Here is a link to the Yahoo Fantasy Football Rules. This is the ruleset used last year; changes are made by majority agreement among the owners.
You, the SDMB game-player, are referred to as “owner,” and the NFL players chosen are the “players,” for ease of communication.
In a nutshell, each owner drafts a team consisting of NFL players from any NFL team. A certain number of players- QB, RBs, WRs, TE, etc…- are chosen for each week’s game, which is played against another owner. Each NFL player’s performance for that week is translated into points, which are added up to determine which owner wins that week’s game.
The players are chosen through a draft, which is held as close to the start of the regular season as possible. Each owner chooses a player in order until the team roster is filled by choosing 20 players or so, depending on the league rules.
There is a lot more, but the link should help you there.
20 teams may be crazy, but it’s fun that way! However, I would vote for cutting our starting positions down a bit (I think we could start 2 RBs, 3 WRs and a RB/WR last year, no? - that’s a lot of RBs). If there were no 20 team leagues, Taco Wallace would never have a chance to make a fantasy team (other than his own).
I played in a few leagues last year, I don’t have the slightest clue who I had in the SDMB one, what I do know is that I was on vacation during the draft. And the computer picked most of my players. And that computer was clearly a Shitco model 1320 with a Pentium none processor and 2 k of RAM.
No, I erred. Don’t know where the hell I pulled Doomtrain from, it should have been Hamlet.
I can see at least two big problems with a 20 man league. (I thought our 14 team league was pushing the envelope last season, although it worked and it was fun.)
Problemo numero uno: A 20 man live draft will be incredibly. slow. and. really. really. really. boring.
Problemo numero dos: The NFL players will be spread so thin over 20 teams that I think the league will be even more of a crapshoot than normal FF.
I say we run with two leagues, and if we want to, we could do a 20 man autodraft league just for shits’n’giggles. That might be pretty fun, given the ridiculous rosters we’d have, but I sure don’t want that to be the only league. (I could also see it blowing up in our faces.)
Or heck, y’all can sit through a 20 man live draft if you want, and I’ll take my chances with the Shitco 5000.
Steelerphan, I recall researching FF software last year a little bit and not finding anything good/free, but maybe I overlooked something, or new software has emerged in the interim. I’ve even idly contemplated writing my own FF software. (#1 feature that I would like to see: a constant rolling waiver wire with a period of say, 1 or 2 days. Every single player ‘add’ would be a waiver claim, and the 24 or 48 hour clock would start silently ticking with the first team to ‘add’ a player. During this period, other teams could also stake a claim on the player. At the end of the clock, the team with the highest waiver priority would get the player. This system would eliminate the “I’ve got to watch football right next to my computer so I can pick up Mr. Guy-I-Never-Heard-Of right now because he just caught his second touchdown” syndrome. Basically a more sophisticated version of the “roster freezing” we talked about last year, if anyone remembers.)
To other dopers not in this thread already, if you like football and want to play in an internet fantasy league with people who will spout more clever trash talk than “stfu u dumass”, speak up. No experience required. (FYI the time commitment is anywhere from 20 minutes a week to more than two hours, depending on how much of a fiend you are.)
The 20 team idea sounds like a real hoot. Imagine having a strating lineup of Tim Rattay, Emmitt Smith, and James Trash. This is what GMing is all about these days. Finding the gems hidden amongst the scrubs.
Just chiming back in to let everyone know I’m following along. I don’t dope too much these days so I have no problem letting you guys sort out the specifics.
My main opinion is that we do everything possible to make this league still be a keeper. I drafted last year with that express purpose and carried an injured Vick all season for a reason damnit.
I’m game to try the 20 team league at least as a flier, but I still think the original 10 should be maintained as its own league. A psuedo Super Bowl matchup between a second 10 team league would be cool though.
My personal forecast is that the 20 team league will suck butt. No one will have backups for most positions and you’ll be dead meat when your one decent player has his bye week. If your starting QB gets injured, you’re screwed…and think, you could be mourning the loss of freaking Drew Brees of all people. Also realize that people in the 10 team league were fielding two running backs who’d combine for 8 carries, 4 yards and a fumble. Imagine the 20 team league. Also, I predict that in the 20 team league the guy who drafts first will win, definately, unless he does something dumb like pick Eli…or LT blows out a knee. All that said it’d be fun to test out anyways.
Why not two separate leagues, with the overall winner decided by the total season scores for the winner of each individual league?
Kinda like two conference championship with no non-conference games, and a mathematical Super Bowl!
If you do want the thang to remain a keeper league, we’ll have to do two separate leagues- one old guy league and one “expansion” league- because us newbies will effectively be missing the first three rounds of the draft otherwise.
