 Fantasy football, like all fantasy sports, is designed so that you can prove that you know more about football than the other people in your league. Whether those are your friends, co-workers, or a fun group of folks that you might hang out underneath a local bridge. But if you've never played before, it can all be a bit overwhelming. So let's run through an overview of how stuff works with fantasy football. We're going to look at different league types, how rosters are constructed, scoring systems, drafting, how things will work during the season, and potentially beyond. There are a lot of terms and abbreviations flying around, so I'll try to define a bunch of stuff that you may come across. But if you ever get confused, never hesitate to just look for a fantasy football glossary and you'll be okay. Every fantasy league is going to have a commissioner who will set things up. Most of what he does will go unappreciated. For the sake of simplicity, I'm just going to speak as if you've been elected commissioner and are in charge of setting everything up. If you don't end up being the commissioner, you'll have somewhat less to worry about, but at least you'll be aware of some of the decisions that will be made and some of the stuff that your league may have to deal with. There is currently a kind of standard league model that will be the majority of leagues, but that said, there's an absolute ton of stuff that can be customized to your liking. The majority of stuff that factors into a league is actually done prior to the start of the season. One early thing you'll have to decide is how standings will be determined. The most popular type is called head-to-head, which means that all teams in your league will play one other team each week and winning or losing those weekly match-ups is what the standings will be based on. I would say about 95% of leagues are head-to-head leagues, although the other way that you could do it is called a points league. This is rather than winning and losing each week, everyone's teams just accumulate points in the same way you would anyway, but they are added up over the whole season and then whoever has the most points at the end wins. Now unless you're like hardcore old-school and you're going to run your league on graph paper with your favorite number two pencil and carrier pigeons or something, you'll have to pick a website to host your league on. The popularity of fantasy football means that basically half of the websites on the internet host fantasy leagues. I'm pretty sure that you can host a fantasy football league on NBA.com. Virtually all of them are free to use or at least have some type of free option. The big two are probably Yahoo and ESPN. For every site that you find some people will love it and others will hate it. Maybe I've been lucky, but personally ESPN has never presented an issue for me. I have also used Flea Flicker and Fan Tracks because those two offer a ridiculous amount of customization, but you probably won't need that just yet. One thing to factor into picking a host is how good their app is. Depending on how tech-savvy your league members are, they'll likely spend most of their fantasy-related time on the app rather than the desktop site. Finally, you need to figure out how many teams you want in your league. The most common will have eight, ten, or twelve, but it could be anywhere from four to thirty-two. Just keep in mind that the more teams the more players are going to have to study. So speaking of teams and rosters, we have rosters. The point of fantasy football is to own your own team, although different leagues have different size rosters. A standard team will include a quarterback, two running backs, two wide receivers, one tight end, one flex spot, one kicker, one team's defense slash special teams, and seven bench spots. A flex spot means that you can either use a running back, a wide receiver, or a tight end in that spot. Rosters are one of the places where each leagues will likely have some kind of tweak to it. My league uses two flex spots and a smaller bench. Some leagues have two quarterbacks a team. Some teams will have a spot called a super flex that's like a flex, but you can also have a quarterback in them. Some leagues are comprised of owners that have apparently been raised by wild animals and therefore they let their teams draft an actual head coach. The point is there's like lots of options here. It's not super common and I wouldn't probably recommend it for your first league, but some leagues will be called IDP or Individual Defense of Player Leagues. In these you can draft, well, individual defensive players rather than just a whole team's defense. The players in your league will accumulate points based on different stuff that that player does in real life, be that catching the ball, throwing the ball, or kicking the ball. Sitting on the bench away from the ball earns you no points. Remember, the ball is important. The biggest factor in scoring systems you'll hear is something called PPR. This stands for point per reception. As in each time someone catches a pass, they get one point just for catching the ball. Other leagues are half PPR, meaning you get a half a point for catching the pass. Some leagues don't do this. I'm not sure what they're called. Zero points per reception. Nothing per reception. NPR leagues. Ten years ago, most leagues were NPR leagues and PPR was kind of like an endangered animal that you'd glimpse periodically. But now if you go to ESPN to make a new league, they're very aggressive about it. The first two things they ask you are, how many teams are in this league and is this a PPR league? Why is PPR so crazy popular now? I don't know. So for quarterbacks in terms of points, they earn one point for every 25 passing yards, four points for a touchdown pass, two points for throwing a two-point conversion, and lose two points for throwing an interception. Quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers will all get one point for every 10 rushing or receiving yards, six points for scoring