Once two teams come to an agreement on a trade, the commissioner notifies all the other owners, who will then have a 24-hour window to try to beat the offers. Whether you use Star Wars, Game of Thrones, The Simpsons or a dozen other solid options, your fellow leaguemates will have a lot of fun coming up with creative Fantasy Football team names related to that theme. Now, that second tier of tight ends really mean something, and sleeper tight ends can start being drafted. Rather than allow teams to make free-agent pickups in the first two weeks of the season, hold a special Week 3 Free-Agent Draft, with the worst team getting the first pick in each round. Fantasy owners can still start three running backs if they wish. The majority of FBS teams are playing against their most bitter rivals, with stakes ranging from . Whats a Devy League, you ask? Maybe theyre your boss and this is your one way of sticking it to the man. (Make sure you can trade draft picks in your league settings.). Im in a handful of leagues that always draft live. Have them face off in Rivalry Week, where the winner gets to change the losers team name and logo for the entire week after their game. [Yahoo Fantasy Football leagues are open: Sign up now for free]. Injuries in Fantasy Football happen just like they happen in the NFL, but NFL teams deal with it in a much different way. Rather than having a tight end mix into your flex position (what a waste! David is a WAAAAAY Better Fantasy Player Than Me! So why cant you? When people are considering new Fantasy Football league ideas, new scoring rules ranks among the most popular changes theyre willing to make. Rather than make a huge change in the scheduling with some of the aforementioned new Fantasy Football league ideas, maybe tweak the schedule just a little by adding a couple double-headers. The top six scoring teams each week receive a win and the bottom six each receive a loss. Rookie tight ends can finally see a starting Fantasy lineup! Fantasy sports player since 2003. By awarding half-points for every point a Fantasy backup quarterback scores, you make the position more important, and you keep from having to go to a full Two-QB league, which changes everything. On the chart of difficulty to implement and impact on the league, the Rivalry Week Rule is one of the shining stars. In 12-team leagues, leagues have had to tackle what to do with those extra two weeks in a standard 13-week regular season. I began my fantasy sports career way back in 2003. Rivalry Weeks The Giants are the luckiest team in NFL history. Have teams pay an extra 25-percent of the league fees every season, while keeping the payouts at the same amount. This is great for Draft Day bragging rights! Start a second league for the waiting list guys, and have the top two teams in that six- or eight-team league (the league champ and the leagues scoring champ) join the big league the next season. How about having four wide receivers and no flex, then you can add a third running back slot, too. Advertisers Disclosure: MyCommishRules and affiliates may be compensated when you click on and/or interact with ads. WRONG! You dont get any spicier than this addition its the cayenne pepper of all rule changes! For those of you who have endured the season where you feel like you run into a buzzsaw every week, this would alleviate at least half of your pain. The logistics of implementing this on the primary fantasy host sites may be difficult, but first, decide if you like the idea. This is called, Relegation, and it happens in European soccer leagues all the time. Once lost a fantasy semi-final on a Ryan Longwell shanked extra point. Adding it to your fantasy football league would no doubt make things more interesting. Here are a couple things that you can do to keep interest high throughout the season for all owners and maybe make things a little more interesting for you as well. Until youve played in a league that has already eliminated the kicker position from lineups, youll never realize how nice it is to not have to deal with a kicker on a bye week when six NFL teams are on byes. Take a step back and enjoy it! What if you set up your 12-team league so that every single week, each team plays against each of the 11 other teams. Pretty much every NFL position can score you points in Fantasy Football, outside of offensive lines and punters. Some people love the deep research that goes into dynasty leagues, but not everyone in the league wants to go that deep. Use this rule instead of points per reception or else youll over-reward WRs again. Thats mostly been for my own sanity and keeping with the times. All owners should choose their preferred rival leaguemate. Were always looking for ways to make our award-winning experience even better and in this case were getting help from