I’ve been interested in American football for some years now and been following the NFL rather closely for a couple (thank G-d for cable!, wasn’t there when we grew up, was it?) - and this season I’m ready to take the step out into the world of fantasy football.
I registered a team at the nfl.com, but to my surprise I had to join one of a couple of thousand seemingly jerk off leagues of a handful of teams.
I don’t wanna get that personal, especially since nobody’s interested in a newbie, and I for that matter is not interested in a league that’s … (well, you know the Groucho Marx quote)…
Please, with this background, give me some tips to start out with this totally new hobbie (being a hard working father of three children and an Xbox 360, I basically need help killing time, as you can understand).
I’m not sure what you’re asking, but to play Fantasy sports you need to be in a league. The point of the exercise is to manage your ‘team’ such that your players do better than the other teams’ players in your league.
If you don’t want to join a league of strangers then get your friends to make a team and form your own league.
If you enjoy the SDMB, then you’ll probably enjoy the blog posts at pro-football-reference.com, where Doug regularly crunches statistics to look at things that may interest fantasy players. For example, (this week) what division of the NFL has had the least-experienced quarterbacks of all time? He goes on to show that depending who is first- and second-string in the AFC West this year, that division would either be the least-experienced QB division since 1978, or the fourth-least-experienced since 1978.
Why do you care? Because in some fantasy leagues, your defensive linemen get points for sacking the QB. With so many rookies at QB, a veteran lineman in the AFC West stands to do very very well this year, especially if he’s on a team with a strong defense. I don’t know much about football either, but this article implies that the Chargers have a good defense staffed with players who can’t wait to get their big meaty arms around a rookie QB and jam him into the ground like a tent-peg. Grab some Chargers defensive players, fill out your roster with Ravens, and go get a QB from a team that doesn’t have to play against either of those teams.
There is only one fundamental rule to Fantasy Football. However much you think it is the right decision, don’t pick Michael Vick. Especially not now, but even if he gets off.
I don’t know about that. I sure as hell wouldn’t pick him NOW, but in my league last year he was pretty solid even in his off weeks. His thing was even if he only passed for 175 yards and a TD, he still rushed for 50 and another TD so his feet usually overcame any problems he had through the air.
Pissed me off how disproportionately valuable he was. He was one of the highest scoring QBs in our league, and in reality he’s not even that good.
I think theres a problem with this idea. While there is some football interest on this, a mostly non-sports oriented message board, I think the people that do follow fantasy sports will already be joining the SDMB league. Can we generate enough new interest in order to create a league big enough with only “newbies”.
I say just head over to the thread devoted to the upcoming SDMB league (here) and chat with those fellas about maybe joining theirs.
ETA: Though good luck if you can generate the newbie league.
There will probably be three or four SDMB leagues this year, I’d suggest joining one of them. They tend to be pretty fun, and people won’t mind that you’re a newb so long as you don’t abandon your team (i.e. get bored with it and stop setting your roster each week). So long as you have some idea about which players are better than others, you can be competitive.
I originally started that thread as both a way to form a new league, and also as the SDMB general chit chit about fantasy football in general, but it only really took off in the former way. If you have any questions about it, feel free to post and there are plenty of knowledgable people to help you.
That league there probably isn’t newbie friendly (in the sense that it’ll be hardcore and tough) and is overbooked anyway, but there are usually several SDMB leagues every year. To me, being new is fine, as long as you make a legitimate effort throughout the season to do your best. You definitely want to play with people you know - either here, perhaps another web community you’re a part of, or real life friends, or something. Leagues can range from about 8 teams to 20 - I recommend 12. It’s much better to join a league with people you at least semi-know than a public league where half the people will probably stop playing in mid season.
He burned me two years in a row. The serious point for a FF newbie is to not simply depend on the published lists - you have to check your scoring system first. The league he hurt me in was heavy on passing points.
Ok, thanks y’all. - This is how dumb/nb I am: I didn’t know you had to join a league.
Alright, knock it off.
I thought you’d draft around and score your points and lingered about in place 50000 at the nfl.com. Keeping track and having geek fun in an all nerdish way.
Fantasy football dynamics isn’t global knowledge, you know.
You say join this or that league. To me, being from the land of the ice and snow, you might as well say, “Why don’t you join up with the Warriors on Planet X n00b?”
Salary cap football may work like that on some sites. In salary cap football, there’s no limited set of players of which only one per team can be drafted - players are given a salary based on their performance, and you have a limited payroll to work with. So you determine who you think will be the most value for their salary and start them. This format could easily work with 50000 players if anyone wanted to run it that way, with overall rankings, because no team actually owns any particular player. But I’ve never done it, so I’m not sure if they still split it into leagues, or what.
I’m considering running a league like that this year for SDMB players. And if you’re interested, I also run SDMB pick 'em (you pick the games, we usually have 3 leagues, straight up pick em, against the spread, and a confidence point one where you give each prediction a confidence value on which your score is based) and survival football (you pick a team that has to win every week, or you’re out. You can’t use the same team twice).
Aside from possibly salary cap football, those are all formats that allow as many people to play as want to, and doesn’t suffer from losing people from disinterest, so I’d encourage you to try whichever ones appeal to you.
