SDMB Super League fantasy football 2011

The Game Room
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3. Relegation. Should we drop 1 or 2 players at the end of the season, or should it depend on some sort of results from the season? If so, how do we determine it?

I think we should drop 1 player. There’s only 6 teams, a 33% replacement rate is too high. There’d be too little continuity, and I want there to be a playoff consolation game for all the marbles. That’d be some serious excitement. I dislike the idea of basing it solely off of win-loss or points, yes that’s less luck effected but I see no point in trying to avoid luck, we’d just be shifting luck from one place to another.

If the vote is for no playoffs (and therefore no consolation bracket) then I say we boot just one player based off of win-loss. I think win-loss is far more important than points. Sometimes I don’t start the roster that earns me the highest point total, I start the roster with the least risk if that’s what I think gives me the best chance to win a given week. If points are the end all just make the league a pure roto league. Wins and losses are the measure in the NFL and I think that should be our measure too, points make a nice tie breaker, but nothing more.

3a. Should the player chosen be dropped based on having the lowest score for the year, or based on the lowest seeding due to win/loss ratio?
I said this above, but win-loss. I prefer basing it off a consolation game, but if there’s no playoff make it win-loss.

3b. Should the player(s) invited to the league next year be based off some sort of champion-only system, an overall evaluation of performance across several SDMB leagues (exact details can be figured out later), or a list of candidates in preferred order submitted by the members of the league?
I think we should have a lottery or a poll. Take the owner who wins every SDMB league and the owner who has the highest point total for every league. That means that every league can enter 2 people into the running, which equal merits. If we go with a poll, we can each choose our own basis for voting. If SenorBeef want to value total points, he can spend his vote that way, and Jules Andre can vote for a league winner. It’s democratic.

If we go with a lottery, my ideal method, we let the fates decide. If you win 1 league you get one lottery ball. If you win 3 leagues you get 3 lottery balls. If you win 3 leagues with the highest point total in 2 of them you get 5 lottery balls. This rewards people who score points and people who win equally and it rewards people for being very active in multiple leagues. Obviously if one of the 6 of us win a league, that’s one less lottery ball in the mix.

I think this idea is fantastic. The lottery drawing could be it’s own little event. Might be a lot of excitement. Plus it removes any risk of someone getting their feelings hurt or any of us having bias in our voting based off a on-board shouting match.

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4. Should we do a standard week 15-16 playoff with our top 4 teams, or something else? Yahoo doesn’t have a lot of options, but we could manually do a custom implementation of our own system, like some sort of two week system listed above, or some other idea ourselves. I considered posting a question as to whether we should do a head to head or points league here, but I doubt anyone would support the latter. If you would, though, mention it here.
It absolutely must be head-to-head. Points leagues are for baseball and those are boring as shit.

I think a week 15-16 playoff is fine. All other options are a bit too gimmicky for my liking and don’t belong in this “elite” league. Save the wildly unconventional stuff for other leagues. If we want to change next year that’s fine, but we should test it elsewhere first.

Also, as mentioned above a Week 15 consolation game is a must. In week 14 there’d be a bunch of dramatic games, battles for playoff seeding and battles to stay out of the bottom 2. In week 15 there’s the semi finals, but more importantly there’s the make-or-break consolation game which decides who get relegated. Yeah, it might not be fair, but it also isn’t fair when your 1st and 3rd round picks go down with town ACLs. It’s exciting and climactic, that’s what’s important.

5. Scoring - should we use a default yahoo scoring system, a modifier system like the all-pro league uses, or something new we create ourselves?
Let’s use a custom setting. We need to determine rosters first, but I’m almost certain that some tweaking will be required. I vote for making the scoring a little more yardage intensive. Lets be sure to add bonuses for yardage thresholds or something or diminish the value of TDs. Yards are a bit more predictable and therefore a slightly better indication of good roster management.

5a. If you want one of those first two choices but with minor tweaking, post those tweaks here. If you want to use a radically different and new scoring system, explain it here.
See above. Boost yardage relative to TDs. Boost yardage for RBs and WRs, boost TDs for QBs. I made this case in the Yahoo message board. I really think it’s an excellent idea. A QB who throws for 350 yards and 1 TD probably didn’t win a game, a QB who throws for 220 yards and 3 TDs probably did win. Conversely a RB with a 125 yard game probably does more to win a game than a RB with 15 yards and 2 TDs. Let’s make the players who carry their teams valuable and lessen the TD vulture impact and let’s lessen the QB on a crappy team playing from behind boost.

