Unique, Refreshing Style of Fantasy Football

Ever since I started playing fantasy football in 2003, I've been fascinated with the array of leagues available. I always enjoyed tinkering with different scoring rules, roster options, and everything in between. In 2004 I took on the challenge of creating and running a league for myself and some friends. With the help of some other league members, I slowly began developing a unique format ultimately made possible by the advent of "auction-style" drafting (if you're not familiar with this term, don't fret--I'll explain later). The league is now in its third season, and has been a major success. It was created to address several problems or frustrations we found with more traditional leagues:

"Keeper Leagues" are a great idea, but they kill parity. If you've ever participated in a keeper league before, you know that the idea can be fascinating. The standard keeper league allows each owner to choose three players from its roster and carry them over to the following season.

The problem, however, is that leagues such as these tend to make it nearly impossible for cellar-dwelling owners to climb out of the basement. In a given season, the vast majority of elite players are never even attainable in the first place--they've been tucked away on some perennial contender's roster for years. These are the guys whose foundations are already built--they don't need to plug major holes in the lineup, and can therefore afford to take chances on a first- or second-year player with the potential to explode. Meanwhile, the rest of the league is scrambling for the "reliable veteran" type of player--the one with lots of consistency, but little upward mobility.

Owners with poorly performing teams are likely to split. Each year, somewhere around the season's halfway point, owners begin showing their true colors. Many whose teams are occupying the bottom half of the league standings suddenly turn up missing--they neglect to maintain their rosters, leaving players in the starting lineup through bye weeks, injuries, and cold streaks. This can be frustrating for owners who watch as trade offers go unanswered and mediocre teams with conveniently-arranged schedules blow past them in the standings. Come playoff time, even some of the better teams find themselves abandoned by disgruntled owners and as a result, what should be the most exciting part of the fantasy football season often goes unnoticed and ends in a letdown.

There is little incentive to stick around when you've got a bad team. On the flip side, why would the owner of a poor team continue to pay attention? Most of us have jobs or classes to attend to, and let's face it--our time is just not well spent managing an imaginary football team, especially one that's going nowhere fast. Building for the future is nearly impossible, even in the aforementioned keeper league--since you can only retain three players from year to year, it's unlikely you're going to pull off even a package trade for a stud player. Your team will be no worse for the wear if you simply throw in the towel around week ten and vow to try again next year.

The Solution

To combat these problems, we developed a league that closely mirrors the NFL free agency model. To begin the league, two season ago we held an auction-style draft with $200 budgets. In an auction-style draft, owners take turns "nominating" desired players for auction with an opening bid (usually $1). Teams then bid on the player until someone's bid goes unmatched for a set amount of time. Several websites now offer free leagues with auction-style drafts, so you simply need to find the one that works best for you. Our league has been on ESPN.com since the beginning.

After the draft, I set up a spreadsheet using Google Docs (see the related links section) for every team in the league. I entered each player's name and starting salary, then created formulas in other cells to calculate the team's total payroll, cap space, and each player's projected salary over the next ten years. It was a tedious job at first, but now takes less than five minutes per week and about twenty minutes per off season to maintain. I published each team's spreadsheet for public viewing (a free service offered by the folks at Google), then placed all the links on my league's front page.

At the end of each season, teams are allowed to select an unlimited amount of keepers at a 15% salary increase (all decimals are rounded UP, even .01). For instance, a player with a current salary of $25 could be kept at $29 for the following season. Again, there is no limit on the number of players a particular team can retain, so long as they remain under the $200 salary cap at all times.

While the unlimited keeper rule allows for teams to maintain an incredible amount of continuity from year to year, the keeper salary increases also work to preserve some level of parity. Under this system, it becomes impractical to retain even the most elite players for more than three our four consecutive seasons.

Once keepers become "locked" on Super Bowl Sunday, all players not marked by owners are automatically cut into the free agent pool. This commences the off season--in which owners cannot add or drop players, but are free to trade between teams and propose rule changes. At this point, cut players are removed from teams' payroll spreadsheets and each team's cap space is made public. Note: Most web sites will assume all keepers will cost the same amount next season, but some provide commissioners with the opportunity to manually edit keeper salaries. This is ESSENTIAL for this type of league--please make sure your site of choice offers this feature.

At the beginning of the next season, all rookies taken in the NFL draft are added to the free agent pool, and another auction draft is conducted. After our first season, teams averaged somewhere between seven and eight keepers apiece, which made the year two draft one of the quickest and smoothest I've ever experienced with any league. Gone was the two and a half hour draft that featured owners ducking out after they had secured their starting lineup, leaving us to wait around for the predictable CPU picks. The draft lasted about 45 minutes--short enough for even the most impatient owners.

