About Fantasy Football

Over the past few years, fantasy football has become one of America’s favourite hobbies starting a month or two before the NFL season starts all the way until the end of the regular season in January. A study made by Fantasy Football Champs in 2004 showed that 40% of the 280 subscribers that responded to their survey thought about fantasy football more than anything else during the day compared to only 30% for sex (see article). Although fantasy football is a game of strategy that can become very complicated if pushed to another level, any casual football fan can play. The following article will explain the basic rules of fantasy football as well as the types of leagues and how anyone can start playing this truly addictive game.

Basics
Fantasy football is a game of strategy where a group of people select players from different NFL teams and earn points based on their players’ statistics throughout the season. Most leagues select offensive players which include quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers, tight ends, kickers as well as team defenses. Statistics such as passing yards, rushing/receiving yards, passing touchdowns, rushing/receiving touchdowns, field goals as well as various defensive statistics will earn points for each team. Each week, every owner chooses a certain number of players at each position from his own roster (called starters) that will earn points for his team while the others will not. There are a very large amount of variables to the game which I will describe in the upcoming paragraphs.

Types of Leagues
Redraft: This is the most basic league where owners select new players every year.
Keeper: In this league, after the first year, owners are allowed to keep a certain number of players from their previous year’s team and there is then a draft that includes all players that were not kept. To keep a player from the previous year on their roster, owners often have to forfeit a draft pick in this year’s draft.
Dynasty: This type of league is one in which owners keep all the players from their previous year’s roster and each year there is a draft that only involves rookies as well as players not currently on any roster.

Draft Formats
Serpentine: This is the most common type of draft where owners select a player one after the other. The draft order is randomly determined for the first round and it is reversed in the second roundé. The owner selecting last in odd rounds will therefore select first in even rounds.
Double Serpentine: This is a brand new draft format that is starting to be used in quite a few leagues and it is very similar to the serpentine draft. However, in double serpentine, the order for the third round is the same as for the second round. The owner selecting last in the first round will therefore select first in both the second and third round as well as the remaining odd rounds. Many fantasy football players found the regular serpentine draft to be unfair because owners who selected in the first few picks had an advantage by being able to draft one of the few star players followed by two more solid players in the second and third round. The double serpentine draft although not perfect does a much better job of evening out the draft order for all owners than the regular serpentine draft does.
Auction: In this type of draft, owners are given a budget to spend on a predetermined number of players. One after the other, owners nominate players to be auctioned off and bid on them one at a time using their bidding points. This type of draft is becoming more and more popular since it is the most strategic type of draft. The advantage with an auction draft is that no owner is restricted to their draft position and no owner has an advantage over another. Anyone can have any player they want as long as they are willing to pay for him. The downside of it is that it is a little complicated to run and not many websites have this option.

Roster and League Size
There is no specific roster or league size that has to be used or that is better than another one. Everyone has their own preferences. The most common is a league with 12 owners but any even number between 8 and 16 works just as well. As far as roster size is concerned, the most common for a 12-team league is 20 players where each owner starts 1 QB, 2 RBs, 3 WRs, 1 TE, 1 K, 1 D as well as one flex player that can be a RB, WR or TE for a total of 10 players each week. Larger leagues will usually start fewer players and smaller leagues will start more. As a general rule, you should want about 120 players starting each week and 240 drafted in total but once again this is all about personal preference so there is nothing wrong with having more or less than that.