The other scoring options, PPR, Sacks and defensive/return stats are contingent on what our rosters end up looking like.

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This wasn’t in Beefs itemized agenda, but I had a comment about Keepers. I’m strongly against them in this league. It’s less about the fairness to the incoming promoted player, and more about keeping this skill based. Keepers are a lot of fun in their own way and they add a degree of continuity that’s cool, but in a relegation system continuity is a bit of an oxymoron. Most importantly, a player hitting the lottery with a round 12 RB who turns into Chris Johnson does WAY too much to influence the outcome of the league, especially in a league this small. Each year should be a self contained battle of the fittest. You shouldn’t be rewarded for what you did in the previous year. We all start with a blank slate every year and fight it out, best man wins. Keepers undermine that.

Honestly I’d be more in favor of having a NFL style parity system in which the championship team picks last in a non-snake draft. Pick last like the Super Bowl champs and if you can go back to back then you’ve really proved something. I don’t want people benefiting in 2012 from what they did in 2011.

Though, a case could be made for combining keepers and a parity system. You get to keep players but you also must draft last in every round. That way if you win the championship on the back of a couple break out stars, kudos, but you are starting the following year at a sizable disadvantage.

Again, I dislike any of these ideas and vote against them. However, if everyone else wants keepers I really think this last idea should accompany it.

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I covered this in my responses above but I hope you’ll all give my lottery ball solution some consideration. Take the voting out of it. Let the football gods decide and you can earn as many lottery balls as you can by winning AND scoring. It gives the two opposing views equal merit. It does open up the potentiality that someone could get really lucky by winning a league as the 6th seed and getting in on the back of one lottery ball, but I’m fine with that. If this league does develop into something people aspire to like we’re hoping, then let that carrot dangle out there. I’m cool with playing against a Cinderella next year and putting them back in their place.

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**2. Rosters. The default number of players for our league would be to basically double the amount of starters from a 12 man league - this would ensure roughly the same spread and quality levels of players. Should we try to run deeper (more starters) than this, shallower, or is that about right?
**

Doubling is a good place to start but I think we should cut down from there. Balancing starters versus bench depth is key, do we want people to be forced to drop and add players during bye weeks? I think having too many starters puts us in a real risk of someone being stuck without having enough people to start in some bye weeks.

Initially my preference was to have:

QB
QB
RB
RB
RB
RB
WR
WR
WR
WR
TE
TE
RB/WR
WR/TE

This means that we could theoretically have 30 starting RBs, that’s kind of ridiculous but it’s not too different from the HHM league. I dislike the idea of having too many flex spots unless we’re very careful to balance RBs with WRs in scoring. A player starting 6 RBs could be potentially dominant and I don’t want that to happen, marginalizing TDs in my earlier proposal would help that. It’s difficult to determine a roster without first figuring out scoring.

2a. Should we add a 3rd QB slot in a QB/RB/WR/TE flex spot?
I’m very strongly against having 3 QB spots. I’m willing to discuss having QB worked into a flex spot, but that will decide how the scoring is sorted out. I’ve talked to a handful of people in 2 QB + a QB flex spot leagues and basically the couple players that manage to have 3 good starting QBs are nearly unbeatable. Granted those are typically standard scoring leagues with 10 to 12 teams making it more lopsided, but it’s a very risky proposition. If QBs regularly score 20-25 points like in most leagues I think it’s insanity to have 3 of them in a lineup.

2b. Should we lean towards lots of flex spots, few flex spots, or somewhere in the middle?
I think we should lean towards fewer, but not none. Having one is key in bye weeks, especially with this many starters. I wouldn’t do something nutty like having 2 RBs, 2 WRs and 6 flex spots though. That’s potentially 8 RBs, way too many if RBs are scored traditionally. Having lots of Flex spots could be a dealbreaker making a mockery of the league.

2c. Discard having kickers?
I’m cool with ditching kickers. I’ve always wanted a solution that merges kicking and defense into one. Make returns, defense and PAT/FGs all the same bucket. Failing that, make the return game and kicking into it’s own category. I don’t think Yahoo allows this though. Absent that, ditching kickers is probably a reasonable idea.

