Fantasy Dynasty 101:pt. 1
I had discussed the other day why Dynasty/IDP is the fantasy for me. A few years ago I made the jump from being the regular in season fantasy football guy to the year-round fantasy football guy. My wife can now call herself a football widow all year round even more so. I will always play in the re-draft leagues as well but the Dynasty adds a whole other world to fantasy football. The season just ended and I’m looking at our leagues Restricted Free Agents and preparing for the rookie draft. How is your re-draft league coming?
Individual Defensive Players take it even a step further. You can win a league with IDP’s even if you don’t have Tom Brady or L.T. The game is played on both sides of the ball…like the real thing!
So we are going to do a little lesson here in how to set up a Dynasty league. After covering the basics on how to set that up we will go into adding Individual Defensive Players (from here on out they will be referred to as IDP) if you want them or it can be the usual Defense/Special Teams (boooooring). A lot of this will be common knowledge at first but the league gets in depth as we move on. Our lesson will be broke up over several posts, broke down in different sections.
The methods used here are tried and true. They are being used in a regular Dynasty with D/ST and one with IDP’s. It was originally set up for IDP and then modified for the regular set-up. You may feel like your intelligence is being insulted as we get going but most will leave with more than what they came into it with. In future posts there will be links back to the previous posts in the series. So hit the little button to go to the full post and let’s get started.
STEP ONE: GET YOUR OWNERS
This is the part where you likely are going to feel like your intelligence is being insulted. This is listed first for a couple reasons. First, the obvious, you need owners for a fantasy league. Second, who you let in this league is going to determine how successful it is. You don’t want some jerk off who is going to quit part way through the season. These leagues are about commitment. You will have to replace an owner here and there, that will happen, but for the most part you want people that are going to stick through for years to come.
If you have enough people locally to start one, that would be great. That doesn’t always happen so you may go out into the inhernets to recruit. Do you have a football message board you frequent? Many of the football related sites have a classifieds forum for posting new leagues or posting if you want to join a league. If this is the route you go, check out some of the prospective owners posts in the forum to get a feel for them.
How many teams do you want? I commish one league that started with eight. It was workable but the next season we went up to ten. The rosters were just too watered down. Twelve team leagues are the norm and you can even go to sixteen and be comfortable. One league I played in last year had 32 teams. This was not for the faint at heart. My suggestion here is to start with 10-12 owners.
STEP TWO: COST/PAYOUT
One of the first things the prospective owners are going to ask is how much it costs. Free or low cost will be attractive to some owners but you may get less commitment in return. Knowing they have paid money and there is a chance to win money can be a great motivator. How much, or if, you charge is going to be up to you and the owners.
How are you going to break down the payout? One of the determining factors of cost can be if your going to use a pay site to host the league. We will get into that next. For now we need to know if your going to use a pay site because that should be factored out of the money that is paid out. Once that comes out, determine if it’s going to be a winner take all or broke down between finishing. Some leagues even pay out a little chunk to the high scores weekly. You can play around with this to your hearts content. For an example, our IDP/Dynasty pays out 65% to Champ, 25% to 2nd, 10% to 3rd. 3rd place basically covers the cost to enter the next year.
STEP THREE: WHERE TO HOST YOUR LEAGUE
Fantasy Football hosts are everywhere. Personally, at risk of sounding like I work for them, I will never go anywhere other than MyFantasyLeague.com for running a dynasty/keeper league. Regardless of where you host it, one of the important features needs to be access all year-round. Because of that, free services like Yahoo are not ideal. It can be done but it’s going to be a lot more work. MFL lets you set up a league at any time if you want to take it for a test run. It’s very customizable. For an example, here is our IDP/Dynasty site for you to have a look at.
I have heard good things about Fanball. In fact I had originally set a league up there but they didn’t allow for the roster size. This is actually an area where some input from readers would come in handy. I have used several sites for re-draft leagues but only MFL.com for the Dynasty. If you have suggestions that can help out, by all means drop them down here in the comment box!
That is going to cover things for today. Keep checking back as we get more in depth on running a fantasy Dynasty league that will make you feel like your running an NFL team! By the end of this thing you will generally have the rulebook of the leagues that I run that are going three years strong.
