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Feature
14 Golden Fantasy Rules
by Keith Bowden
7/10/2007
Letting the wife join your fantasy league is a good thing, till she beats you.
This is one of the many things I have learnt in fourteen years as the commissioner of a fantasy league – the LAFFL.
We started as an eight team league – in the days before the internet, so we had to wait till Thursday, when First Down came out, to pick up the stats. We became sixteen at one point, but realised that was too big, and have currently settled at fourteen. Some twenty five different head coaches have been through the ranks, many leaving for pastures new (or veteran leagues) and nearly all of their own accord (we did push one).
My spare time now is shared between running the magazine and still running the LAFFL – so I thought I would share with you some of the lessons I have learnt. They will not be helpful in your own team play or (if you are as important as me) commissioning, but I feel I need to share. Many of these you will have read someone before – but not here(!)
A commissioner must be devious
You need to get into the mind of the competitors to ensure that the rules of your league cannot be bent easily. I therefore suggest, when selecting or employing a commish, he should be the one most likely to know how to bend the rules. The two of us who set up the league were the ones who knew how to twist things in our favour. The other, a Mr Mark Lewis, was great at playing the game to his advantage, and although he has left the league – new rules are referred to as “Lewis rules”, when introduced to stop shady practice.
For example we realised early on that as a keeper league, you needed a way of keeping injured stars for the following season. Our scoring system came from a book someone found (pretty traditional I later discovered), but we were in the dark and freewheeled it on many others. So in order not to lose a crocked Steve Young (for he was my franchise QB) we introduced an inactive list – on which you could put up to five players (injured, inactive, on a bye – you get the idea). The first thing Lewis does is sign up five potential players, who appear as slightly injured somewhere, and stick them straight on his inactive list – thus stockpiling players. The introduction of a “Lewis rule” soon followed – you must keep them active for at least one week – and that slowed him down until his next sneaky move.
If poss, do the stats yourself
The proliferation of internet sites that will run your league is amazing and brilliant. But if you have the time, inputting the stats yourself is so much more rewarding. I spend my Sunday nights watching the games, while translating the NFL Game Books into our league’s excel spreadsheets. It gives the league a more personal touch, and you know what is going on.
That probably says more about me than you need to know – but when it comes to compiling a yearbook after the season, I am sure I have a better feel for the stats than if I was an internet commish. Can you name the number of NFL players in your league who share their first names with actors who have played Doctor Who (this number went up significantly with the addition of a David)? Or how many kickers have each team got who have a first name that begins with J (there are loads of J PKs – Hanson, Elam, Kasay, Carney, Feely and so on). Sorry I think I am revealing too much about my mind here as well.
This also means quirks can be added. For years we had home field advantage. We included NFL Head Coaches as assistant coaches, and if you started them they scored a point for every three points their team won by. This was then doubled if you were at home (or a negative was halved). During the regular season it kind of evened out, but come the seeded playoffs it did decide in the home team advantage a couple of times.
Week 17 is for Pro Bowls only
We worked this out early on, and I have since read it in many books. But then, due to a realignment, we put our final in week 17 last year. We knew it was a bad idea, but thought it could not be that bad. Oh, how we were wrong – as the favourite (and one of the guys who thought this would be okay) suffered an embarrassing loss – to a girl – the first time one of the fairer sex took our title. Needless to say he pushed for further realignment so that the Imlach Bowl is back in week 16, although we are still messing with the Plate final (the Cadle Bowl) and leaving that in week 17, along with the reinstated Pro Bowl. Of course, players on the Cadle Bowl squad cannot be selected in the Pro Bowl starting line-ups – they cannot be in two places at once, now can they.
Schedule-man, Schedule-man, does whatever a schedule can (?)
Many people search for their super power – mine was thrust upon me. I am a schedule god. I discovered that whatever the combination of teams, divisions or conferences people threw at me, I could make a fair and even schedule. It was not a power I knew I had, but as I realised my gift, I knew I should use responsibly (with great power comes great responsibility, as I believe someone Uncle once said).
I have even now incorporated the Pete Rozelle ideal of having poor teams play each other early, and better teams play each other early – in theory (and it often works) keeping more sides in the playoff hunt for longer.
Australians have an advantage
One of our players moved to Australia. At the time I was still a teacher and used Gary (for it was he in Oz) as an example when teaching time zones to my students. You see one o’clock kickoffs translated into six o’clock here in the UK. Therefore we set the deadline at Sunday six pm LST (Luton Standard Time). Now Gary is ahead on the clock, as it is already Monday morning where he is when the deadline occurs. He therefore has the Monday papers and can read the results before the rest of us have put our teams in. That is how time zones work…
Love your NFL team, but be wary
By the very nature of fan hood – you will know more about players on your NFL team than any other. It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking they are way better than they actually are. Beware – they rarely pay off – and if they do fail your fantasy team, they also fail your NFL team – a double blow. We have one HC who constantly signs Dolphin players, as that is his favourite team, and you know – if you have vaguely followed the NFL in the last few years – this has rarely panned out for him.