one of you, our amazing legion of fantasy players, to make leagues even better. Previous Changes They can also start just one and roll with five wide receivers. But then, as you play, and you realize just how nice it is not to have to maneuver your lineup around to accommodate kickers on byes or kickers coming off byes or an injured kicker, etc., the idea sounds pretty awesome. The matchups that you circle on your calendar are the ones that make it all worth it. ): In many of these cases, the commish should go back and list off some nominations for each of the awards, so people dont have to do a ton of research. If your league does not do any of the following, you should absolutely leave that league. Rivalry Week has been a hit in the OIL, and its easy to implement. The constant sniping and trash talk carried over to the OIL, and Dead Again always seemed to upset the higher-ranked Lucky Enuf team. The NFFC figured out that those lucky owners with the first few picks of the drafts were finishing much higher than those with later first-round picks. Creating a rivalry week and looking for suggestions. However, if youre part of a league with people you dont know very well, you could use the previous season as a guiding light. ! (I honestly dont know what goes on in those boiler rooms, but I like to think there are a lot of sandwiches being pilfered out of the breakroom fridge.). You could also decide to do a lower sandwich pick, depending on the injury bust. When I say universal, I mean it literally. This reminds me of a boiler room at some finance firm on Wall Street with people yelling Buy! Fantasy guru who has mastered the art of the picking from the 11 slot. So one way you can fix that is by making more regular season games! Just like the NBA Draft, award the worst teams from the previous season with extra names in the hat during the draft lottery, improving their chances for landing a top-three pick. But in Fantasy Football, quarterbacks have been neutralized because you only start one, and the top 12 are generally all very good, with little separation. One of the most annoying things that happens with Fantasy Football trades is that people always say, What a horrible trade I wouldve given you a much better deal for that player! Make teams draft two quarterbacks, with the second quarterback being their emergency quarterback. Have a Super Draft Day, with both leagues doing their drafts at the same time but force the minor-leaguers to draft at the kiddie table! Let those players build up for a couple weeks and have a Week 3 Supplemental Draft! Manually set schedules to pair rival owners for matchups during the chosen Rivalry Week. There is certainly a point where too many starting roster spots drastically increases the luck factor. When a player gets hurt early in a game, it can cost you a matchup. It doesn't mean they are bad owners. I never understood why more leagues dont award three-to-six points for home-field advantage to the higher seeds in the Fantasy Football playoffs. You could also make a rule that you cant name a player as captain more than twice in a season, making it more strategical. Its bad enough when your player gets hurt because you no longer have him. Here are five rule changes your league should consider implementing in the upcoming season. Buy a customized Fantasy Football Draft Board with your leagues name on it, with team name stickers and everything! 4for4 Fantasy Football. The Fantasy Football league ideas were few and far between back then!With a 13-week regular season for most Fantasy Football leagues, its really tough to gauge who the six best teams are, especially when you consider how many times a good team loses to a bad team, just because they had stars on byes that week. Set up some competitions, like miniature golf or skee ball. The NFL was much different back then. All rights reserved. This is all predetermined before the start of the season. Thanksgiving weekend is perhaps the best weekend in college football. This one harkens back to my introduction about how different the NFL was 15 years ago. If not, you and your leaguemates are definitely missing out. Dont let fantasy football inexperience deter you from bringing those kinds of owners into your league. Think about how the NFL has shifted to division foes playing one another in Week 17, increasing the chance that the slate will impact the playoff field. Give your league a theme. If there are owners who do not have rivals, create rivalries! Give it a try! In college football, rivalry week is always a fan favorite, unless of course your team never wins. Dynasty leagues keep the football talk going just about all season. Adobe Express inspires you to think outside the box. A friend of mine recently quit his fantasy football league for this very reason, and while it