2d. Propose your preferred rosters.
See above, but it’s pending adjustment once we hammer out scoring. If RBs or QBs are favored by the scoring I’m going to argue to have fewer of them started.

I think we should have reasonably sparse benches. I don’t want a player to be able to corner the market on a position by stashing them on their bench. Make bench spots a valuable commodity and make smart bye week roster management important. The more flex spots the shorter the bench.

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After consideration, I agree with this. No two round playoffs. Have a 1 round playoff, 1 vs 2 for the title, 3 vs 4 for bragging rights, 5 vs 6 for the relegation spot.

I’m cool with some type of two week combined playoff system. I’m not sure how to structure it really, but it might lessen the fluke factor that could make the title and relegation too luck driven. I also think that rosters should be fixed if it’s a two week playoff, make the managers pick players who’ll score best over 2 games instead of allowing them to cherry pick across two weeks. Make it a strategic process with exemptions for injury.

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To summarize the responses on the issues. I’m not addressing scoring details yet, that can be worked out in detail later.

  1. Should we do a standard or auction draft?

SenorBeef: Standard
RNATB: Standard (first said auction, later retracted)
Jules: Auction, strong
Munch: Standard
Varlos: Standard, strong
Omni: Standard

1a. If auction, how much starting money should each team receive? If standard, do you want a normal snake or some sort of non-snaking ABCD ABCD DCBA DCBA DCBA… type draft as I proposed? Details on the latter (how many picks before it flips) can still be worked out.

SenorBeef: Non-snake reverse once
RNATB: Snake
Jules: $400
Munch: Snake
Varlos: Either
Omni: either, lottery proposal
2. Rosters. The default number of players for our league would be to basically double the amount of starters from a 12 man league - this would ensure roughly the same spread and quality levels of players. Should we try to run deeper (more starters) than this, shallower, or is that about right?

SenorBeef: Deeper, strong preference.
RNATB: Slightly shallower, no strong preference
Jules: Same or deeper
Munch: slightly deeper
Varlos: slightly deeper
Omni:
2a. Should we add a 3rd QB slot in a QB/RB/WR/TE flex spot?

SenorBeef: Yes, strong preference
RNATB: Yes, weak preference
Jules: Yes
Munch: No
Varlos: Wants 3rd QB slot, rather than than QB/WR/RB flex spot. Counting as a yes vote for 3rd qb slot.
Omni: Against 3 QBs, strong
2b. Should we lean towards lots of flex spots, few flex spots, or somewhere in the middle?

SenorBeef: No strong opinion, 1-2 flex spots
RNATB: Three flex
Jules: Only 1 flex for RB, the QB/RB/WR slot
Munch: Middle
Varlos: 2, maybe 3 slots
Omni: Fewer
2c. Discard having kickers?

SenorBeef: Yes
RNATB: No, strong
Jules: No
Munch: No
Varlos: Yes, very strong
Omni: Yes
2d. Propose your preferred rosters.

SenorBeef: QBx2, QB/RB/WR/TEx1, RBx4, WRx6, RB/WRx1, WR/TEx1, TEx2, Kx0, DEFx2, Benchx11
RNATB: agree with above
Jules: No pref
Munch: No pref
Varlos: QBx3, RBx4, WRx6, RB/WRx2, TEx2, DEFx3, Kx0, Benchx10
Omni: QBx2, RBx4, WRx4, TEx2, RB/WR, WR/TE
3. Relegation. Should we drop 1 or 2 players at the end of the season, or should it depend on some sort of results from the season? If so, how do we determine it?

SenorBeef: 1
RNATB: Drop 2 if the worst record and worst score are different teams. Drop one if the same team has the worst record and worst score. Feel strongly about this.
Jules: 1, strong
Munch: 1
Varlos: 2, weak preference
Omni: 1
3a. Should the player chosen be dropped based on having the lowest score for the year, or based on the lowest seeding due to win/loss ratio?

SenorBeef: relegation bowl between bottom two seeds, two week format
RNATB: lowest point total and lowest seed
Jules: seeding
Munch: seeding
Varlos: lowest point total and lowest seed
Omni: seeding
3b. Should the player(s) invited to the league next year be based off some sort of champion-only system, an overall evaluation of performance across several SDMB leagues (exact details can be figured out later), or a list of candidates in preferred order submitted by the members of the league?

