Creating a Constitution for Your Fantasy Football League

For one reason or another, you have made the decision to be the acting commissioner for your fantasy football league. But before you kick off your first fantasy football draft, it is important to have a set of written rules in place for your fantasy football league. Otherwise anarchy will rule and your league will dissolve throughout the year and the owners will be miserable.

Though creating a set of written rules for your fantasy football league can appear to be a daunting task, it is actually a lot easier than figuring out who you are going to draft in the sixth round. These are five simple things you need to remember when creating your constitution for your fantasy football league.

No. 1 Basic Structure of League

While this may seem simple enough, this is often overlooked by novice fantasy football commissioners. If you leave this alone, it can result in problems down the road. Make sure you are clear from the beginning, not only by stating how many teams are in the league, but cover simple things like how many owners can run a particular team or is it against the league constitution to own more than one team in the league.

No 2. League Scoring System

The backbone of any league, the scoring system needs to be in place before your owners even begin to make any serious thoughts about their draft strategy. Do you want to have your receivers and running backs earn one point for each reception? How receives credit for a punt return touchdown? There can be a wide variety of variables used to determine the weekly scoring for your league.

But this can be a difficult task if you take it on yourself. If this is your first time running a league, you can either use the default scoring setting or use your owners as a democracy and vote on various scoring changes.

Once the scoring system has been finalized, list it verbatim in your league's constitution so the owners can reference it throughout the entire season.

No. 3 Development and Maintenance of Roster

When you have the scoring system set for your fantasy football league, you can now concentrate on the rosters. Specifically you want to dictate in your constitution how each owner can create their roster through the draft and how they are able to maintain it throughout the season. It is also important here to notate whether your league owners will have keepers that they can hold onto through the following season.

Your nights will be filled with headaches through the duration of the season if your rules are vague when it comes to the waiver wire process or if you omit a key piece, like the trading deadline.

No 4. League Financials

The financial aspect of the fantasy football is the hardest thing a commissioner needs to take care of when running your own league. Not only do you need to act as a bill collector at times, you need to find creative ways to make sure every last cent of the league fees are paid out to the members.

It is important to make sure you have the league fees laid out in black and white for all of the owners so that they have a clear understanding of it. The last thing you want is to be in a heated argument with an owner about the twenty waiver wire transaction he completed and how he owes the league a $2 fee for each one.

Not only do you want to list out all of the potential fees for your fantasy football league, you want to list the breakdown of the prize pool in your league's constitution. This way every owner will know what they are playing for during the course of the year and will not be surprised when they receive the check in the mail.

No. 5 Determining the Winner

Believe it or not, the majority of fantasy football league winners are decided when they earn a victory in their championship game at the end of the season. That is unless you have not planned for it. For example, what happens if the championship game ends in a tie score?

The majority of leagues have a default category for this situation, but it may not be the right one. What if it says in case of a tie, the team with the most points scored in the regular season is deemed the league winner, even though they barely snuck into the playoff picture.

When you are creating the scoring rules for your fantasy football league, pay special note to the settings for the playoff system. You should make sure that you include these settings in your league's constitution so there is no question at the end of the year.

The key is to remember that even though there is money on the line, the ultimate goal for fantasy football should be fun. Make sure you adhere to that simple principle through the entire process and you will have a long career as a fantasy football commissioner.