Fantasy Dynasty 101:pt.3

This is the third segment in a series on how to set up a fantasy football Dynasty league. It will cover using both the traditional Defense/Special Teams and as well as using Individual Defensive Players. If your just joining our class you may want to go back and review the previous segments.

Part 1
Get your owners, Cost/Payout, Where to host your league
Part 2
Appoint a Commish, Communication, Rulebook

STEP SEVEN: RULEBOOK CONTENTS

The Rulebook is something you want to put some time into before the first season. In every new league your going to have people wanting to go in different directions. Setting this first rulebook into stone will help reduce some arguments mid-season. Of course there are going to be some things you forget and have to address during the season. Lay down your foundation here and it will make it easier for the Commish and everyone else during the season. We are going to list out some contents that should be in your rulebook, you can then discuss, poll, with the league to determine how it fits your league. Some of these things may have been mentioned in the previous segments but we are going to drop them here to fit some pieces together.

Who is the Commish?

You likely have determined this by now but if not it should be. Check out pt.2 for more on this.

How many franchises?

How many teams do you want involved? The usual for a fantasy league is 12. I have played anywhere from 8 teams to 32 in dynasty leagues. With eight teams your looking at a pretty watered down roster. You can look at 10 teams split into two divisions, 12 teams split into three, even 16 teams split into four divisions. This is really up to you, just keep in mind how many weeks your going to play in the regular season and if you want everyone to play each other.

How long is the regular season?

This depends on a couple of things. Which week do you want your Championship game? Week 17 has a lot of starters and studs that are in the playoffs sitting out…no good for the fantasy owner. Week 16 is becoming more uniform. The other thing it depends on is how many playoff teams are going to advance? You need your regular season to end on a week that will allow you enough weeks for the playoff matches to play out. For example, if you have six teams advancing with two teams having a bye week, your tournament is going to last three weeks, your season should end week 13.

Head to head?

Hell yeah you want to play head to head. Your building this league to come as close as you can to the owners operating a real franchise. Generally your going to want to play each team in your division two times. Depending on how many weeks your regular season is you can determine how many times you play the other teams in the league. You can play a straight schedule where you don’t play every team and rotate the teams you did not play each year (like the NFL). You could also incorporate double header weeks. The downside to this is if you have a bad week you lose two games. Depending on your league size you may end up with the perfect number of weeks and teams. For example, if your league is 10 teams and you play a 13 week regular season, you get your division teams twice and everyone else once.

Where is your league running?

Everyone has their preferences of where they play their fantasy football. We mentioned before that MyFantasyLeague.com is very Dynasty/Keeper friendly. In fact you can go there right now and start setting up a league to try it at no cost. The important things to keep in mind when choosing your host is that you have year round access and that they allow for the size of rosters you want. Some will only let you have a certain amount of players on a roster, depends on how deep you want your league.

What about rule changes?

Setting up a solid rulebook before the first season should eliminate most in season rule changes. There will be some things that are forgotten that need to be addressed or it is something that came up with special circumstances. Determine how in season rule changes are going to be addressed (although highly discouraged). Polls? What percentage is needed for the rule to pass? Should the Commish make the decision? Determine a time frame after the season for rule change discussion. For example, a week of discussion and then a week of polls. With this you also need to determine what percentage of the vote is needed for the rule to pass. Example from our rulebook…

1.10 Major rule changes can only be made through a
league-wide vote.
1.11 The league commissioners will make minor rule
changes in the offseason only.
1.12 League off-season votes require 51% to pass.
1.13 In-season votes, though discouraged, require 75%
to pass.

We won’t rehash some of the things already mentioned. Cost/Payout and where to host your league were covered more in pt.

More on appointing a Commish and Communication were covered in pt.2

Still to come we will go in depth on topics like: Franchise Ownership, League Currency, Participation, Rosters, Drafting players, Developmental Taxi Squads, Using IDP’s or Defense/Special Teams, Contracts, Trading, Free Agency, Restricted Free Agency, Franchise Tags and Injured Reserve.

Of course you can pull the things you want to use and apply them how you choose, you don’t have to use everything.

So you have your group of owners together right? Make sure everyone has a valid email address. Go set up a forum for communication and polls. You can get a free, easy to run forum that is very customizable at Excoboard.com

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

tag: Fantasy, Football, NFL, Sports, Dynasty, Keeper, Rules

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