may not seem like a big deal, it was a league thats had the same group of close friends for decades, and his leaving upset some longtime friends. Buy! and Sell! Good times! Additionally, this Rule is literally made to pair with other. This could be just enough change to keep people interested in your league. NASCAR: Do a drawing with the different drivers names, and the person who drew the highest finishing driver picks first! Don't be "just another fantasy league." Stand out from all the others by assigning a theme to it, like Seinfeld, Mafia movies or Saturday Night Live. Under the two-win system, a perfect season would be 26-0 as opposed to 13-0. For example, the highest QB score in a given week might win $5-10. Schedule two weeks of double-headers (the week before bye weeks and the week after so everyone has full rosters), preferably against division rivals. Consider giving fantasy owners more flexibility. Buy it here! Here's what I do: Go to the Football Guys schedule maker and run a schedule for your league size (without changing any team names). The games haven't even started yet. Everyone hates when an owner does not set their roster and there are 3 injured players set to start against the best team in the league, setting them up for an easy victory. Members are one-upping each other, flinging deeply personal insults, and sending audio and video files expressing their deep-rooted hatred for their rivals. These prizes can range from anything such as a trophy or achievement on the fantasy football website, to part of the prize pool. The opposition was overwhelming, and rightfully so. OK, well, sometimes I lie. No matter the number of teams in your league, you should take the schedule seriously. This is all predetermined before the start of the season. I would highly recommend implementing this in all of your FF leagues. Some owners feel they have to go years rebuilding and not being in the money while still paying league fees. Deciding the fantasy draft order might be the most important event outside of the actual fantasy draft, so why not make it a bigger deal than just pulling numbers out of a hat? Fantasy owners should be afforded the same options. 12:30 p.m. Some league services, like CBSSports.com, has league histories, which includes stuff like the standings every year, the draft results, the owner records versus other owners, and assorted other records, like highest points scored in a season, etc. a combined Week 17 and 18 final). And awesome, all at once! Scott Pagel is Sports Editor for the Bethlehem Press and has covered Philadelphia Eagles training camp since 1997. That will truly determine the six best teams that should be in the playoffs which are then just Head-to-Head contests. In Week 14, before the fantasy playoffs begin, have all your owners vote for a handful of awards each season, including Fantasy MVP, Rookie of the Year, Sleeper Pick of the Year, Free-Agent Pickup of the Year, Fantasy Bust, Worst Move of the Year, and most important, Fantasy Owner of the Year. In the other league I run, for what is just in its second season, I do things a totally different way. For example, whoever took Keenan Allen in 2016, the biggest injury bust of the year, would get a sandwich pick between the second round and third round. For example, I have a father-son connection and a brother connection and I like to keep them in the same division. Listed on Jan 29, 2023 Run faster, drive faster, work faster! Its a fine line, so you need owners who understand the process. Hes fun dad! BetMGM + 4for4 Promo (Free Betting Subscription), 18 Impact Rookies Drafted Outside the First Round of the 2023 NFL Draft, The Fantasy Football Impact of Jaxon Smith-Njigba to the Seattle Seahawks, 14 Winners and Losers from Days 2 & 3 of the 2023 NFL Draft, The Fantasy Football Impact of Zay Flowers to the Baltimore Ravens, Fantasy Football: Final Thoughts for the Last Draft Weekend, Daigle's Targets: 21 Players I Want in Every Fantasy Football Draft, 3 Fantasy Football D/ST SOS Pairings & Other Late-Round Options, Daigle's Top 30 Fades in Fantasy Football Drafts. In 2004, nine running backs carried the ball over 300 times. YAY!!! And some great busts would have been Justin Blackmon, Trent Richardson and Montee Ball. Whoever becomes Toilet Bowl Chump has to buy shots at the bar during next years draft, or they have to bring the beer if the draft is at someones house. That tends to make owners think twice about returning the next season, which is a pain for the commissioner. One way to keep people interested all 18 weeks is to just set some money aside from league fees and offer money to the highest point-getter in Week 18. Some of my favorite leagues are leagues that have a different flavor and arent just the typical leagues that havent changed since 1995. Use the same