This points should probably be a points-only league. That would be the fairest way, the sheer number of people and matches in this league means screwy things are going to happen based on head to head. I’m sure you all remember that in year 1 I was number 1 in points but finished like 13th or something in the actual standings because everyone had their best week against me, it was ridiculous.
But head to head adds a lot of value to the fun of the weekly games. You not only have your players to root for, but you have the opponents players to root against. There’s a sense of finality - a win or loss every week. Dramatic Monday night games where your opponent needs 9 points out of his tight end. That sort of thing. So even though head to head screws with the overall fairness of the results, it brings its own value.
Divisions - I’m unconvinced they add any value. I thought they might, which is why I was willing to try them the year yahoo allowed. But meh, I don’t really feel like they do add anything. Even in the dynasty league, where the division component is way more important because we have no turnover in that league and we’ve had years to develop rivalries, I still feel like they don’t really add anything to the proceedings. Certainly not in this league where they’re arbitrary and will have to change from year to year due to turnover.
But they still create unfair results, so there’s a cost with no benefit. I asked people last year if we could stop using divisions, and there were people saying they wanted to keep divisions but not actually giving a good reason. I suspect this was just reflexive resistance to change.
While I agree divisions seem to be there mostly based in inertia, there is something to be said about using them for the following reasons:
First, the divisions should stay the same year to year (for the most part) so rivalries develop. I suppose you can split up the top 4 and bottom 4 performers each season to ensure parity, but I think they should remain as similar as possible.
They give less-than-great teams a shot at the playoffs because it allows teams to stay competitive longer. A win against your division leader counts for two games in the standings, meaning you can have a more realistic chance of being in the hunt.
In one big division, if you lose your first 3 or 4 games, your chances of making the playoffs are very, very low. May not even be worth playing. In a league with 20 people, it’s hard enough to keep people interested, but even fewer would do so if they were effectively eliminated 1/3 of the way into the season.
A pure system would just award playoff spots to the highest scoring teams over the course of the season. Head to head games are just as distortive of the “process” as divisions are.
A division, with a smart schedule, allows for a direct comparison between (at least) the teams in your division. A random schedule will almost never achieve that as almost every teams has a different schedule.
Given the paucity of trades, and the dearth of talent among the leftover free agents, a strictly “fair” system (eg. most points over a season) would basically reward people that drafted the best. While that is fine in principle, it calls into question why I would bother invested time over the course of 16 weeks in something that was basically decided on one night September. There needs to be a balance between luck and fairness that is more than just whether your guy gets injured in real life.
You can better game plan and strategize against 4 teams much easier than 19. Sometimes, it make more sense to get a backup RB (for example) for a team in your division, knowing it will be more advantageous in the event of injury.
One big division is just cold, impersonal, and boring to me. Yes, I get that they can introduce some unfair aspects, but it’s worth it in the long run.
Last year, in the playoffs, there were 3 9-4 teams, 2 8-5 teams, 3 7-6 teams. If it had been one big division, the results would’ve been the same, except “Living Through Them” would’ve beaten out “Unrelated Siblings” based on Points. And I was 2-4 halfway through the season, but I fought my way back.
You can’t know that it would have been the same. Why? Because if my team is effectively eliminated say, 7 games into the season, how hard to you think I am gonna scramble to cover my bye week guys? How much would I care about getting good trade value, or making trades? Divisions allow hope to last longer, and luck to play a slightly bigger role. I think that is good if it spurs more activity and interest in general, and I say that as a guy who missed the playoff in part based on divisions.
I tried last year to give the divisions some sort of meaning. My preferred way is to place people in divisions based on last year’s finish to make a tier/prestige system. So last year’s top 5 players would be division one, players 6-10 would be division 2, etc.
Being in, and winning, division 1 would be prestigious because you had the hardest level of competition in theory. And you’d get at least 1 playoff spot to one of the last place finishers last year for a bit of a dark horse/parity sort of thing. I’d be more comfortable with divisions if they had some sort of meaning like that.
But people objected on the basis that they felt like they were being punished for success by facing tougher competition if they were doing well, and that giving a playoff spot to bottom tier guys would be kind of unearned. Eh. I think people should want to seek out and defeat the hardest competition, so that’s a plus, not a downside.
But there were enough objections that I tried to be slightly less arbitrary. I basically ordered it by how long people were in the league. It roughly lined up as 4+ year players, 2-3 year players, and newbies this year. Still not terribly meaningful but at least it had some meaning.
Problem is, if 3 or 4 random people don’t come again this year, what do I do? Scatter the replacements randomly? Re-order the divisions based on time spent in the league, moving some people up to create a new newbie division? That would separate some people who were on the borders between divisions.
brickbacon’s reason number 4 is actually the only compelling argument I’ve heard yet. That actually in some way increases the fairness of the overall system, but not enough to offset the luck of drawing an easy or hard division in the first place.
I’m in favor of getting rid of the divisions (or, for those who really want them - what about 2 instead of 4?), but I’m not in favor of going strictly points. The weekly matchups are a highlight, and adding a little luck into it makes things interesting.
[QUOTE=SenorBeef]
I’m sure you all remember that in year 1 I was number 1 in points but finished like 13th or something
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Huh - weird. I’d think you’d have mentioned that on the boards ore or two (or a trillion…) times if that happened…
It is unfair. Just reseed people based on last years results (this time), then keep it the same. New folks replace those who drop out. The reality is that people are not always good year after year.
There is luck in everything. Anything but overall points is just introducing more luck- which is fine. Luck is not a bad thing given very little in this exercise is pure skill. It’s not like we are getting on the field or playing.
Divisions just introduce more of what you seem to like about head to head matchups.
There’s a big difference between a system with a lot of luck and one with a little luck. Hell - we could just have Yahoo autodraft for every single team, that’s a LOT of luck!
But to ignore that for a second, H2H also adds significant pieces of strategy into the system as well. Particularly when it comes down to bye weeks - do you try to diversify your bye weeks so you can roster a full team each week, or do you punt one week in favor of having your strongest team out there for 12 of your 13 regular season games? Do your waiver pickups differ based on what you feel your next week’s opponents might need? Do you risk that Monday Night defense start, or do you hope your opponent’s 2nd string TE just isn’t going to get the looks to beat your 8 point lead?
Exactly. But all that is easier to do if you are doing that in preparation for 4 teams and not 12 (or 19). With 20 teams, most of that prep has to come pre-draft as your likelihood or trading or picking up a good player are slim. You can much more easily strategize against a smaller number of teams.
But on a different not, can we make the draft a bit earlier this year given that it is Labor Day. Us east coasters are kinda tired of the post midnight conclusions.
That doesn’t make any sense - you’re still playing against 13 different teams, it’s just that everyone in your division plays against each other once. (Unless we go with 2 games against divisional teams.) And actually, I’d lobby that if we go divisions, we make the divisional games be Weeks 1, 2, 3 and 13 - weeks with no byes.
It seems the best options are either to go with Munch’s Option A:
or straight up no divisions. Anywhere in between just leads to messes. So it really comes down to whether or not someone wants to come up with the schedule.
I’d be willing to move the draft up a little bit time wise, but then you run into the west coasters running late from work. It’s better to miss the end of the draft (you can buy all the players you want and finish out early if you so choose) than the beginning, where the premium players would be gone without your bidding. I can maybe move it up another half hour, but going before 5pm on the west coast would be difficult.
I am lightly against a midweek draft since I referee local football and would rather work real games than draft, but can make any night with adequate notice.
