| Fantasy Football Commissioner's Handbook written by Spike Forehand ( spk4hand@concentric.net ) TIMELESS ARTICLE REPRODUCED FOR FREE AT WWW.DRAFTGUIDE.COM |
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| It's Week 10 of your fantasy
season, and the teams in your league are starting to sort themselves out - the cream
rising to the top and the pretenders sinking like rocks. You think everything's under
control - when all of a sudden the shit hits the fan. You got owners disputing trades,
other owners disputing the scoring system, owners sending nasty e-mails back-and-forth,
and still others looking for you to cut them a break because of the fifty reasons they
didn't submit their starting lineups on time. Worse yet, some guys are beginning to feel
cheated and are wondering about the integrity of your league. Meanwhile, there you are,
sitting on a pile of their money, deflecting blows from the unhappy hordes. What the heck
did you get yourself into being the Commissioner of this league? Relax - you're not alone. It's called the mid-season doldrums, and they happen in varying degrees in every fantasy league that I've ever been in or run. A lot of times, it's brought on by the frustration of owners who realize that they have no chance. Other times, especially in leagues where the owners are not all friends, it's just a clash of personalities. If you run your league over the Internet, it can get even worse. So how do you minimize those mid-season doldrums and keep your league intact through to the excitement of the League Playoffs? Here are a few pointers designed to keep your owners happy (or relatively happy in a pursuit where there are more losers than winners): 1 - Get Organized Early There's no such thing as having your league ready to go too early. I usually try to find out who's coming back from the previous season in May, and start serious recruiting of new owners in mid-June - starting with the friends of owners already in the league. Once the league is full, then I try to keep a few guys on a waiting list in case someone else drops out at the last minute. Hopefully, you'll eventually have a stable set of owners who return year after year, making this job very easy. I also try to let owners know in mid-May when the August draft date will be. In that way, you can get on people's busy calendars before other things do. 2 - Be Creative in Designing Your League Don't be a stale fish. There are a million leagues out there that use the standard format of QB, 2XRB, 2XWR, TE, K, DEF/ST. Also, everybody seems to be either a TD-only league or some kind of performance based system. Why not distinguish your league a little? Make everyone pick an individual defensive player or two who get points for tackles, sacks, int's, etc. If you don't like that then how about some type of system where the DEF takes points off the other teams offense? Don't like kickers in fantasy football? Then don't put em in. It's a clean slate, but just make sure that your owners are in agreement with what you do. Along these same lines, don't be afraid to change your league rules from year to year. Ask the other owners for suggestions and incorporate them wherever possible. In my favorite league (which I also happen to run) no players from the Dallas Cowboys are allowed on any teams roster. This developed when all of us - primarily fans of other teams in the NFC East - realized how much we hated having to have Dallas players on our fantasy rosters. It's a great gimmick that also gives us something in common - our intense dislike of the Cowboys - to discuss. 3 - Make The Rules as Clear as a Bell A set of rules is essential in any league. Take the time to write them out thoroughly and it will pay dividends by reducing your headaches later on. While there will be no doubt that you will still get owners submitting illegal roster moves and multi-player trades that put them over the roster limit, at least you have something to fall back on when you deny their moves. It's important that your rules are thorough and clear, but not so long as to make them unreadable. They should, at a minimum, cover the following areas: · The Draft - How many rounds, when, where, etc. · Roster Sizes - IR Slots, limits by position, overall limits, etc. · Submitting Starters - Positions, player position limitations (i.e. - can a RB be a WR?), etc. · Scoring System - Standard points, bonus points, etc. Define what is not a valid scoring play. · Submitting Roster Moves - How many can be made per week, is there a cost, etc. · Trades - Trading draft picks, multi-player and multi-team trades, when is trade deadline, etc. · Submitting Protests - Rules to cover disputed trades or scores. Remember to include the entire procedure for how a disputed trade will be handled. · Ethics - What is expected of league owners, what the commissioner can do if cheating is suspected 4 - Get That Cash In, Then Pay Out On Time If your league deals with owners who are new, or that you don't know well, you should insist that they pay their league fee before the draft. That way, they won't be likely to try and welch on it later on when they decide they don't like the team they drafted. You can bend this rule a little if you're good friends with all the people in your league and you trust that they'll