site (football guys) and the setup where Week 9 was the rivalry week. Dont be just another fantasy league. Stand out from all the others by assigning a theme to it, like Seinfeld, Mafia movies or Saturday Night Live. Once rivals are paired, you can go in to the league site and manually adjust schedules accordingly. That would definitely make Sunday dinner at the in-laws (more) stressful! Choose a week during the middle of the season and deem it Rivalry Week. Sign up with your email address below to be added to our list. In the past 20 years, players like Kurt Warner (1999), Alfred Morris (2012), Justin Forsett (2014) and Dak Prescott (2016) all ended up being great waiver-wire pickups at the beginning of their seasons. In week two, a prize can be given to the owner who has the highest scoring quarterback. Still think kickers and defenses shouldn't be in fantasy leagues. If its a keeper league, make them lose one of their keeper slots! But I played in the FLEX Leagues, run by Jake Ciely, and he has eliminated the kicker position from those leagues. When they make a shot, remove that cup, and they announce which pick they have! $150 league fee. But when January rolls around, get the league involved again by asking everyone to vote on some Fantasy league awards (theyre not allowed to vote for their own teams! . The worry is not having keepers up to par with the rest of the league sets them back from the start. Keeping one or two players in a 10-team league should allow owners to come up with a similar set of keepers, talent-wise. Scott Engel loves to poke fun at me for this one. Thats like penalizing the guys wife and kids. Running back by committee has become the norm with some teams employing as many as three backs in a rotation. Bring one of our customized Fantasy Football draft boards with you to put in the stickers across the top! If a starter gets hurt in the first half and does not return to the game at any point, the replacement automatically takes his spot (it has to be automatic, otherwise fantasy owners could exploit this if the injured player happened to have a monster first half). Ships from United States. Cowboys fan. Media: This guy is the one that sends out the fun emails to the league to get them pumped about the draft, and maybe he announces the Fantasy MVP each week, etc. Its like when your tax refund comes in the day your car engine blows. The NFL is transitioning to become much more pass heavy. 4. With so few NFL teams employing a workhorse running back, requiring fantasy owners to start two is a bit outdated. I am only in favor of this if there are five or more keepers, which makes it closer to a dynasty league than a keeper league. 1 Overall Draft Picks in Fantasy Football (Back to 1971). Before we get into the new changes, I would be remiss to ignore aspects of fantasy leagues that should be universal. To me, the flex is a copout, and this forces owners to make decisions. For those unfamiliar with the term, a position week is where matchups are determined based on the standings. Hey, Im an old school Fantasy player, so kickers hold a special place in my old decrepit heart (I once drafted Donald Igwebuike, for goodness sake!). From 12-18 weeks, you are covered. Once again, in an effort to remove the good luck from bad teams and the bad luck from good teams, scheduling double-headers every single week will make the cream rise to the top. Think of how much fuel you could add to the rivalry-fire if owners played for Player Pink Slips that week! You should still reward the winner of the playoffs with the biggest payout, but dont forget to reward the team with the most Fantasy points (not the best record!) Draft day is one of my favorite days of the year. Sure, there are always those who want the draft to be over a few minutes after it starts, and will complain its taking too long. Here are some ideas on how to make the Fantasy postseason even better. If youve never done a fantasy auction, youre missing out. Now, those backups that are seeing more snaps become cheap superstars! As I am sure many of you have noticed, there are owners at the end of the season who tank because, well, they just do not care anymore. And my Fantasy league was Basic TD-only scoring. Whether you want to go for the scheduling nirvana of a 14-team league or a 12-team league with multiple divisions, their schedule maker will give you a painless way to create your perfect schedule. For example, if Odell Beckham Jr. is your team captain, and he scores 32 points against the Eagles this week, youll get an additional 16 points added to your final Fantasy score! A change to a dynasty league could even be a tougher call vs. a keeper league. I remember when the idea of a flex position was first introduced. Let owners draft Team Offensive Lines, sort of like how people draft