SenorBeef: Multi-league overall performance, strong preference. Voting preference system would be ok.
RNATB: Champion only, voting
Jules: Champion only, but allow league winner to choose from preapproved list
Munch: List based off performance
Varlos: Comissioner’s discretion
Omni: Lottery or poll
4. Should we do a standard week 15-16 playoff with our top 4 teams, or something else? Yahoo doesn’t have a lot of options, but we could manually do a custom implementation of our own system, like some sort of two week system listed above, or some other idea ourselves. I considered posting a question as to whether we should do a head to head or points league here, but I doubt anyone would support the latter. If you would, though, mention it here.

SenorBeef: Two week championship (15-16) between top 2 seeds, relegation bowl between 5-6
RNATB: two week championship top 2 seeds
Jules: Two week format, 4 teams preferable
Munch: 4 week playoffs with 2 rounds of 2 weeks each
Varlos: One championship game between top 2 teams, strongly against 4 team playoffs
Omni: standard week 15-16 playoff

  1. Scoring - should we use a default yahoo scoring system, a modifier system like the all-pro league uses, or something new we create ourselves?

SenorBeef: All pro
RNATB: Standard, Half ppr
Jules: Standard scoring +PPR, +return yards, with 4pts for a passing TD so as QBs don’t go for $100 each. No benchmarks/bonuses.
Munch: PPR (at least .5/rec)
Varlos: Yardage weighted
Omni: Yardage weighted

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The most contentious issue is how to select who gets invited to the league. I think the best way to compromise here is a voting system. I’m thinking we all submit 5 names in order of preference - the top pick gets 5 points, next 4, and so on. Then we add up the point totals from everyone and that becomes the invite list. Keep in mind that there’s no guarantee that the invitees will accept - some people are already at as many leagues as they can handle, etc. Anyway, this way everyone gets an equal say and can use whatever method they want for determining who’s best to invite.

As far as deciding who to drop from the league, there was a late proposal to have a playoff between the two bottom teams and the loser gets booted. That seems like the way to go and I suspect people might change their vote now that that’s an option, so chime in if you support that.

I would say that a two week playoff (weeks 15-16) between the 1-2 seeds for the league championship, and between the 5-6 seeds with the loser getting booted would be the way to go.

Standard draft wins, with only one voting auction. Two snake preferences, one strong non-snake (reversing once), and two that can go with either.

Everyone agrees that the league should be a little deeper than just double a 12 man league. Slight differences in exact preferences.

The vote is 4 to 2 on having a third QB slot, but one of the yes votes wants it in a dedicated QB slot rather than a flex slot. I’m fine with that idea, I just thought the flex spot would be easier to swallow since if you end up with no QBs you could at least start someone there.

We’ll be dropping one player, hopefully the loser of the relegation bowl if we can all agree on that.

We can discuss the details of the scoring system now. I’m crunched for time and can’t go into it.

I’ll say more later, been crazy busy this week.

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I still prefer my lottery approach, but this would be acceptable. I think preferencing 5 players might be a little much, there’s only what, 5 or 6 leagues out there and I suspect that this group will make up more than a couple of the winners/points leaders. Submitting a top 3 would probably be sufficient.

Agreed. I like the 2 week playoff with championship/relegation bowl matchups concurrent.

Standard is good. We’ll hammer out the order/snake thing next. I think a re-randmonizing 2 round snake pattern would be best. I think the reversing once idea is very unfair.

I vote for shallower than double. I REALLY want to avoid a situation where teams can stockpile RBs and start 6 or more and run away with the league. If a deeper roster is chosen it’ll be critical to adjust scoring to not favor one position.

Remember there are 4 weeks in which there are 6 teams on bye and 2 weeks with 4 on bye. That means for almost a third of the season we’ll be potentially starting 36 RBs when only 26 teams are playing. Seems a little nuts. It’d be very possible that a player would be stuck starting inactive RBs in those RB spots during bye weeks, it could be common if benches are deep.

A dedicated 3rd QB spot is lunacy. As noted above, during those bye weeks there’s only 26 available QBs. You’re proposing a situation where 18 of them are starting, and most teams will have backups. That means Cam Newton, Alex Smith and Tarvaris Jackson will almost definitely be starting multiple times for someone. That’s not how fantasy football is supposed to work.