Two phone lines are better than one
Many times my mother-in-law has rung at five to six on a Sunday evening (that is 12 o’clock eastern, and something else somewhere else – although 60 Minutes will follow the football in its entirety, except on the West Coast). Before we invested in a second phone line she was kindly asked to vacate the area, as important teams were about to be rung in. For a couple of years we used this for most of the year, until she clocked onto the fact that the football season ran only from September to December. The other problem with one phone line – back in the day – was that I could not check out the late injuries for myself – as it would have meant dialling up. Oh how the world of Broadband has changed everything.
Tie breakers come in many forms
I have seen many different ways of splitting teams, but I have always used the NFL ones. Points difference or points scored are probably fairer – but the complicated way the NFL does it is much more fun to work with. It confuses every one. It is also a get out clause when whining starts – well that is the way the big boys do it – and it means that a team can have a couple of bad weeks and quite often get away with it. Being as I do understand, mostly how they work, and that I am the arbiter, I should point out that I do not use them in the same way as I used to use my French monopoly set when I was younger. Faced with a Chance card I could always somehow translate it to read that it paid me the money, rather than me having to pay out.
Try not to get too annoyed with the inactive head coach
There will be players in your league who do little with their teams, except change the line-ups when a major injury occurs or the bye weeks come round. These are head coaches you must not bitch about with others on the phone. Invariably their scores slide, but as soon as they arrive on your schedule, if you have moaned about them – that is when one of their stars will go off on one and you will be looking at the wrong side of a beating. Keep stum about these people, otherwise they will bite.
One year I got so frustrated with one of these characters I rang them, because they had a key match-up with a playoff rival of mine. Acting on the “it might be a good time to plan for next season by picking up a few waiver wire treats” premise – he signed three new players, who waited till the following week to score big scores. That week he was playing the team I needed to win to get me into the playoffs. See – should have left alone.
Just because you talk to everyone more than anyone else – do not get carried away with the trading
People ring up to complain about their lot – a lot. Be careful. As the commish you are the one they regularly talk to and you may be tempted into “helping” them out with a trade. This rarely works as you have not thought about it long enough. Only trade to your advantage. This is also true of people in your league who you work with or live with.
Draft Day is so cool if you can do it live
Our first Draft Day was actually my wife’s hen night (before she married me, not anyone else). We celebrated her hen night in style, and as the evening wore on the picks took longer to make, as some of us had difficulty remembering our own names, let alone the potential starting Seahawk RB who we had seen on the telly once and quite liked the cut of his jib.
We did not do it live – the Draft Day – for a few years after that, but it has been back for the past eight years, and is one of only two days we let my friends into our house (the other being Super Bowl night). We now invest in Fantasy Labels – after years of making cardboard labels myself, complete with Blu Tac – as this makes the whole day swing better – and you can actually see who is left – unless of course you are taking the punt on the sleeper no one else has heard of.
We have attempted the “live internet link” with absentees – but that failed as we forgot to check the e-mails. We did successfully link up with one Head Coach who was helping run a heritage day in Bedford. Every time it came to his pick we rang him, and to the sounds of cannons (no, really) going off behind him, he named a player.
Trophies are cool, but can get hot
I started buying trophies our second year – with the intention of them being passed on. But when I discovered that the Imlach Bowl was being used as an ashtray, I continued to invest in new ones each year.
They have become more sophisticated through the years, and are now made by the same company that makes the MOBOs (although ours are way cheaper – and I am making other league members help me pay for them now that I am only a poor magazine editor). I keep thinking that maybe I should stop, but then I go round someone’s house and see them proudly displayed.
If you get glass ones, embarrassed partners can pass them off as paperweights. Although beware if you do invest in glass trophies – as one winner of the Layden Division found a scorch mark on his windowsill, where he had left the prize in direct sunlight.
Alliteration is not good
Just do not like teams that have their names starting with the same letters. We have had a LAFFL champion or two with alliterate names – the Holgate Hamsters were the first, and Beavis Beavis the second – but I tend to find that, when push comes to shove, these teams do not do very well. Name a Super Bowl alliterate champion – and I am not sure you can really count the Chiefs or the Bucs.
And finally, as said earlier, Letting the wife join your fantasy league is a good thing, till she beats you
When someone dropped out, Lynne asked if she could join. She spent most of her time listening to me talking about football, so she figured she might as well put her knowledge to good use.
She has made the playoffs in five of the six years she has competed. Pretty impressive, and no problem. I am very proud of her.
Well I was, while I was winning our annual match.
We even invested in a special trophy “The Bowden Bowl” to be held by the winner of these games. I won the first three and the trophy was placed in the downstairs toilet with my other divisional trophies and the odd Imlach Bowl.
Then around came game 4. Not only did she win – but the trophy remained in our bedroom for a year – positioned so that it was in my direct line of vision whenever I woke up.
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