Keeper FFL Questions

[albionmoonlight]

I am tired of joining fantasy football leagues every year where after week three half of the owners lose interest because they don't have the best team. Accordingly, I am thinking of starting a keeper fantasy football league with some friends. Of course, the exact details of the league will have to be hashed out by the owners, but I think that I have a better chance of getting people to participate if I have a framework set up and leave as few questions as possible for them (my friends can be somewhat of the lazy sort).

Some basic questions for those who are fantasy addicts/experts:

How many teams is a good number?

What web sites are good to host the league (I'm looking for one that will keep track of scoring, team rankings, etc. It will also need to have customizable scoring. Indeed, the more customizable the better. We can handle the draft ourselves, but it would be nice if the web page did it for us.)? I'm willing to pay, though not through the nose.

How best to set up the "keeper" structure? I am looking for the balance that allows someone to keep good players while at the same time allows enough shakeup in the league to make the draft/new seasons interesting.

Any ideas on how to set up trading rules/deadlines, etc.? I want active trading because it will keep owners who are having a bad year engaged because they will be interested in building for next year. I do not, however, want the system abused. Any insights?

Opinions on roster size and scoring methods are also welcome, though I think that those are standard enough that I can look on the internet and see what I can find.

Thanks in advance for advice and opinions. If it turns out at the end that I need a couple of people to fill the league out, I'll be sure to check in here before I go anywhere else.

[sachmo71]

For the structure, our league had team with 16 players. You could drop as many as you wanted, but you had to drop 8 to get into the first round. Any less and you would drop a round, i.e. keep 9 and draft in the second, 10 and draft in the third, etc.

I would recommend checking out the site at www.footballguys.com for additional information on how people set up leagues. Very active community over there, and some of the best advise on the net. Not long ago it was a nice secret, but now everyone knows about it, so no harm done!

For sites, I've only used CBS and Yahoo. CBS is nice since they keep your league rosters and stats from the year before, and it's very customizable. The negative is that every year they seem to have issues with their live scoring system, and the interface is ugly. Yahoo is cleaner, but not as customizable. They both cost around $120 a year, but in a 12 team league that is $10 per owner. Not bad when you consider the alternative...grabbing a newspaper and a pen and paper!

I like a 12 team league...I think it's the perfect depth. I would recommend against going below 10 or more than 14. That takes some of the fun out of the league.

Points are easy. Depending on what postition you want to showcase, you can use the standard scoring on the website. Our league gives 6 points for TDs from all positions with the performance yardage tweaked. We usually get a good mix of league leaders in points. There are programs out there where you can test your scoring system before starting the season. I would gather the owners and discuss it, then plug in some numbers and see how it turns out. If you find QB's ending up with the most points, tweak the numbers a little. Your scoring will also depend on your lineup choices. Here were ours:

QB
RB
RB/WR
WR
WR/TE
K
DEF

I have been in leagues with 3 RB's, and 5 WR's. It's all about what you and the other owners like and BALANCE.

Deadlines and such are easy to take care of when using a website. That allows owners to set their lineup up to 5 minutes before game time, and takes you out of the equation. If someone is out of town and forgets to put their bye week RB on the bench, it's not your problem. Otherwise, you will have to be pretty detailed about when you can reasonably expect owners to turn their lineups in to you, taking into account the fact that you have a personal life.

If you have any other questions, let me know and I'll give you my experiences. Actually, I quit my keeper league because I missed the draft and I was tired of some of the guys in my league. I think the most important aspect of a keeper league is choosing people you really like and TRUST to join, because durning a long season, people can get on each others nerves and you don't need the drama.

Oh yeah, for all of the rules that you decide on...write them down and distribute them to the owners. Try to think of everything that might come up, from how you choose a new owner, to voting someone out, to dues, etc. Everything that can happen will happen, but it can be really really fun if you do it right! Good luck!

[albionmoonlight]

Thanks. About 1/2 of us are lawyers, so one thing we will have covered is an abundance of rules.

Your info is a great starting point.

