Joining A Fantasy Football League

Welcome to the Fantasy Football Guide!

Readers can find tips, strategies, breakdowns, reviews, and other great info pertaining to Fantasy Football. For the new FFers out there, fantasy football is an on-paper game that has been around since the 1960s. A group of people (around 10 on average) form a league with each person taking the role of a "team owner". Each league has it's different settings and types of scoring, but all leagues are decided by compiling points based on how certain players and teams fared statistically in the real NFL.

The two major types of scoring are rotisserie and head-to-head. In a Rotisserie league, the standings basically reflect who has the most points. In head-to-head leagues, owners are matched up against each other from week to week in the season. Each owner plays out a schedule against all or most of the other teams in the league. Whichever team scores the most in a given week, wins that contest. The H2H (head to head) leagues' season usually ends around week 13 or 14, allowing for the final few weeks of the NFL regular season to be used for the playoffs.

Fantasy Football can be played with friends, co-workers, family, or strangers. There are many sites out there that offer free fantasy leagues for people to join, or even to create their own league for others to join. Two main free fantasy football sites are ESPN and Yahoo. I've used both of these and recommend either.

In subsequent entries, I'll be explaining the process of playing a fantasy football league season.

Joining A League

As stated previously, there are many free sites for joining a fantasy league. For the beginner, the best advice would be to join a free public league. This will place you in a league with 9-11 other strangers. When joining a league, you'll be able to choose options such as team name, draft type, draft time, roster type, and others.

Team names are taken seriously among some fantasy players. Some leagues have strict rules on what your team name can be, and some leagues have no rules on team name. A team name can be anything (within rules if any) the owner wants it to be. A lot of fantasy players go for humor, and many owners keep the same name from year to year. Some examples of team names are: Mississippi Mud, John's Jocks, Butterfly Catchers, Pooprod Fartroids, etc.

A fantasy league roster consists of any of the positions in the NFL. Each owner sets their roster each week, putting in the players they think will perform the best. Each team has a starting roster (players that will earn points that count towards the standings) and a bench (players on the bench are to be used as substitutes on bye weeks or when other players are injured or underperforming). Most leagues have some or all of the following roster spots:

• Quarterbacks (usually 1 starter per team)
• Running Backs (usually 2 starters)
• Wide Receivers (usually 2-3 starters)
• Slash Positions (WR/RB or WR/TE) these positions can be filled by any position associated with the spot
• Tight Ends (usually 1 starter)
• Kicker (usually 1 starter)
• Defensive Teams (usually 1 starter - this spot consists of the entire team's defense with points accrued by allowing few points, sacks, interceptions, fumble recoveries, defensive touchdowns, etc.)
• Defensive Starters (most leagues don't use individual defensive players)

For draft types, the following options may be available. Explanations for each follow the type:

• Live Online Draft - The draft is held at a scheduled time in a specific place on the internet. When joining, you should be given a link to the exact place to go. Some sites will let you test your system to see if it can support the live draft, and you should do this. During a live draft, each owner drafts a player according to their draft order. Similar to the NFL draft, each team gets an allotted amount of time (usually around 90 seconds) to make their selection. After each round, the draft order USUALLY reverses, giving the first pick of the draft overall the last pick in the 2nd round for fairness. This style of draft is commonly known as a "Serpentine" draft. The draft continues with or without all the participants until all roster positions have been filled. Live drafts are fun, and I recommend that anybody try it at least once.
• Offline Drafts - These drafts are entered in manually be the commissioner of the league. Make sure you understand what you're getting into before you join a league with this draft setting. There are many ways this draft can be conducted. Message board drafts are done through the message board of the league or a specified forum elsewhere. Each player posts which player they wants when it's their turn. Another option for this type of draft is meeting together with a group of people in person. The draft would then be conducted in real time with the results being entered into the league during or after the draft. There are also Free Agency drafts that are somewhat silly. At a certain time, all players are made available to the entire league. When the time comes, all mayhem lets loose and everyone can start picking up the players they want. The person with the fastest internet connection, mouse fingers, and strategy will put together the best team. There are some other options for this kind of draft, but I won't go into any more detail here. Do feel free to ask about them if you have any questions.
• Auto-Pick Draft - These drafts are truly for beginners. The site hosting the league usually puts together a list of best to worst fantasy football players. Each owner can manually change their list to reflect their opinion. When the league is set to draft, a computer selects each players team by going through each owner's player list.
• Auction Draft - These drafts are for the more advanced fantasy player. Each owner is given the same amount of fake (usually) money to bid on players. When the draft begins, NFL players are nominated for bidding automatically or by owners. All owners can bid on the current player being auctioned, with the high bidder getting the player on their roster. Money management and strategy play key roles here as you must have enough money to go around for all the desired positions. The more money you spend on a player, the less you'll have to fill other roster spots.

There are definately other ways to draft a fantasy team, but the above are the most common.

This all may have been redundant to those veteran fantasy football players out there, but I hope it helps out some rookies in getting started. For all of the bored readers out there, be patient, the fun will come.

Next Topic: Draft Strategies!