I vote yes on both.

Time is short but it’s a holiday weekend. I suggest we lock down the rosters before we debate scoring. One impacts the other greatly.

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Guys,

I just received a phone call from two very good friends of mine, who will be flying in this week from Alaska. I very rarely get to see them, and the only night they’re available is Wednesday, the night of the draft.

So I’m going to have to pull out of the league. I’ll certainly give it a shot on trying to earn my way in next year, as I really do want to participate - but not being able to be part of the draft, especially with just 6 teams, is entirely unfair to anyone interested in being part of this. Once you find a replacement, I’ll delete the league from my Yahoo lineup so they can join (unless the commish can do that) - I don’t want to pull out until there’s a replacement available so’s I don’t screw everyone over.

71

Yahoo opened a few more slots. I’d like to keep you in, if you’re still interested in doing the league - we can move the draft to Thursday, Friday, or Saturday… or just wait to start scoring in week 2 and draft sometime next week.

Edit: With the thursday opener, I guess anytime we draft after wednesday would mean a week 2 start. No rush then, we could draft next Tuesday or Wednesday if people can do that.

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The lottery idea is interesting, but I’m not sure how many people who aren’t already in the league are going to earn tickets. My concern is that we’ll end up having like 8 people with 1 ticket each, in which case it ends up being just random. I’d rather do a vote with everyone submitting their own criteria.

Top 3 could work, but top 5 gives us a bigger list to draw from. I’m not sure how many people would turn us down if we invited them based on not wanting to take on more leagues and such.

Unfair why? I mean, if we run the numbers through a fantasy calculator and come up with the exact point to swap where everything evens out, it seems like the most fair approach to me. Snake is unfair IMO because the first pick gets a significant advantage over the last pick even accounting for snaking. We discussed this in detail in a thread last year - not sure which one.

Well that’s an RB issue rather than a general roster issue I think. Your roster proposal says you want 4 RB slots, 4 WR slots, RB/WR and WR/TE slot. Effectively that will usually end up adding up to 5 RBs and 5 WRs, which is an odd proposal for someone concerned about starting too many RBs. I think we’d be ok if we had fewer RBs and more WRs.

“How fantasy football is supposed to work” is arbitrary. The big league ends up starting second string tight ends in their flex spot, which is certainly not how fantasy football is supposed to work by conventional wisdom, but it works, since that’s the design of the league, and it makes it interesting and different. Same thing here - adjusting your strategy to have a lot of QBs will make it a different challenge.

18 isn’t that bad anyway, I don’t think - some 12 man leagues draft 2, which is 24. Making it a flex slot makes it even less severe a change - you can always start another WR or RB over Cam Newton if you don’t have much QB depth.

Fair enough, let’s get that resolved in the next 12-16 hours or so.

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I’ll leave that up to the rest of the league. I don’t think I’m in a position to hold the rest of the league hostage for a week.

74

I can’t draft any other day than Wednesday. It was a stroke of luck it happened to land on that day anyway. I won’t have another shot to draft until the next Wednesday.

75

I’m fine with moving it up to next wednesday. That gives us longer to iron out any settings issue anyway. Can anyone not do next wednesday at the normal time? It’ll be a little weird drafting after week 1, but add that to the unique features of the league.

76

I can do that. I would rather we had kept it where it is, though. :frowning:

77

I’m not sure if I can round up a replacement by Wednesday. It might be interesting to draft after week 1 too, when you see some actual performance out of players. Could the rest of the league chime in (soon) about whether you’d like to put the draft off until next wednesday, or try to get a replacement for Munch and continue it for this Wednesday?

78

Drafting after week one takes a whole lot of the fun out of it for me. It’s like opening a pack of cards and knowing what’s in the pack beforehand.

79

That. Plus we lose a game.

80

Might I suggest a quick vote? We should:

a. Find a replacement.
b. Wait a week.
c. Have Munch autodraft.

Again, I have no preference. Options B & C keep me in the league, but at a cost to 5 other managers, so I’m voting A. Beyond that is entirely up to you. Again, I’m sorry this happened, as I don’t want to put anyone in a bind. Please feel free to vote me out - absolutely no hard feelings.