[Fritz]

I have been toying with some hardcore rules

Team AND weekly Roster

1QB
2RB
2WR
1TE
1D
1K

Fairly standard, except that is your whole team. Injuries and Bye weeks force an owner to decide between a donut for a player or releasing him. For keepers an owner would get to keep 1 guy.

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Deciding when to select keepers is important. I have been in leagues that do keepers right after season, and others that do it right before.

[sachmo71]

Yikes, Fritz!

[thesloppy]

As a league commissioner, my advice is to get as much information as you possibly can this year, make informed choices and then stick with your rules, making as little changes as humanly possible. I play with several guys, all close friends, and even some who I've known since middle school. What I've learned is that FF is half politics, and somehow manages to bring out the worst in people, even though it's a game. Make sure your ready to be a commissioner, as it CAN be infinitely less fun than just being a player, depending on who you play with.

Things to consider:

The more exotic or hardcore your rules are, the bigger the chance for problems. I use a custom designed ruleset, probably unlike any other on the planet, and while I love it, and many have grown to, it is definitely safer to use the tried and true methods of scoring that your players are familiar with. All players hate losing, and many will be quick to blame an exotic scoring system for their failures, rather than themselves (sometimes rightfully). Likewise, once you decide on how the league is scored, if you are running a keeper league you should never change the scoring system, as players who have built dynasties with one scoring system will be ultimately unhappy if a scoring change results in 3 years of building towards worthlessness.

Decide on how involved YOU want to be before you decide on anything else. If your involvement will involve little else besides setting up the draft, and than logging in as a player for a few minutes a week, it is porobably in your best interest to stick with standard rules, as you won't have to be explaining things constantly, and simple systems will probably cause less team abandonment. Since it's your first time running a league, and you might be having to grab players you don't know from unknown sources, you may want to think about running without keepers for a year or two, to allow you to refine scoring, and collect a core group of players you are comfortable with.

If you plan to be heavily involved, and are building a league primarily for your personal satisfaction, choose your players very carefully. Personality types mean more in FF than friendship and this includes yourself. Beware of control freaks, it seems every league I've been in, as player or commish, has one player who is trying a hostile takeover of the league, simply because it's there and they are not in charge (yet!). I have a friend/player who I've know for 15 years, and he has complained weekly about every facet of the league, tried to change every rule, has told me our friendship was in danger, has threatened to quit at least once every year, created his own ignored head2head system even thoguh we play by total points, and has come up with gems like "I am just too attached to this game, I think I need to quit as a player...and TAKE OVER AS COMMISH". Yet when we get together yearly in Vegas, and the rest of the owners grill him, it turns out he pays very little attention to scores, players, anyhing really..he just can't handle the fact that we're all involved in something that he's not in control of. Likewise be on the lookout for flakes who will quit halfway through the season, or never seem to pay their dues, these guys can be just as disruptive. The level of your involvement with the league will be directly proportional to your level of frustration, so try to make sure your not killing yourself by adding the burden of asshole players.


I hope I don't sound too morose, I just want to make sure you know what you're getting into, as many first-time commissioners did not, myself included. Running your own league won't necessarily take over your life, but I would imagine in 90% of cases it always turns out to be more work than you wanted it to be, even if you think you're just going to set up some standard league on an already established web page. Best of luck, and again, I hope this didn't sound discouraging, just trying to prepare you for the worst.


BTW I use FLM for team management form www.sidesoft.com. It's a great software package that allows for complete customization above and beyond what you're probably going to get at sites like Yahoo and CBS, for half the price, but it's an offline software package that definitely involves more management time. The Sidesoft site links to myfantasyleague.com as an online solution, so you might give that a look as well.

Edit: To clarify, FLM is not ENTIRELY offline, as it will send out all sorts of reports to owners by email, and will even generate a huge variety of web pages for your own webspace. However, it is far from automated, weekly starters still need to be entered manually, and any web content will have to be actively managed and updated by the commish, rather than done automatically like yahoo and CBS. For what it's worth NFL.com also offers leagues, and I thoguht theirs were the best of the bunch by far, when comparing online options.

[sachmo71]

I think NFL.com and CBS are the same system, FWIW.