a touchdown, two points for a two-point conversion, and if you're in a PPR league, one point per reception. One key point on earning points for yardage. I think most sites have fixed this by now, but it used to be that a player would literally get the one point upon reaching the 10 yard benchmark. So if a player rushed for 10 yards, he got one point, and if he rushed for 19 yards, he would still only get one point. Only when rushing for 20 yards, would he get that second point? Doing it this way is complete garbage. Luckily, the fix that most sites have started to implement is the players will get point one points per yard rushing and receiving and .04 points per every passing yard, which works out to the same ratios, but it's always worth double-checking that. I'm not going to read through all the rest of the points, but I think you can kind of get it. Kickers will get an increasing amount of points for longer field goals and lose a point for every miss. Personally, I also use point one point per yard for field goals as well, and I don't subtract points for missing any attempts over 50 yards. Defenses get points for doing things the defenses are supposed to do, and same with special teams. Maybe I shouldn't come back to this, but PPR obviously increases the total points for wide receivers. The weird thing is, if we looked at yards gained in today's NFL, the top receivers gain more yards than the top running backs already, and touchdowns are fairly even. So if anything, we should be giving running backs a point per carry, which some leagues do, but it's kind of rare. Obviously, if your league is PPR, it won't help you with regards to gaining an advantage over one of your opponents, but you should at least be aware of this as it will likely affect your draft strategy. Make sure you don't overdo it with scoring. Some commissioners get way too excited about changing a few points here and adding a few categories there. I think there are legitimate ways that the standard scoring system could be improved, but it's a slippery slope. Adding or altering too many categories will make it difficult to translate stats into fantasy points. So if you're watching a game and you see your receiver catch a touchdown pass, you know you just got six points. It's pretty simple. Too much playing around with points and you end up completely disconnecting the value of something on the field with the value of something in fantasy. Now that we know how many players of each position will be selecting and how they'll be earning points, this will allow us to prepare for the most important day in the fantasy season, which is draft day. One major point. You do not change any of the settings once the draft starts. This includes everything we looked at to this point, plus a few that we'll get to. Every setting in a league could potentially affect a draft strategy. So don't be a dunce bucket and add an additional running back spot the day after the draft because you forgot. Usually when this happens, the commissioner just happened to pick three good running backs. If I was in a league and my commissioner did this, I would quit on the spot because as we all know from our Bayesian statistics classes, if he pulls something like this early on, he'll likely do it again in week 12 when his team is close, but not quite in the playoffs. The exception to this is that any and all league settings should potentially be allowed to change. But if and only if there is a unanimous agreement from all owners, not nine out of 10, 100%. There are two kinds of draft styles, a snake draft and an auction. Most leagues will use a snake, meaning that each team will make their selection in a certain order and then in the second round that order will be reversed. In an auction draft, every owner will get a certain budget and all teams will bid on players until someone wins them. Auction drafts are a lot more involved, so we're not going to get into that too much. Either way though, you're going to have to decide. Should we do the draft in person or online? The majority of drafts are probably online and whatever site you're using will make it easy on you by keeping track of everyone's team who hasn't been picked and time the whole thing. The order in which everyone picks can be a big deal, so either come up with a strategy for picking it or just let the site randomize the order right before the draft, which is probably the most fair way to do it. You can also get a big board and have a party and let everyone write their picks up on the board. This takes significantly more preparation. Most of the leagues that I've done with friends have always met in person for the draft, but everyone brought a laptop and we did the draft online anyway, which also very easily allows anyone who can't make it in person to draft from wherever as well. One thing to consider is that a draft could take a while. If you have standard rosters, that's 10 teams worth of 16 players, which would be up to four hours if everyone has 90 seconds of pick. So cutting that back to a minute or 30 seconds of pick can save a lot of time. Regardless, even if you're home by yourself, have a little fun, make a spread, get some hummus, make sure you have a laptop or a toilet close by. In preparing for a draft, you might do something called a mock draft. Lots of sites offer mock drafts. Basically, it's a practice draft just to see, for example, if I'm picking first what options will I likely have as opposed to if I'm drafting 10. You can go to any given site and jump in and mock draft. They start like every five minutes and they'll have different league types too. PPR or not, 18, 12 team, whatever. So find one similar to your league. Typically timing is very short, like 15 seconds of pick, so it doesn't take that long. If you've never drafted before, I probably try this at least once, just so you're not so overwhelmed when the real draft starts. Each site tracks all of its mock drafts and real drafts and creates a list of players sorted by their average draft position, or ADP. Most sites will