3 things that need to be changed about fantasy football

[Horizons]

Most of your proposals seem dictated by the premise the luck plays too big a role. I disagree. Luck hasn't that much to do with FF other than injuries, and even then knowledge comes into play in injury circumstances.

1) H2H is unfair. No it is reflective of the game of football, a game the FF is largely based on. Your idea eliminates one of the reasons the game rules, to watch not only your players on gameday but your opponants as well. No I don't like roto FB, nor do I like roto FF.

2) No playoffs. Again going against what the nature of football, and so FF. You feel a team is unlucky to have to go without LT or SA during the SB. I say that is poor planning on that teams part. That these teams didn't secure the back-up isn't dumb luck, just dumb. If you have issue with the playoff becuase it costs the best teams money in your example, then you reward regular season champ as well as playoff champs. If the possibility of some players not playing in week 16-17 then do something radical. Have you playoffs in weeks 12-15. Not to have a playoff takes the heart out of the game. Why even play.

3) The draft is unfair. Not really. In a lot of established leagues draft orders are inverse to the order of finish the prior season. That the worse team gets the best pick seems totally fair to me. Your idea of orchestrating a draft so that all teams will get picks that total value points more evenly is flawed by the very nature of the drafters. In established leagues this gives too much power to the better drafters (teams that usually are competitive). Trying to make things even assumes that the people drafting have even skill levels, which we know is not true. It actually defeats your purpose.
In random draft order leagues, the very randomness makes for much more interesting draft prep and strategies, offering more of a challenge for the savy manager.

I appreciate the amount of time spent on these ideas, but trying to take luck or remove skill from the game goes against the game itself. Football is predicated on one owner being sharper than his league-mates. Or luckier.

Daaaayum!! Mooch4PreZ
Well said

[Pete123444]

Okay - playing poker at the same time so I just scanned this thread but the biggest mistake I see everyone making is comparing NFL H2H with Fantasy H2H and the "any given sunday" aspect. The difference is when an NFL team loses on "any given sunday" it's their own fault - either their offense didn't score enough or their defense didn't stop the opponent enough - in Fantasy you have no input on how your opponent does, so if you just happen to play against the top team for the week and you are the 2nd team it is not in any way your own fault...

Explain to me how you have control of your own team BUT it's not your fault that you didn't score the highest that week?

[maddog60]

There's one serious flaw in your draft suggestion. So now instead of the last person to pick having the lowest value the middle person does. Now whoever gets to pick in the middle is screwed. Why bother coming up with a much more complicated system for drafting if it doesn't balance everything out?

[Gibbs Baby!!!]

"Playoffs?! Don't talk about playoffs! Are you kidding me? Playoffs?! I'm just hoping we can win a game, another game!"

Many thanks to Jim for that, I'll use it the rest of my life...

Anyway, interesting ideas, I guess it really depends on whether or not the rest of the owners in the league are interested in trying them out. I could give a rat's patooty about "Playoffs!", but they are interesting, just the same. I'm more interested in overall scoring for the season, and yeah, there's only one champion there.

[Downtown87]

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[lmcjaho]

Okay - playing poker at the same time so I just scanned this thread but the biggest mistake I see everyone making is comparing NFL H2H with Fantasy H2H and the "any given sunday" aspect. The difference is when an NFL team loses on "any given sunday" it's their own fault - either their offense didn't score enough or their defense didn't stop the opponent enough - in Fantasy you have no input on how your opponent does, so if you just happen to play against the top team for the week and you are the 2nd team it is not in any way your own fault...

Explain to me how you have control of your own team BUT it's not your fault that you didn't score the highest that week?

Petey petey petey... How much input do you ACTUALLY have as to how well your players do each week? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say 0 - please correct me if I am wrong.

The point I was making (and admittedly I should probably have just waited until I got to work so I had time to make it a little more coherently rather than trying to fit it in between hands of poker earlier) is that while many of the ideas from the original post are cracked, the line of reasoning that "well that's how it is in real life so we do it that way too" is also inherently flawed.

In the Colts-Steelers playoff game all the Colts had to do to win was either score more points or prevent the Steelers from scoring as much as they did - both things the Colts had direct involvement in. In a standard fantasy football playoff the only thing you can do to win is start the best combination of guys on your roster and HOPE and PRAY that your opponent's roster doesn't blow up and have their best games of their careers - two things you have little-to-no direct involvement in.

Some other glaring differences between Fantasy Playoffs and Real Life Playoffs:
-When was the last time you saw a real NFL team sitting their studs in the playoffs while a game was still in question in order to save them for the next week?
-When was the last time you saw a real NFL team leave their backup RB on the bench when the starter went down in the 1st quarter on his first carry, and say "oops, looks like we have no RB for this game, guess we should have started the backup instead!"?
-When was the last time a real NFL team made 100% (or even 25% in the case of fantasy leagues that pay out to regular season winners) of their profit from winning a playoff game, or lost it all from losing one?

Am I saying I agree with the OP that fantasy leagues should scrap the playoff format? No, although I do favor a prize structure that makes the playoff more of a bonus than one where the playoffs are the cash cow of the league...

Do I find it a bit ridiculous to say that the fantasy playoffs are a direct emulation of real life playoffs? Hell yeah.

[Vixtor]

1 & 2) It isn't the most logical system but H2H is definitely fun. The "fairest" system would just be points only all the way through week 17 with no playoffs. But, it's good to mix a bit of luck into the equation.

3) The serpentine draft is really quite bad and gives a large advantage to certain slots. No matter how knowledgeable it's difficult to overcome a bad draft slot. I don't agree with your value system though. Each pick is worth a different amount every year. Auction is the way to go.

[FantasyMan13]

While I agree the auction is the way to go, it's very hard to do this in person. Also, the H2H and playoffs systems are there from a "rivalry" standpoint. Yes, you could do it the way you mentioned. Would it be more fair? Probably. Buy would it be more fun? Doubtful.

[Sixxgunn]

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Insightful 3rd post. We look forward to a year of posts filled with such compelling arguments.

[BeefSandwiches]

While I agree the auction is the way to go, it's very hard to do this in person.

I think the auction in person is the ONLY way to go because the emotion of bidding up prices with every owner in the room is what makes it fun.