Five Ways to Make Your Fantasy Football League More Competitive

Fantasy football has exploded in popularity over the last several years. It can be very fun to play, but unfortunately, the rules in many leagues take away from the competitiveness of it, and allow only a few teams to dominate. Following are changes you can make to the rules to make it more competitive.

1. Have A Maximum Of 10 Teams Per League

There are only 32 teams in the NFL. That means if you have a 12 team league, not every team will be able to start a starting running back during their bye week. This gets worse when players at these position go down with injuries, and allows teams who have loaded up at these positions to dominate the league.

2. Use 2 Starting Quarterbacks

For some reason, most fantasy football leagues only use 1 starting quarterback. It should be noted that quarterbacks usually put up a lot of fantasy points, yet many of the quarterbacks sit on the bench. If teams could start two quarterbacks instead of just one, the teams that are strongest at running back would not be able to dominate as easily, since the teams with strong quarterbacks would be able to compete with them.

3. Use A Salary Cap

Sometimes, fantasy football seasons are won or lost in the first three picks of the draft. For example, during the 2005 season, many teams who had Shaun Alexander or Larry Johnson won their leagues because these players dominated the stat categories, which meant owners that had these players were able to rack up points, and consequently win most of their games. The same thing held true with Ladainian Tomlinson in 2006. In fact, I recently looked at point totals for different leagues from 2006, and in every case, the team that scored the most points during the season had Ladainian Tomlinson.

However, using a salary cap would even the playing field out a little, and would make it harder on teams who had the high picks. This might seem a little unfair, but not if you are the person with the last pick of the draft.

4. Give Points For Receptions

One the one hand, giving points per receptions makes running backs who get lots of receptions stronger, but it also evens out the playing field for the wide receiviers. If you give points per receptions made to wide receivers, it allows them to put up more fantasy football points over the season, and makes them more competitive with the running backs.

5. Allow The Worst Teams The First Shot At Waivers

If you allow the worst teams the first shot at waivers, they will have a better chance to compete, because they will have the best shot at improving their team. Some people will abuse this, by throwing the first game of the season to get the lowest score, but this is very rare.