publish an ADP list, so you don't necessarily have to spend a bunch of time doing mock drafts. And you can just look down the list and approximate who will get picked when. The thing about drafts, and really one of the most intimidating things about getting into fantasy sports in general, is that everyone will act like they know more than you. Now, so far as I'm aware, time travel is not a thing. And until it is, just remember that nobody knows more than you about how players will perform. This includes every fantasy expert online and TV as well. Now they may have studied the stats more, and that will certainly increase their chances of selecting a team more likely to win. Many do offer good advice, but it's never a guarantee. One example that I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit, a few years ago I was in a league with a guy whose internet connection at his house suddenly died right before the draft. And rather trying to call us and protest, he just let it roll. Now if this happens to you, whatever site you're using will go into auto draft mode and will automatically pick the next guy in their rankings, which is usually their ADP list. But you can also customize it yourself if you want to. So the computer does the whole draft for him, and lo and behold at the end of the season, he wins the whole freaking league. Now, is this likely? No, it is not. I would not recommend going in with the auto draft strategy, but it does show that all the research in the world won't guarantee you anything. There is some luck involved here too. Anybody's top pick could break their leg in the first game. I'm not going to get into draft strategy here, that's another whole video in itself, but one piece of advice I will offer, do not embarrass yourself and pick a kicker before the last round. And no matter how exciting the draft is, within a few hours it will all be over and the season will begin. Each week you will need to set your roster, picking who to start and who to sit on the bench. Only the points accumulated by your starters will count towards your team's points that week. There are different deadlines of when this needs to be done. Most often it will be at the time when each individual player's game starts. So once his game starts, whether a player is in your starting lineup or on your bench, he's staying there. Just be aware of this because some people like to wait until the last second to set their lineup. So make sure it's actually locking in at game time rather than a half hour before or even worse, locks on Thursday for that whole weekend. And while there certainly are trades allowed in fantasy football, most in-season acquisitions will come either from waivers or the free agent list. Different leagues do pickups differently. The simplest option is that there are only free agents. Free agents are a player who are not on a team that as soon as you click on their name to claim them, they are added to your team. So if one team drops a player, he could become a free agent for two minutes and another team could come and pick him up. Waivers is a way to prevent the situation of such a quick turnaround. So if a player is dropped, he will go on to the waivers list for a certain number of days, usually one or two. While he is on waivers, any team can put in a claim for him. And once the player's time on waivers expires, he would go to the team with the highest ranking on the waivers list. That's our next question. How do we determine the waivers list order? In some leagues, it will reset each week in reverse order of the standings. So the worst team to have put in a claim would get the player. In others, it will start as the reverse order of the draft order. And then each time you pick up a player from the waiver wire, your team goes to the bottom of the list. This second method will really make you consider, is it worth losing my top spot on the waivers list in order to pick up this player? Or am I going to miss out on a bigger guy next week? If no teams put in a claim for a guy on waivers, he'll just become a free agent. Other leagues will use a free agent auction system in which you have a budget for the whole season and can bid on players. Whoever bids the most on a player will get them. The tricky part is that all bids are secret, so you don't know how much the other teams are bidding. With regards to trades, every league has that guy who will offer you someone he picked in the 18th round for your starting quarterback. Don't be that guy. If you couldn't reasonably see yourself accepting the offer, if it was made to you, then just don't bother making the offer. Having said that, most leagues will have the option to veto trades, which is one of the most dumbest things that there has ever been in this world. I'm not talking about like getting a trade offer and then turning that down. Vetoes work like this. Team A makes a trade offer to Team B who accepts the trade. At this point, the trade goes into a review period, which is usually a day or two. A notification will be sent to all the owners, saying Team A traded this player to Team B for that player, should this trade go through. And if a certain number of owners say no, then the trade won't go through. Sometimes it's just the commissioner who has the power to say no and cancel a trade by himself, but usually it's a majority of the league. Now, why is this stupid? Remember how sometimes people will act like they can see the future. Usually they'll claim that the trade is unfair one way or another and that they're trying to protect one or the other teams from getting ripped off, which is another way of saying, I know more than you do, and it's my right to make choices for your team. Personally, I prefer to treat the other people in my league as competent human beings. And even if I think a trade is a bit odd, who knows, maybe they're picking up on something I'm not, which is, by the way, the whole point of this fantasy thing in the first place. The worst depths of this drama is when the trade is vetoed solely by the commissioner, thus reversing