Commissioners: How To Improve Your Fantasy Football Leagues Rules.

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In the pursuit of a fantasy title, gripes and groans will ring out worldwide with the cries of fantasy managers over poor trades and supposed acts of collusion. When asked what being a fantasy football commissioner is like, the most common response is that it’s akin to babysitting upwards of eleven other adults. So we reached out to the fans to ask “What recommendations would you make to instantly improve your fantasy league/ make a commissioners job less hard?

Having a focal point of one commissioner sometimes makes it seem less like a “cheerocracy” and more of a “cheertatorship”.To those Bring it On fans in the room, buckle up. A suggestion that was also put forth by fellow GF2 staff member Jay, having multiple minds on task can make the decisions that normally came from one source seem less harsh. Having two or more people be the “council” instead of one commissioner is one way to make the week to week slog less intensive for one person.

The site surverymonkey.com is a simple yet effective tool to make league decisions quick, and easily visible to the whole league. For free around 10 questions per year can be fielded to handle possible league changes. Invites can be sent out to the league to see who voted for what, how many didn’t vote, and all in a clear pie chart format. How this also helps is we have all been in a chat log that seems to stretch for miles, having a visual of six people vote yes, four votes no, and two abstained from voting eliminates the frantic search for who said what.

Ah, vetoes and collusion, we will cover that in just a short bit, so we focus here on the aspect of tanking and how that might differ in dynasty and redraft formats. For redraft, if a team is dead and buried come trade deadline time, it should stay as such. If there is nothing that can be gained by trading away players, such as keepers or draft picks and the like, then that team is unfortunately done for the season in the trade market sense. Dynasty is a different beast entirely, and to the above point if players are allowed to make the tank decision, just like a real NFL team, then they should be allowed to do so. In dynasty, it’s very important to identify if you are a contender or pretender for the current season. Moves that can have an effect on the coming years and put you into a place to do if allowed from the start are perfectly fine. Nobody faults the Jets for “our next defeat is scheduled for next week” sort of mentality and neither should fantasy players.

Another take on the anti-tanking stance, this suggestion brings the consolation bracket into account. A fantasy championship is reserved for only one name per year, having the nice consolation of playing your way into the coveted first pick is an excellent suggestion. Having competition in place for the leftover teams keeps everyone involved the whole 16 weeks, fantasy football at its core is a game, nice to spread the fun around. 

These two suggestions lead to five recommendations that I will personally be throwing into the suggestion box, some more radical than others. The first and easiest is that before the season even kicks off if there is an entry fee, collect it. The task of making people pay to see a movie before they watched it is better than the converse. That alternate scenario being they didn’t want to pay money to see Bring it On Again because it didn’t capture the spirit like the first movie did, and now you’re chasing them down the street. 

Trades, the most exciting and infuriating part of fantasy football, no other aspect garners as much controversy as trades. Trading should be allowed to go down as intended outside of very specific situations. If two players are working together to affect the integrity of the league and are a clear act of collusion, then vetoing on the trade is not even necessary. The reason a veto is not needed is that you should have two fewer people to worry about in your league if they were so keen on cheating. The second issue, one that again, will not need a veto as you would have two fewer league-mates, is on the issue of actively taking advantage of uncaring managers. If a player’s best response to why they made a trade is “ I don’t care” then they and the actively nefarious player should be removed. Fantasy football is a game and a competitive one at that, no lame ducks needed. A nice way to limit griping and angry group chats is understanding that trades are meant to be an agreement of two people that the deal makes their teams better. It is nobody else’s problem to designate if a deal benefits somebody or not, if the trade is not clear like the situations listed above then the deal goes through. Making trades instantaneous rather than having a waiting period would be the third recommendation. There’s less of a chance for cries for pitchforks against the commissioner when the deal is already done and over.

The last two recommendations are specifically for the fantasy playoffs, and a kind warning will proceed them, these suggestions are possibly radical in nature for some players. The first of the two is to designate a playoff spot for the team with the highest points. That team can have proper seeding if already claiming a spot clearly, but if they are just running into buzzsaws each week and should be in playoffs, it should be rightfully so. The last playoff spot for the highest-scoring team in that scenario works just fine. The last suggestion is, assuredly, a radical one so we will need to do some scene-setting. A first-place team enters round one of their fantasy playoffs after stomping teams left and right, they are bounced in week 14 by the lowest-seeded team. To rectify round one bouncing, even in leagues that have byes, the teams enter the week with an already starting score of the average points they have scored weekly. For example, team A scored 1,300 points over 13 weeks, they enter with 100 points to team B’s weekly average of 80. The 100 points that team A scored along with their week 13 score of 90, would then best team B if they say scored 100 points in week 13. The totals of team A to team B, 190 to 180 respectively, would move the team that was on average better for 13 weeks to just the one-week team B put together in the playoffs. A commissioner’s job is to have a league running smooth and fair, having a clear method to make just the first round of playoffs fair as possible relative to the course of the whole season can be beneficial. The clear retort is that fantasy is a weekly game and that comes with the ups and downs of the process, no suggestion is perfect.

If there was one last suggestion that could be made it would be this, don’t let league-mates walk over you as a commissioner. Time and time again controversy kicks up because of “that guy”, try your best to not be them, but also don’t let a league be ruined by one bad seed. Fantasy at the base is a hobby amongst friends and family, don’t give the person trying to bring it all together a harder time than it needs to be. Remember, “Big Red ran the show man. We were just flying ignorami, for sobbing out loud.” Be good to your Big red.

ATTN Dynasty Commissioners: Do you want to do something cool for your league? How about a 1-hour live show dedicated to YOUR league? Team-by-team breakdowns, rankings, and more. For details and to book a show, visit: GoingFor2.com/plp.