eventually pay, but in general it's a good rule to get that money up front. Conversely, you should make sure that you pay the winners on time. Everybody likes a little extra cash around the holidays, and they will appreciate your promptness. It also gives you a little bit of leverage when you come around looking for league fees the next year. 5 - Get Into the 90's If you are still getting stats from the newspaper and figuring out the scores for your league manually, my hats are off to you. You are a person of uncommon commitment and endurance. However, you could also be considered nuts, especially if you already have a home PC with Internet access. Today's Fantasy Commissioner never had it better with the technology that is available. There are a multitude of Fantasy Football software packages available that all are capable of greatly simplifying the mind-numbing chore of compiling scores and generating reports. In most cases, a simple weekly stats download from the World Wide Web will have you printing complete, accurate, customized reports within seconds. As the competition heats up, down comes the price as well. Some of these packages are running as low as $35-$40 including stats downloads for the whole season. Well worth the expenditure to avoid having to run through boxscores until your eyes are blurry. Now that you got the technology - you should take the time to use it. Send those reports out to all your owners. As I stated in Tip #1 - the more info the better. They may not want to read it, but you'll never hear anyone complain about getting it. Another strategy that offers benefits to league owners is to set up a web site for your league. Some of the software packages will allow you to print reports to text files that you can "cut-and-paste" into HTML documents quickly and easily. Upload those HTML documents to the web and you're done. Making web pages may seem foreign to you, but it really is very easy and can be accomplished without having to be a computer genius. There are a number of good paperbacks available that cover basic HTML authoring that will have you banging out simple web pages in the matter of an evening. I can not understate how great the technology available today is. With my 20 team league, I currently download the stats, print about 6 reports, e-mail them to the league owners, cut-and-paste them into HTML documents, make a couple of minor modifications to the web site, and upload the new web pages in a grand total of about 30 minutes on Tuesday evenings. I used to spend more time than that figuring out the scores for one or two teams! The technology available today will allow you to spend more time doing the things you should be doing as Commissioner - resolving disputes, answering questions, and making people happy. It'll also allow you to spend more time managing your own team as you fight for that championship. 6 - Hold Up Your End I can't stress this one enough. If you want to expect the best behavior from your league owners, then it's very important that you do your job and do it well. Send out those results on time, publish the transactions before the deadline for starting lineups, and make sure that everyone is up to date on the NFL schedule (every year someone forgets those surprise Thursday Night games). Encourage questions and answer them quickly. If you change a rule, make sure everyone knows when and why. By being the best commissioner you can be, you're setting an example of excellence that your owners will want to follow. 7 - Be Fair and Take the Time to Prove It Nothing's worse than being in a fantasy league where the commissioner seemingly makes all the right choices in starters every week, while never showing anyone his starting lineup beforehand. Another nightmare is a Commissioner that cuts slack to their close friends in the league, but not for you. Now, I'm not going to say that you shouldn't try to win the league that you run - but you better make damn sure that everybody knows you're on the level when you do win it. You should make every effort to prove your honesty by always sending your list of starters to everyone in the league. At the very least, you should make at least one other owner in your league (or your opponent in head-to-head leagues) aware of who you choose to start each week. Don't assume just because you're an honest guy that everyone else will know it. Another important thing to do is to cut the same amount of slack to everyone in the league, or don't cut any slack at all. I generally allow owners to submit roster moves late or will give them a little extra time to get a trade done. The reason is that we all live busy lives, and despite the fact that we would like to, we don't make our livings off fantasy football. Where I absolutely will not cut slack, however, is in the area of submitting starting lineups. Those suckers gotta be in by game time Sunday - or they don't count (my rule is that you get your starters from the previous week - regardless of injuries or bye weeks). Allowing owners to push that deadline is a mistake that could come back to haunt you big-time. Encourage your team owners to send their starting lineups to their opponent for that week. Using e-mail, I will send all owners a list of starters for all the teams as soon as I get them. Remember, the more info that you can give owners, the better. 