What I've described so far are the basic elements of the league that we've found to be essential. You may want to play with the rate of salary growth or salary cap size, but the existence of both is crucial. Feel free to get creative with the rest--you can set set the scoring rules, roster sizes, starting lineups, and anything else to whatever you feel works best. The rest of this article is simply going to detail the way we've done things; more in-depth rules that we've implemented to close loopholes, roster sizes that work best with the $200 cap, disciplining salary cap delinquents, and how the league has turned out thus far.

In-season free agency: When the new format was first proposed, this was by far the most-discussed topic. Owners were worried about their ability to tweak rosters over the course of the season; picking up breakout players, accounting for injuries, and everything in between. There was also concern over how to handle dropped players in terms of the salary cap.

Our league chose to utilize a three-day waiver period for all free agents. This means that if a player is dropped from a team's roster, he will remain on waivers for a 72-hour period in which each team has the opportunity to place a "claim." At the end of the period, the player will be awarded to the claiming team that is highest in the waiver order at 50% of his previous salary (again, decimals are rounded up). For instance, a player dropped at a salary of $11 can be claimed off of waivers at a total cost of $6 against the cap. If the player clears waivers without a single claim, however, he can be signed at any time for the league minimum $1. The same goes for any undrafted player.

To close the obvious loophole, our league implemented a rule specific to any team dropping a player. If at any point during the season a player is claimed by the team that has owned him most recently, he will count the same amount against the salary cap as he was paid in the draft.

Dealing with teams exceeding the salary cap: If at any point a team makes a transaction which puts it over the salary cap, it is immediately forced to forfeit its next scheduled game. Even if the infraction occurs during the off season, the team's week one game will be forfeited. The owner is then contacted directly by the commissioner (me) and given one week to remedy the situation. Once the week is up, a player or combination of players is cut from the team in an attempt to bring the cap to exactly $200, or otherwise as close as possible. It's worth mentioning that so far, we haven't had a single team breach the salary cap. This is why it pays to be in a league with people you know and trust.

Trades: All trades are processed automatically, but can be reversed by the commissioner should concerns be raised about their legitimacy. In a league such as this, few trades are made in which both owners have immediate success in mind. Therefore, it's not uncommon for star players to be traded away for a handful of young players with uncertain futures. Being allowed to make these trades is vital to the success of this type of league, so we take an "innocent until proven guilty" approach as opposed to seeking league approval on each transaction.

Miscellaneous: This league, on the whole, has been by far the most competitive and satisfying of any fantasy league I've ever participated in. In three years, we haven't had a single owner leave the league, and I can only remember one instance in which a team went unattended for two weeks or more.

The reason for this is that even when a team has been mathematically eliminated from playoff contention, there are always things to be done which can improve the future of the franchise. As of this writing, we're currently in week 10 of the season, and the league is experiencing a flurry of activity. Bubble teams are actively dealing young, cheap talent to non-contenders for elite players in hopes of making a playoff run. Meanwhile, cellar-dwellers are clearing cap space and stocking up on high-potential players for a future dynasty. Even winless owners still have a reason to be excited about their teams. Instead of a dead message board, owners waste hours each week talking about that breakout rookie they've got for $1.

The Future (Will it Work?): Because the league is still in its early stages, we can't really be certain that the system is foolproof. It's yet to be seen how free agency and parity will be affected when teams who were cap-savvy from the beginning or had the foresight to secure cheap players prior to breakout seasons really start reaping the benefits.

The first two seasons have brought an incredible amount of parity. In the first year, all but one team remained mathematically alive in the playoff hunt with two weeks left in the regular season. Furthermore, both division champions were eliminated by wildcard teams in the first round of the playoffs. During the second season, however, it only took until Week 11 (four games remaining) for the second team to be eliminated. Still, every team has remained competitive throughout the season, a characteristic I attribute heavily to increased incentive for owner participation.

I anticipate that the league will eventually feel the effects of the learning curve--there may be a handful of seasons in which parity is compromised by a handful of extremely well-managed teams, but the system should straighten itself out as owners get a better grasp on the salary cap. It is therefore worth stressing again the benefits of populating your league with owners you know; the more likely they are to stick with it even through a losing season, the more competitive and fun your league will be.

Here are the league's basic parameters:

-10 teams (two divisions of five teams- playoffs consist of division champions and two wildcard teams)

-15 regular season games, followed by two weeks of playoffs

-18 man rosters, 4 IR spots

-Starters: QB, 2 RB, 1 RB/WR, 2 WR, TE, D/ST, K

-Waivers reset in reverse order of standings each week