Part 2
Appoint a Commish, Communication, Rulebook
Part 3
Rulebook contents
Part 4
Franchise Ownership, Tanking, League Currency
Part 5
Using IDP or Team D/ST, Lineups, Roster Size, Developmental Taxi Squad
Part 6
Filling Rosters, Determining Draft Order, Rookie Draft, Vet Draft
Part 7
Roster Management, Contracts, Injured Reserve
Part 8
Free Agency, Waivers
- Fantasy Dynasty 101:pt. 2 (0.986)
- Why IDP/Dynasty is the Fantasy for me (0.812)
- Fantasy Dynasty 101:pt.3 (0.812)
- Fantasy Dynasty 101 | pt. 8 (0.803)
- Fantasy Dynasty 101: pt.4 (0.789)
Just for the record, Fanball sucks. My FantasyLeague.com while tricky at first is the best one that I have played in as well.
Good stuff here. I use Fleaflicker.com for dynasty leagues it is not as fancy with adjusting graphics or display as MFL.COM but it is free, year round and very customizable with rosters, league size, and scoring.
Thanks for the input guys! I’ll have to go have a look at that Fleaflicker.com to see what it’s all about. Thanks Jeremy.
[...] Part One we covered getting your owners, determining cost/payout, and where to host your league. Thanks to [...]
[...] Part One [...]
Those things freak me out LOL however I do find reading these posts interesting.
i’ve never done a dynasty one before tho I have done IDP’s and like them better cuz its harder and more challenging
but really year round football is a new thing to me
great post
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[...] Part 1 Get your owners, Cost/Payout, Where to host your league Part 2 Appoint a Commish, Communication, Rulebook Part 3 Rulebook contents [...]
[...] Part 1 Get your owners, Cost/Payout, Where to host your league Part 2 Appoint a Commish, Communication, Rulebook Part 3 Rulebook contents Part 4 Franchise Ownership, Tanking, League Currency [...]
[...] Part 1 Get your owners, Cost/Payout, Where to host your league Part 2 Appoint a Commish, Communication, Rulebook Part 3 Rulebook contents Part 4 Franchise Ownership, Tanking, League Currency Part 5 Using IDP or Team D/ST, Lineups, Roster Size, Developmental Taxi Squad [...]
[...] Part 1 Get your owners, Cost/Payout, Where to host your league Part 2 Appoint a Commish, Communication, Rulebook Part 3 Rulebook contents Part 4 Franchise Ownership, Tanking, League Currency Part 5 Using IDP or Team D/ST, Lineups, Roster Size, Developmental Taxi Squad Part 6 Filling Rosters, Determining Draft Order, Rookie Draft, Vet Draft [...]
[...] Part 1 Get your owners, Cost/Payout, Where to host your league Part 2 Appoint a Commish, Communication, Rulebook Part 3 Rulebook contents Part 4 Franchise Ownership, Tanking, League Currency Part 5 Using IDP or Team D/ST, Lineups, Roster Size, Developmental Taxi Squad Part 6 Filling Rosters, Determining Draft Order, Rookie Draft, Vet Draft Part 7 Roster Management, Contracts, Injured Reserve [...]
[...] Part 1 Get your owners, Cost/Payout, Where to host your league Part 2 Appoint a Commish, Communication, Rulebook Part 3 Rulebook contents Part 4 Franchise Ownership, Tanking, League Currency Part 5 Using IDP or Team D/ST, Lineups, Roster Size, Developmental Taxi Squad Part 6 Filling Rosters, Determining Draft Order, Rookie Draft, Vet Draft Part 7 Roster Management, Contracts, Injured Reserve Part 8 Free Agency/Waivers [...]
I have been seriously contemplating transferring my keeper / dynasty hybrid league from sportsline.com to myfantasyleague.com. Do you have any recommendations about sportsline vs. myfantasyleague?
Doug,
I have never used Sportsline pay service, which is what I’m guessing your using for your league. If you can throw down all your likes and dislikes I can certainly compare them for you. I have not played at another pay site since going to MFL a few years ago.
[...] Part 1 Get your owners, Cost/Payout, Where to host your league Part 2 Appoint a Commish, Communication, Rulebook Part 3 Rulebook contents Part 4 Franchise Ownership, Tanking, League Currency Part 5 Using IDP or Team D/ST, Lineups, Roster Size, Developmental Taxi Squad Part 6 Filling Rosters, Determining Draft Order, Rookie Draft, Vet Draft Part 7 Roster Management, Contracts, Injured Reserve Part 8 Free Agency/Waivers Part 9 Restricted Free Agency, Franchise Tags [...]
[...] then there’s Football Jabber’s obscenely detailed, twenty-step process for creating a dynasty league. And here I thought we were the geeks. « Previous post: [...]