5 ways to jazz up your season-long fantasy football league

Doing the same thing over and over just because "that's the way things have always been done" can get old. The standard NFL fantasy league is no exception. Every year ends up being familiar, and familiarity breeds contempt.

Fantasy commissioners need to find ways to generate a spark of interest, to make every week matter. This isn't as simple as switching from standard scoring to PPR or finally committing to a keeper league. We're going to look at five ways to make your hum-drum league something special.

Separate tiers and relegation

This will require commitment, but it will be worth it. It will also require two different leagues at once to be active. Feel free to use two commissioners, though one could oversee all of it.

One of the biggest problems in fantasy is that one or two teams inevitably get out of the running by mid-season, causing those owners to lose interest and the league to wind up with absentee GMs. This is true in all forms of fantasy. Check your current baseball league. How many managers haven't so much as looked at their team since early July? Are you one of them?

Punishment should befall these lowly bottom-feeders, but there should also be incentives to continue through a losing season. While the top prizes may be out of reach, leagues need to spice up the way the bottom of the league shakes out. This can be done in a couple ways.

By employing a relegation clause, the bottom two teams in the standings at season's end would fall to the second league in the following season, while the top two of the second league would be promoted to the presumably more competitive league.

There should still be secondary prizes for the second league, but they should be smaller to ensure the separation makes sense - and to create an urgency for managers to escape its confines. Sure, that doesn't solve the problem of absenteeism in the second league, but it theoretically solves these problems in the primary league.

Of course, the other option is to forget the second league altogether and just boot out the bottom two teams the following year while finding more committed replacements. Less effort, similar results, but also a little less fun.

Give kickers (and maybe team defenses) the boot

Caring about kicker statistics is the worst. No one takes a kicker before the later rounds, unless something goes incredibly wrong with auto-draft or team bias. No one would be surprised if the entire final round of a draft was committed to kickers. Not a single kicker, not even the New England Patriots' Stephen Gostkowski, is undroppable on a bye week.

Kickers are integral to the real-life game, but they're so often streamed in fantasy and most results are interchangeable. There's hardly any edge, and if there is, it's negligible. Imagine that moment of realization that you just spent five hours scouring kicker stats. Madness.

Of course, no one does this because the position does not belong in fantasy. Either replace kickers with a second QB position or a new FLEX spot or just use one fewer roster spot on the season. This will streamline leagues or at least require more careful planning when drafting.

Maybe we're a year away, but team defense plus special teams is almost as volatile, though there are predictive measures. Similarly, though, these spots are left to the end. Keep it simple. Keep the fantasy positions on the offensive.

Performance bonuses galore

As long as this is communicated to league members with an appropriate amount of notice, this is one change that could significantly alter average draft position, though the cream of the crop still rises.

It's a very simple addition. Any time a quarterback passes for 300 yards in a game or any time a running back or wide receiver records 100 yards in a game, there is an added bonus. The amount is up to you.

It might be the best way to justify using kickers if you absolutely feel compelled. Any 50-yard field goal gets a bonus. This would, at the very least, provide a little more concrete value for kickers who are consistently attempting long field goals.

One bonus bound to infuriate, but also reward players for having steady hands, is a year-end bonus for league leaders. New Orleans Saints QB Drew Brees led the NFL with 4,870 passing yards in 2015. Why not give the fantasy team with him on it an end-of-season reward? This will not work in head-to-head leagues, but points-based ones would do fine with this kind of addition.

Limited Bench Spots

You have customization at your fingertips, so why not use it? A tricky wrinkle would be to further limit how many bench spots are available at the start of the season. Normally, leagues employ four to six bench spots, allowing speculative backups or bye week replacements to be stashed.

For the most part, kickers and defenses are the most likely to be streamed through bye weeks instead of rostering backups. Instead, leagues should shorten the bench to create some genuinely difficult week-to-week decisions, especially in those weeks heavy with byes.

Limit it to one or two bench spots. This would work especially well in a system with a free agent acquisition budget (FAAB). Some elite players will wind up on the waiver wire, so forcing owners to bid on them will make further FAAB decisions even trickier. It could help facilitate late-season comebacks, and the more people in the hunt, the better the league.

15 seconds per draft pick

Ever feel like your fantasy drafts just plod on forever? A new draft is always exciting ... until it isn't. It can go south in the later rounds, so why would anyone willingly select the maximum number of roster spots?

Instead, let's plunge the whole thing into panic mode and give drafts a real sense of urgency. Everyone better have a queue ready and replacement selections a click away, otherwise there are going to be some disappointments. This will make everything faster and ensure maximum excitement to kick off the season.

Bonus: Make Your Own Trophy

Fantasy is more fun when there are stakes, and it's even better when it's with people you know. Trash talk and banter make it feel more alive. Considering how long 'The League' was on the air, this kind of thing has its appeal.

So, put your tactile skills - or lack thereof - to good use and make a monstrosity to call your own. Even better, make two! Give the good one to the winner and the one that looks like a mutated cactus to the last place manager.