Team Defenses. Then award five Fantasy points if that offensive lines NFL team rushes for over 150 yards, passes for over 300 yards or doesnt allow any sacks! Make Offensive Lines a Fantasy Position In Your League. Helpful hint: Managers wanted custom playoff features and Yahoo Fantasy made it happen. Rivalries are one of the major reasons why we love sports. You might be quite surprised at how differently things would have turned out. Or maybe you add it as a secondary league. I want to start that this season in the league I run and I'm looking for suggestions for consequences for the losers. The 5-8 team with 200 more points deserves it more. Whats really fun about it is people cant change their pick, so they have to a) guess about their draft value, and b) hope their players end up with good opportunities on NFL teams. Mock draft in minutes with our free fantasy football Draft Simulator. If you award a second win to the teams that score in the top half of the league that week, then the best teams get two wins, the worst teams get two losses, and the unlucky teams split the difference with a win and a loss that week. Help your league stand out from the others! Another option, if you dont want to have to draft two quarterbacks, is to just have the points scored by the NFL backup to an injured quarterback count for your team. So one way you can help those teams that have had some bad keeper luck is to give them the higher draft picks, and stop the serpentine drafting. Battle Royale Week One of my leagues experimented with this for the first time in 2018 and it was a huge success. Weve implemented rules adjustments and such yearly, such as mini competitions wherein the members can win prizes outside of just their record. For instance, Im in a Seinfeld league, where all the divisions, teams and even the championship game (The Festivus Bowl!) Award Final Playoff Spot To Highest Scoring Non-Playoff Team Have each team face off against the other 11 teams in the league every week! The name is short for a Developmental dynasty league. Ideally, youd have both of these Fantasy drafts happen at the same time, with all of the owners together at the same location. There's always a reason to talk about your league and discuss trades, or rookies or draft order. The only caveat is it may require some ex post facto schedule manipulation by your commissioner. In the two leagues I run, I like to group the standings with owners who may be closer to one another, maybe went to school together or are related. The NFL is smart like that! The end of the Fantasy Football season is usually sluggish and slow, as most of the league is already eliminated and everyones dealing with the holidays and visiting family, while getting ready for the new year ahead. Nothing is more frustrating in fantasy football than having a great team and watching your opponents just tee off on you every week. My leagues have experimented with two rivalry week ideas. Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience. It is the first week of the playoffs. From the Egg Bowl to The Game and everything in between, let's enjoy the strange, petty, delightful world of the season's best rivalries. In the early-to-mid 2000s, the idea that a team could roster three stud running backs would break the league. Guys like Randy Moss, Eddie George, Ricky Williams, Peyton Manning and Tiki Barber were all college player keepers back then. In the end though, I would much rather do it live versus an online, timed draft that only allows you a few minutes to make a selection and is over in an hour and a half. The month of November is college football's fireworks show, and Rivalry Week is its grand finale. Jul 14, 2021 - This Craft Supplies & Tools item by someka has 5 favorites from Etsy shoppers. Of course, a lottery has to be done for the order in which the teams would pick their picks! Rivalry Week; the best thing thats ever happened to our Fantasy Football league. For scheduling purposes, 14-team leagues are the best because every team plays every other team once and then it is playoffs time. That could mean the sixth place team by record gets the boot. Go back and re-run the schedule maker with those names in place of Team 1; Team 2; etc. Free league schedules for leagues with 8 teams, 10 Teams, 12 Teams, and 14 Teams -- both with divisions and without. Its nice to get everyone involved again, and reward some Fantasy owners that didnt make the playoffs. Dez caught it. Starting five wide receivers may seem like a lot, but adding that extra starting roster spot rewards teams for finding those gem players later in drafts or on the waiver wire. In one league Ive run for over 20 years with friends, its pretty obvious they dont really care about rules. UGH! Having a draft is spring is a great jump start to the season