The Best Way to Play Fantasy Sports

I realize that we are already well underway into the season, so the timeliness of this post isn’t exactly perfect, but it’s important nonetheless. As you all know I’ve been a commissioner for a competitive league for over a decade now. During that time I’ve had the opportunity to fiddle with different setup types to try and determine which ones are the best for promoting fun and competition. I’d like to touch on a few points that I think will go a long way toward making your league better, and making sure my readers have the full advantage they should get from this blog. If you are currently a commissioner, I highly recommend these changes next season. If you aren’t currently a commissioner, then I suggest appealing to your commissioner to implement these next season.



1. Don’t Only Play in a Public League

Public leagues are good for one thing and one thing only, getting into a fantasy sport that you have never played before. The very first baseball league I ever played in was a public league, and the only hockey league I’ve ever played in was a public league. People generally join these leagues either to learn how to play or to have a second or third fantasy team going. Thus, the members of these leagues are generally less competitive, pay less attention to their squads, and have little or no interest in trading with you. There is little action on the message boards, and establishing trade relations is nearly impossible. I highly suggest going forward that you try to join a private league. If you don’t have enough friends to put one together, the forums on both yahoo and ESPN constantly have people who post looking for extra members.



And just to make it even easier, I’ve created my own Post Board in the right hand column of the page where you are free to post either looking for members or looking for a league. Don’t be shy either. -------------look here!----------------->



2. The Dumbest Rule in Fantasy Sports

Remember that public baseball league I was talking about. Yeah well coming into the final months of the season I was solidly in second place and making my move toward first. However my Shortstop had just gotten injured and I had no backup. Luckily, I had an extra first baseman and so I hit the trade wires. I ended up working with a team in 7th place and getting him to deal me Nomar (who was good then) for my first baseman. It was about as even of a deal as you could want. My trade got vetoed. Why? Because the league knew that if I had this SS, I’d have a shot at competing for first, without him and I was screwed. They didn’t vote n the validity of the trade, they voted on where my position in the league was.



Trades should be vetoed for one reason and one reason only, collusion. It is never acceptable to have two managers collude in trades to try and stack one team. It is up to a commissioner to know if people are doing that, and stop the deal if it happens. However taking advantage of someone’s stupidity is part of this game. Trades shouldn’t be vetoed because the league members know better than the managers making the deal. Many times I’ve witnessed deals that looked lopsided, but ended up being the opposite in the end. Hopefully as a commissioner you have managers who aren’t completely stupid, so there’s no LeBron for Tracy McGardy deals. But in the end, ONLY the commissioner should decide if a trade is OK or if it should be vetoed. This decision should ONLY be based on the presence of collusion.



3. The Auction Draft

Hands down the best way to draft is via auction. If you’ve done it before, sound off in the comments section cause I know you loved it. If you haven’t done it before, I guarantee if you do it once you’ll never look back. It is the MOST fun and MOST fair way to draft. Everyone starts off in the same position, no random first draft pick guy getting CP3, that’s stupid and unfair. I’m sure this is ever more obvious now with my last post. As a side benefit, Keepers are much easier to do with an auction draft, but more on that some other time. I mentioned this before, I’ll say it again, I know yahoo doesn’t offer Auction drafting yet (which hopefully they fix soon) but I know ESPN does, and they offer it for free. So each season my league drafts on ESPN, and then I input the players into yahoo (goes much faster than you think) and we play there.



These three simple tips will help make sure you get the most out of your fantasy experience. The rest of the customizations are really up to you, but I’ll add in that I usually don’t add in stat categories, and only modify roster sizes based on league size (bigger league = smaller roster). Hope you found this useful!