8 - Recognize the Different Breeds of Owners Every fantasy football league has good and bad owners. The good ones are the easiest to deal with, as they will submit their rosters on time, will understand the rules, and can be counted on not to whine about things when they go wrong. The bad ones are a much more varied breed, and will each require a different set of kid gloves - or brass knuckles - to keep in line. Generally, they fit into four categories: The Expert is recognized by his snooty comments during the draft. He'll often bluster about how it's too early for a certain guy to be picked, while he will make sure everybody knows how great each of his picks are gonna be. This is also the guy who will go out of his way to let you know about every rule he doesn't agree with and will nit-pick you to death. The problem with the expert is that he can't handle losing, and will have the tendency to want to blame someone else for his losses. The best way to placate the expert is with honesty and patience. Answer each of his questions/comments as best you can, but at the same time make him aware that you feel he is being nit-picky. One thing to watch out for is that the expert may be the guy who agrees to ridiculous trades once his team is eliminated - just so that he can influence an outcome. The Hitchhiker is the guy who's just along for the ride. He may be friends with a more serious player in the league, who talked him into joining. These guys never complain about anything, rarely make any roster moves, will not pay attention to bye weeks, but will pay their money on time. While you could make the argument that these owners make it easier for quality owners to do well - I don't think they make the league any better. It is the commissioner's responsibility to try to bring out the football fanatic that's inside each of these guys. Ask them constant questions about their team, make them trade offers, and hook them up with other owners looking to make trades. The Hitchhiker can become a great owner - he just needs a little more motivation. The Fair Weather Owners are good owners until their teams are eliminated, but will then disappear altogether - putting no effort into further managing their teams. More of an annoyance than anything, there is not much you can do with these guys. Just keep reminding them of their responsibilities, while at the same time don't knock yourself out worrying about it. If they don't submit starters, that's not your problem. However, one thing to be careful of is to make sure that a non-existent owner doesn't upset the competitive balance. If you have a head-to-head league and are still in the regular season, you may have to manage these guys' teams for them if they refuse to. One good idea to try to prevent this is to emphasize to the owners at the beginning of the season, and about 8 weeks in, that each owner is responsible for fielding their most competitive lineup each week - and explain why. The Instigator is the worst owner that exists. While rare, they can be extremely deadly. They may start with good intentions, but if they feel they are wronged or one of the other owners in the league got some competitive advantage - they will do everything they can to blow things up. Constant e-mail flaming with other owners, repeated complaints about other teams' roster moves, general crankiness, and even out-and-out attempts to cheat can be seen with the instigator. This is where the fantasy commissioner needs to wield the big stick. Get these guys in line immediately, or boot em from the league. You may even have to refund a part of their league fee - but these guys must not be allowed to exist. 9 - Don't Burn Out I used to be involved in five different leagues, two regular, one keeper, one national, and the one my wife signed up for at work. Not to mention being commissioner of my own league. However, I found that I was totally burnt out on football by about Week 10. It was just too many teams, players, and scoring systems to keep track of. Further, it was impossible to find a game on TV where I didn't have players playing on opposing sides - causing me to be rooting at cross purposes. Since then, I've cut way back to being involved in only one. I've found that by decreasing my involvement, my interest level stays high, I do better homework, and I'm a better commissioner if I'm still into it in Week 10. 10 - Have Fun This is the most important tip of all. Hey - if you're not having fun, what the hell are you doing it for? You should make every effort to foster a friendly community of owners. If you have your draft in person, make it like a party. The beer and pretzels you buy today may be well worth it tomorrow. If you run your league through the Internet, set up a weekly league meeting in a chat room to announce the results. In that way, guys get to know each other and will be more likely to have fun and be competitive. Being a Fantasy Football Commissioner can be a lot of fun and pretty rewarding, but can also be a total nightmare. A little bit of work can go a long way towards making sure that your league falls into the fun a rewarding category. Good Luck this Season!! Spike Forehand |
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