not enough turnover in rosters. Bad teams (or injured teams) stay bad and can only replenish with rookies.

What we’ve done is a dynasty league with contracts. When we started, you would draft your team, and then sign the people for a contract of length of 1-4 years. You would also have one contract termination and one contract extension that you could use each year as needed. Any player who is on a one year contract can be dropped and replaced, but the person replaced with would only be for one year.

It worked pretty well for a few years, but then we ran into a problem with owners continuing to suck and losing interest, so we changed it to 1-3 years. With a 3 year max contract and only one extension, there was more talent going into the drafting pool each year, so teams could actually improve year to year.

If we can find a way like that to replenish the pool of talent, i’d be all over a dynasty league. It will be yet another way for me to kick your sorry asses.

ETA: I too would like to see even just a nominal yearly fee with payouts to winners. Just to compensate the commish and to make sure people remain interested.

14

That’s a thought. Instead of doing serpentine drafts from Year 2 on, just make like the NFL and have the worst team pick first in each round. Though OTOH I do like the setup in our keeper league, whereby the consolation bracket determines the top of the draft order, thus giving all but the very worst teams something meaningful to play for until last couple of weeks in the season. As a side-benefit, this would mostly put a stop to people tanking, since the only benefit to be had would be for the two or three worst teams, who could try to assure themselves of the 5th overall pick instead of the 6th or 7th.

But it would be a good way to help last place teams get out of the gutter, so maybe.

I don’t know, the idea behind the league is that you’re making long-term decisions, and a big part of that is devoting roster space to developmental players, trying to figure out which rookie WR from the 3rd Round of the NFL Draft will some day be an above average starter, etc. You lose most of that if you can only keep a handful of players, as it just wouldn’t make sense to stash any but the best prospects on your bench for future use. And if you increase the limit to just enough so that teams can keep their starters and their decent prospects, then you’ll just shake loose the Ike Hilliards of the world, and that’s probably not helping the poor teams all that much.

Could do something like this. However, it would require a lot of extra work to keep track of, and it wouldn’t have any effect for the first 4 or 5 years of the league.
I think, fundamentally, there may be a difference in philosophy among some of us. Yes, in a dynasty league it’s entirely possible for a team to suck so badly that, even with expert management, it might take a few years before it’s good again – but that’s not a bug, it’s a feature. It means that every decision you make has long-term consequences for your team, instead of being washed away in late December. It means that you might *get *to to claw your way out of the sewer, or to build and maintain a dynasty, which are experiences that are not possible in other types of leagues.

Also, note that there’s a lot of turnover in the list of most valuable fantasy players from year to year. There are a relative handful of players who produce at a consistently high level, but they’re the exception and not the rule. Of the top 25 players in 2007 (according to raw point totals), only 11 were in the top 25 in 2008, and only 15 were in the top 50. Of numbers 26-50 in 2007, only 7 were in the top 50 in 2008. So there will still be a lot of organic movement from one year to the next, even without reshuffling part of the deck every year.

15

I’m thinking about this and wondering how it would go for me. Even after I stopped going with all NY players I still have an aptitude for suckage. Consider the keeper league last year, where I had a two game strangle hold on dead last. True suckage. The core of my roster was:

Carson Palmer
Joseph Addai
Darren McFadden

I suppose they could turn it around and become a decent group, but, Oy. Another big aspect of fantasy to me is looking for decent free agents based on weekly matchup. That involves a lot of roster turnover; I pretty much always employ a rotating WR #2, TE, DEF and K, with only the QB, RBs and WR#1 being permanent fixtures on the team. I do tons of free agents and waiver claims, but very little trading. It sounds like this play style is the antithesis of a dynasty league.

Because my favorite parts of fantasy are the live draft and the waiver wire, I don’t think a dynasty league is for me. I just can’t get excited for a live draft where the #1 overall pick (which I would get a lot) gets to choose from this list:

This is not to say that you guys can’t make a great dynasty league that rocks the house. But I’ll have to take a pass.

16

This sounds interesting, but I’m not sure I’d be any good at it. Like Ellis Dee, I’m a big supporter of rotating my roster on a week to week basis.

But I’ll take up the 12th spot if you can’t find anyone else interested.

17

You’d have a bigger bench, so you’d have a lot to select your starters from. You wouldn’t have to play the same guys from week to week.

18

That’s a fair point. What would the roster look like? Nothing finalized of course, but what are your initial thoughts?

19

It would probably be pretty close to standard, but with 12-15 bench spots instead of 5-7.

I definitely hear what you’re saying, and agree that the league wouldn’t suit everyone’s tastes. Ironically, however, that’s exactly the sort of core that would have a real chance to turn things around and be good for several years to come.

20

As for an entrance fee, I personally wouldn’t mind a small fee ($20-$50) to keep things interesting, but I imagine that such a fee would take a big cut out of the number of applicants (could be wrong). I’d also be mildly surprised if the mods and admins didn’t have a problem with a money league.
Interest List

SenorBeef
VarlosZ
Stringer
Jules Andre (provisional)
furt
Petey
RNATB (if hosted on Yahoo)
mazinger_z
Hamlet (if there’s a mechanism for roster turnover)
Justin Bailey (measured interest)
Getting there. I think maybe we give it another couple of days to see where we’re at before we create a league. We can wait till then to begin rules discussion in earnest, or we could start that now.