as by the time your rookie prep and draft are over, it's just about time for camps to get started. Commissioners Corner is a multi-part series meant to provide tips to keep your league engaged all season long and tap even more into the fun that comes with playing fantasy. There are multiple options for the length of your regular season. My team used to be Scandals and Animals, named after my favorite episode with The Merv Griffin Show set, but Ive recently changed my team name to These Pretzels are Making Me Thirsty! Its dumb. Also, keep owner records, year after year, including the award winners and career win/loss records (overall and against specific owners). Another fun Fantasy Football league idea is to have your waivers play out on Twitter! At the end of the season, each would get their deposit back except for the sum that was taken away due to fines. I like the Toilet Bowl setup, personally, pitting the two worst teams of the regular season against each other, with the loser of that game being the Toilet Bowl Chump. Gonos is senior editor for FNTSY.com and founder of SoCalledFantasyExperts.com. That would make it a race for owners to pay you! Did you know their Fantasy drafts go in counter-clockwise order, and the 12th pick selects first and the first pick drafts last? For quarterbacks, the solution is easy if your starting QB goes down, you continue to accumulate points scored by his backup. As the NFL changes, our fantasy leagues must change alongside it. While the basic ideas behind fantasy women's hoops have some commonalities with the men's game, the reality is that the leagues are also very different. Michigan-Ohio State. In Year 4, your . You should be in several different leagues every year, including one dynasty league, one keeper league and one IDP league! Back in my day, we had to wait until Saturday to watch cartoons. We also have 4 divisions of 3 teams and we play division twice and everyone else once and I usually use the footballguys generator as well. Fines can be levied for things such as not setting one's roster or even for things such not voting in league polls. More tips for improving your fantasy league: Starting with the basics Why bylaws matter Building franchises Recognizing the champ, In Part 6 of the series, well dive into d, Yahoo Fantasy Football leagues are open: Sign up now for free, FootballGuys.com has a free custom schedule maker, Commissioners now have the ability to edit seeds. Try what I like to call a limited keeper league, which means its a keeper league, but the only players that are keeper eligible are the ones drafted beyond a certain point of the draft, like after Round 9. You can add devy players to your regular rookie draft, or set it up so they can be added throughout waivers in-season. For instance, some great college keepers in recent years would have been Amari Cooper, Todd Gurley and Ezekiel Elliott. Have a hybrid auction/draft, where you auction off 50 players, then teams can fill their rosters with a regular draft. So lets make it a week where every owner picks a team on FanDuel or Draft Kings and they all play against each other in a DFS Pro Bowl! That is why we switched to a 14-team league with a 13-week schedule. I learned a lot of lessons last year during the inaugural ESPN fantasy women's basketball campaign. Create rematches of last years playoff bracket or in final standings order. The first one to pick up a player gets him and whomever he drops is instantly available to other owners. Get the league to vote on the biggest injury bust at the end of each regular season. Back then, with all the bell-cow backs that existed, the best strategy was to begin your draft with as many running backs as you were allowed to start. Things dont always turn out the way I want them, but honestly, just because I run the league doesnt necessarily mean its my league. Wouldnt the NFL be better if every team played every other team at least once? I run a league website for us and have a page dedicated to rivalry week matchups with overall points differential, game highlights, and a record of funny bets that resulted. Change the division names accordingly, along with the name of the leagues trophy and championship game, while also asking each owner to change his team name and logo to something theme-related. Once again, were trying to eliminate luck from the hobby, so a team that has a horrible Fantasy schedule (with the most points against) and the second-most points in the league, to go with a 6-7 record, gets rewarded with a playoffs spot. Anyway, the point is that owners get to pick where they want to pick in the first round. Its like were introducing 21 new flavors to your fantasy football craving! Maybe you have some lingering need to get back at them for stealing your seat at lunch way back in 4th grade.