The keeper league is a stupid idea IMHO. Not in general, but in specific here, for a couple of good reasons:
Nobody has produced any rosters from last year. I was in 4 leagues, I literally have no clue what players I had in this one. None.
If we were going to do this as a keeper league, it needed to be clear from before the draft last year. Omni may have kept an injured Vick around with an eye towards a keeper league, but I sure didn’t, and I am sure a lot of others felt the same.
A keeper league is fine, but it’s got to be done from scratch
Well, we did do the draft knowing it was a keeper league - but the rules weren’t really nailed down. Some thought we’d keep three, and use those three for the first 3 rounds on the next draft, some thought we’d go by the round they were picked in.
Going with the second option is the better way to do it, but logistically impossible with a large Yahoo draft. If we do it on a private website, that can change, and greatly improve the quality of our gaming experience.
I wasn’t in the league last year, but doesn’t this solve the keeper problem? I mean, assuming A. you guys remember whether or not you made a major trade and B. nobody of keeper quality was a free agent, and if they were (Boldin maybe), whoever picked them up remembers doing so, shouldn’t you be able to pick keepers from that list?
I had a thought. I think trying to run two leagues and match up champions against each other is more trouble than it’s worth. For that same kind of interleague dynamic, though, we could do this- and tell if it’s stupid: you know how those British soccer leagues have divisions, and the best teams in the low divisions move up to replace the crappy teams in the upper division? We could have the original league be the first division or whatever, and then the second league that I’ll start can be the lower division. Then, when I win that league, me and maybe the next two or three teams could move up to the first division, and the bums from the original league will move down. It’s even more opportunity for scorn and derision, and I’ve never gone wrong with those. Of course, if you do end up resurrecting the keepers, that complicates or downright destroys the division idea.
I have no problem letting the Vick-holder keep Vick as his first round choice. If he’s lucky, Vick might start upwards of 8 games before he gets broken.
I was going off the link that **Jimmy Chitwood ** posted. We all knew full well that it was a keeper, and we also all had the rosters in that thread. The only real question mark was what the final rosters were and I am making the arguement that a) no major trades were made which would likely affect the keepers and b) that the difference in final roster versus original roster was an acceptable margin of error to preserve the original intent of the keeper league.
We’d established that we were keeping three players, the only point that wasn’t finalized was the date of the “keeper deadline”.
As for the arguement about the 2-league set up, I like the ideas and I was leaning towards Really Not That Bright’s idea regaridng how to parallel them. Its easy, allows for some smack talk and they only real consideration is making the league settings identical. That said, Jimmy Chitwood’s English Soccer style system would be kind cool too, though considering the trouble we’re having now with the year-to-year details it might be unrealistic.
If I may add my two cents? These are just suggestions; I intend to run the league by majority rule, to be fair.
Having the old rosters allows us to play the league this year as was intended last year- three keepers can be chgosen, and we can decide the order of the draft. The drawback is that new owners don’t get to pick many of the top players, and would probably get discouraged quickly.
Starting the league fresh would allow everyone an even chance, but the history is destroyed, and the owners who did well and expected to keep good players would lose out. (Not to mention those who sucked and would get good draft positions. )
A distinct possibility would be to limit the veterans to one pick from last year’s opening roster, put all the rest in the draft pool, and draft equally among all the team owners. This would be one way to compromise fairly between tradition and expansion.
If we need to split into multiple leagues, I suggest a random draw to place teams into the leagues. We could split up into leagues of 8, 10, or 12 and have the playoffs between the league winners, played out using Yahoo to calculate the score but matching up on the game’s website. Granted, trams may have the same NFL players, but I think it’s something we can live with in the playoffs. A structure like this would let us have many more players than any single league could hold.
I intend to make a prize available for the champion- maybe even a trophy, which can be awarded at a Dopefest or mailed to the winner, to be passed on to the following year’s winner. This might add more of a sense of continuity, along with the keeper players.
I like it too, however I don’t understand the thought that there’d be any new players in the draft with the old players. We have everyone from the old league, and they all have their rosters, so one of teh leagues is set, no new playes will be in that draft pool. The second league that gets set up would be the expansion league. No need to juggle the divisions IMHO. Next year we could consider it, but it wouldn’t be feasible considering the keepers. When you consider the likely odds that all 20-28 players won;t be around come next year it might be too ambitious a goal to use as an excuse to risk throwing away the past years tradition.
Haven’t been able to follow nearly enough since being home for the summer means dialup and just plain unpleasant message board surfing, wish I had gotten on this earlier… but if we do a second league or anything like that, I’m definitely in. Football is so much better than baseball as both a real and fantasy sport, too
This is what GMing is all about these days. Finding the gems hidden amongst the scrubs.
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