a trade that he himself or a good buddy of his was involved in and had a panic attack of regret two minutes after accepting. People who do stuff like this cannot adequately be described on this family friendly YouTube channel. So what's your the setting for this be? As far as setting vetoes, if you can turn it off and just automatically process the trade, then do that. The second best option is that vetoes are determined by the commissioner only, but the commissioner should never exercise the option. If for some reason you have to include the option, then it should be every other team in the league that should have to veto the trade. No, I will say there is one related thing to this, which is the worst possible thing that you can do in fantasy football, other than drafting a kicker in the first round. And that is something called collusion. This means the two or more owners somehow conspired to gain an advantage. So say you're in a league, like we talked about earlier, with only free agents, and you text your buddy and say, hey, I'm going to drop this guy in five minutes, be ready if you want to pick him up. That's collusion. And that's one of the reasons why waivers exist. Another way collusion could occur is through clearly lopsided trade. If there is suspected collusion, it should be brought to the attention of the whole league. And this could be by any member. It shouldn't just follow the commissioner to pay attention to the stuff. And then steps should be taken by the league to punish those owners. In other words, if someone tried a horribly obvious lopsided trade, I wouldn't consider that a trade veto situation so much as you have been caught cheating and shall now be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law situation, which is quite a bit different. Now, one major aspect that can really make any disagreement and potential cheating situations more complicated is money. Many leagues are just for fun. And if something goes wrong or somebody's trying to bend the rules, then you can just walk away and not play with those people anymore. But others leagues will have money riding on them, which will be awarded to the winner of the league or however it's determined to distribute it. The more cash you're putting into the pot, the more selective you need to be about who you're playing with, obviously. If some random guy you met on the internet wants you to just PayPal him money, I'd be a little skeptical. Especially now because some sites have money collection built right into it to streamline the process. So no member of the league actually has possession of the money. If you end up being the commissioner the general rule of thumb is if you don't pay, you don't draft. This should be settled ahead of time. But if someone manages to keep putting it off and you get to the draft and he says, hey, I'll get that to you next week. Personally, what I would do is to tell the whole league the situation and ask what they want to do. If they all trust the guy, then I might go along with it. But you shouldn't put yourself in a situation where you are personally nagging this guy to pay up. He's not giving the money to you, he's putting it into the pot for the league. And if somehow he goes the whole season without paying and then the winner gets less money, then you can say, listen, I was transparent about the situation from the start. And then you lure the guy who didn't pay up down to the docks. So you're picking up free agents, you're winning games, you're losing games, and at some point you'll hit the playoffs. Now some leagues go the European soccer route and don't do playoffs. But I'd say most do. The standard way to do it would be 13 regular season match-ups and the top four teams advance to the playoffs. Playoffs are two-week match-ups. You can change your roster for both weeks. It's just the scores from both weeks are added up and the winners move on to the championship, which is the totals of weeks 16 and 17. Now some leagues don't have a week 17 because some teams in real life will have already clenched home field advantage for the playoffs and they're resting their players. I've never found this to be a big enough issue to not play the last week, but it's just another one of those options. Most leagues will just send the top four teams to the playoffs by however the standings were determined and there will be some sort of tiebreaker, usually total points scored. There is typically the option to have multiple divisions in a league, but I would avoid these. Unless you have some kind of really unique league and reason to do it, divisions will inevitably just result in a team with a worse record getting into the playoffs over a team with a better record in another division. Okay, so you made it to the end of the year. Congratulations. Hopefully you found a league that was enjoyable enough that you would want to do it again next year. If that is the case, you have a few options. A redraft league is with the same or mostly the same owners from year to year who just completely start over at the beginning of each season and everyone picks all new players. One type of league that seems to be increasingly popular for reoccurring leagues is a keeper league in which you can keep a certain number of guys, usually two or three, from the previous season. Sometimes you just get to keep them other times where you drafted them factors in. The final way to do it is called a dynasty league. This is where everyone keeps their whole team from season to season. This probably isn't something I would recommend going into for your first season, but who knows. So that's fantasy football. It can seem a bit intimidating at first, but as I said, the vast majority of league settings, roster scoring, draft stuff, in season pickups, playoff formats, those are all determined before the season starts and they're not going to change. So if you make it through the draft, you're at least halfway home. And as always remember, nobody is a time traveler and if they are, they probably aren't worried about fantasy football.