5 rules to spice up your fantasy football league
Get ready for your season with theScore's 2018 Fantasy Football Draft Kit.
Getting bored with fantasy football? Or maybe you play in several different leagues and want to differentiate one?
There's no reason you have to stick with the default rules offered by your provider. Using FAAB instead of rolling waivers, adding a superflex slot, or even eliminating kickers can all improve your league. But there's no reason you have to stop there.
Below, we outline five significant rule changes that can help reinvigorate a dying league or take a thriving one to another level.
1. Live draft with lottery and trades
The draft is everyone's favorite part of the fantasy season, but it's better when it functions more like a real-life event rather than a dozen owners staring at laptop screens and clicking on the next player on the pre-rankings list. Get everyone in the same room, maybe get some alcohol, and get ready for fireworks.
Start by holding a draft lottery. You can figure out rules that work for you, but something where the worst teams from the previous season have the highest chance of earning the No. 1 pick works best.
During the draft, allow owners to trade picks. This mimics the drama of the NFL draft, with teams negotiating to move up and down the board while targeting specific players.
If every owner can't get in the same room at the same time, hold the draft over email and input the picks to your league site when it's done. Just make sure to set a draft clock or it could take more than a week to complete.
2. Keepers with a cost
Full dynasty leagues can be enjoyable, but are too time-consuming for most fantasy owners (and, let's face it, the patience required for a multi-year tank-and-rebuild process isn't exactly everyone's idea of fun).
The best solution for most leagues is to add a few keepers. Stick to simple rules: Two or three keepers maximum, and it should cost something to keep a player.
There are a few ways to go about this. You can either force an owner to surrender next year's draft pick in the same round (or a round earlier) that the player was originally drafted in order to keep him, or make the owner pay real money (something like $10 for the first keeper and $20 for every subsequent keeper) that goes into the champion's pot.
Keepers make every waiver and trade decision that much more important. They also give owners who are out of title contention a reason to keep paying attention. At some point, it becomes a smart strategy to stash an injured player on your roster as a keeper.
3. Multiple trophies on the line
Take a page from European soccer, where a team like Liverpool competes not only to win the Premiership, but also the FA Cup and the Champions League, and create a second trophy (and/or a cash prize) that teams can chase. This shouldn't come at the expense of your league's primary fantasy title, which should remain every team's top goal, but it can give the lesser teams something to strive for.
Get creative with it. You can award a trophy to the team whose bench players scored the most points over the season, or who made the best trade according to league vote, or for whoever eliminated that one owner you all hate.
4. Steal a player
Once or twice during the season, hold a draft where the bad teams get the chance to steal a player from the good teams.
The goal here isn't to turn the league completely on its head, so every team should be allowed to protect its most important players. If your roster size is 15 players, eight to 10 players is a good number to protect. If you want, set a limit so no team can have more than two or three players stolen.
Give the last-place team the first pick in the steal-a-player draft and then watch the drama unfold.
5. Punishment for losers
There are a few ways you can go about this one, depending on how much of an appetite you have for humiliating your league's worst owners.
The standard model is to force the owner who finishes in last place to stand somewhere in public wearing something embarrassing.
Some leagues take it to another level and force the last-place team to get pelted by paintballs, retake the ACT, or even get a tattoo. That sort of risk will certainly keep every owner engaged all the way through Week 16.
If this all sounds a little too intense for you, a lighter punishment like allowing whoever has the biggest win each week to rename the loser's team works, too.
(Photos courtesy: Getty Images)