No matter how good of a set-up you have, there is always room for improvement. Hopefully, you play in a league with an open-minded commissioner and leaguemates who are willing to make minor changes to make the league more fun. The following tips and suggestions are excellent ways to make your league more competitive, engaging and just plain fun without too many growing pains.
Frosted Tips, Tattoos, and T-Shirts
The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Athletes feel both. Fans do too. But in most fantasy leagues only the champions feel the thrill, and no one truly feels the agony. That needs to change. Punish the owner that finishes in last place, and that doesn’t mean trash talk for a day or two. It’s called the agony of defeat, not the mild annoyance of defeat.
Before the season begins, the league should collectively determine an embarrassing punishment for the last place finisher. Pro Tip: it must be a collective decision to which everyone freely agrees, or else it stops being fun and starts being bullying.
Some teams make the loser dye their hair or shave their head. Others have to don a T-shirt with a deprecating statement about their fantasy skills. Some leagues make the loser prominently display a toilet bowl trophy in their homes for a year. More hardcore leagues have really regrettable tattoos as punishment for bad ownership. Last year my home league decided the loser would have to wear a men’s romper for an entire day full of activities and provide video evidence. I’m looking forward to this year’s punishment of the loser receiving a Fathead wall decal of the winner’s face.
The beauty of this system is that regardless of what punishment the team lands on, the very existence of the punishment keeps everyone involved. Let’s be honest, once teams are out of the playoff hunt, most owners tend to mentally check-out. Lineups get neglected, trades get ignored, and the whole league’s experience suffers. Not when you every team knows that checking-out will result in ramen noodle lookin’ Justin Timberlake hair circa 1999.
Power To The Points
Have you ever had one of those years in fantasy where your team is a powerhouse on paper but ridiculously unlucky in actuality? One of those years where your team consistently puts up points, but you miss the playoffs because you had the misfortune of facing teams during their best weeks? It is the worst! You drafted well, and you meticulously set your lineups, you worked the waiver wire like a pro, and you still couldn’t get the W. Each week you faced a team with at least one player that just blew up. That is no fun, and its time to change.
You can’t take the luck out of fantasy football, but your league can find ways to reward skill. One such way to reward talent is to reserve the final playoff spot for the points leader (the team with the most “points for” on the season) instead of the team with the fourth (or sixth) best record. If the points lead is one of the teams with the best records, then revert to season-long standings to fill the last seed. This seeding actually makes the league both more fun and more competitive, especially if you play with conferences, as it leaves a back door open to the playoffs.
Another fun idea revolves around a weekly reward. If your league has a buy-in or dues, consider setting some aside for a weekly jackpot. Disburse this jackpot to the team with most points scored on the week. Or maybe to the team with the largest margin of victory. It adds an extra element of fun to each match-up regardless of season-long standings or playoff chances.
Get Creative, Get Fun
The ceiling is the roof with what you can do to make your league more fun. And that is ultimately what fantasy football is all about: having fun. Yes, we like winning. Hell yeah, trophies and belts and cash are cool. In the end, though, we all play to have fun. So get creative. Your league already has its framework, so flesh it out a bit with some fun and creative tweaks. The results and the laughs will be well worth the effort.
