In terms of sheer popularity, Fantasy Football is unquestionably the granddaddy of fantasy sports. As the simplest of the major fantasy games as well as the least time-consuming and management-intensive, fantasy football has become a global industry that creates over $3 billion in annual revenue for the major online players.
Here at ALA Fantasy Sports, we’re committed to offering the best fantasy football experience possible – which means we might do things a little differently from past leagues that you’ve played in, but we almost certainly do them better. Allow us to explain by way of Q&A.
Q: Which website will host ALACS Fantasy Football?
A: We will run each of our Fantasy NFL leagues through ESPN.com’s Fantasy Football game.
Q: How do I draft my players in ALACS Fantasy Football?
A: As any ALA veteran knows well, we despise traditional snake-format drafts (1-12, 12-1, etc.) and run auction drafts for all of our fantasy leagues. The concept is relatively simple: Each team in the league is given $150 in fake money to use on 15 players. Owners take turns nominating players, and if you win the bidding on a player, he joins your roster and the price you paid for him is deducted from your available budget. We run auction drafts rather than snake drafts for a few reasons:
- We believe that everyone in the league should have a chance at every player. In our leagues, you’ll never be the guy who gets the 4th pick in a draft where the top 3 players in the league are clearly better performers than everyone else. An auction allows every team in the league complete freedom to construct their team however they’d like – and gives every team a chance at every player. In the same vein, an auction draft allows for more strategy than a snake draft.
- In this Commissioner’s opinion, auctions are way, WAY more fun than snake drafts – particularly because the auction software we use for our drafts is tremendous. We run our auctions through FantasyAuctioneer.com; click here to a run a DEMO of the auction software (the demo is for fantasy baseball rather than football, but it’ll look exactly the same).
Q: How does the ALACS Fantasy NFL scoring system differ from past leagues that I’ve played in?
A: Our Fantasy NFL game uses something that we call Power Rankings to determine the standings, rather than just basing the standings on H2H record. Don’t freak out yet – H2H record is still a major component of the standings, but our system eliminates the luck involved in typical fantasy football leagues, where scheduling luck can often supplant overall performance to determine a champion. That doesn’t happen here; you have to earn your titles, not luck into them.
The Power Rankings are a three-tiered system, with each of the three tiers carrying equal weight. Teams are ranked 12-1 in each of the three categories to determine the standings – so the best score possible is 36 (meaning you’re in 1st place in all three categories).
CATEGORY 1: H2H Record. A simple W/L record based on your weekly games.
CATEGORY 2: Total Points. Still simple – teams are ranked based on the total fantasy points they have accumulated for the year.
CATEGORY 3: Breakdown. This is a cumulative H2H record measurement that acts as if you are playing every team in the league every week. For example, let’s say your team scores 120 fantasy points in Week 1, and everyone else in the league scores between 80-100. Your Breakdown record would be 11-0 for Week 1, because you would have defeated every team in the league had you played them. In Week 2, let’s say you have the third highest point total – one team scores 120, another team scores 110, your team scores 100, and the other nine teams score worse than 100. In Week 2, your breakdown would be 9-2, giving you a 20-2 record in Breakdown through the first two weeks of the year.
Combine the three categories, and you have your Power Rankings.
Q: What scoring system does ALACS Fantasy Football use?
A: In a tribute to one of the better sportswriters of our time, we use a scoring system crafted by ESPN columnist Bill Simmons, also known as the Sports Guy. Complete scoring rules can be found here: ALACS Fantasy Football Scoring. We may make a minor change or two by the time the season rolls around, but this is the gist of it. Make sure to read the note regarding Flex Spot usage – it’s a unique system, but it was a great success when we used it for the first time last season.
Q: How are you going to fit all of us into one league?
A: We’re not. The ALACS will support as many 12-team leagues as we can fill up, and each of the leagues will have equal ALACS significance. The structure of the leagues will be geared to keep friends together within each league as best as possible, while still making the leagues balanced competitively. This may be tricky to pull off, but I realize that it’s more fun for everyone if they’re playing with people they know.
However, it should be noted that it will be IMPOSSIBLE to keep everyone happy in this regard – there’s simply no way to ensure that each “group of friends” that participates in the ALACS will be able to all play in the same league. Of kids hailing from Lake Oswego, there are already more of us than could fit in one league, so seniority/experience will likely take priority when it comes to league placement.
Q: Will we start using Keepers in fantasy football?
A: Nope – Fantasy NFL will remain the one ALACS fantasy game in which we do NOT use a keeper system; rosters will start from scratch each year.
(LATE EDIT)
Q: How do Playoffs work in ALACS Fantasy Football?
Here at ALA Fantasy Sports, we’re committed to offering the best fantasy football experience possible – which means we might do things a little differently from past leagues that you’ve played in, but we almost certainly do them better. Allow us to explain by way of Q&A.
Q: Which website will host ALACS Fantasy Football?
A: We will run each of our Fantasy NFL leagues through ESPN.com’s Fantasy Football game.
Q: How do I draft my players in ALACS Fantasy Football?
A: As any ALA veteran knows well, we despise traditional snake-format drafts (1-12, 12-1, etc.) and run auction drafts for all of our fantasy leagues. The concept is relatively simple: Each team in the league is given $150 in fake money to use on 15 players. Owners take turns nominating players, and if you win the bidding on a player, he joins your roster and the price you paid for him is deducted from your available budget. We run auction drafts rather than snake drafts for a few reasons:
- We believe that everyone in the league should have a chance at every player. In our leagues, you’ll never be the guy who gets the 4th pick in a draft where the top 3 players in the league are clearly better performers than everyone else. An auction allows every team in the league complete freedom to construct their team however they’d like – and gives every team a chance at every player. In the same vein, an auction draft allows for more strategy than a snake draft.
- In this Commissioner’s opinion, auctions are way, WAY more fun than snake drafts – particularly because the auction software we use for our drafts is tremendous. We run our auctions through FantasyAuctioneer.com; click here to a run a DEMO of the auction software (the demo is for fantasy baseball rather than football, but it’ll look exactly the same).
Q: How does the ALACS Fantasy NFL scoring system differ from past leagues that I’ve played in?
A: Our Fantasy NFL game uses something that we call Power Rankings to determine the standings, rather than just basing the standings on H2H record. Don’t freak out yet – H2H record is still a major component of the standings, but our system eliminates the luck involved in typical fantasy football leagues, where scheduling luck can often supplant overall performance to determine a champion. That doesn’t happen here; you have to earn your titles, not luck into them.
The Power Rankings are a three-tiered system, with each of the three tiers carrying equal weight. Teams are ranked 12-1 in each of the three categories to determine the standings – so the best score possible is 36 (meaning you’re in 1st place in all three categories).
CATEGORY 1: H2H Record. A simple W/L record based on your weekly games.
CATEGORY 2: Total Points. Still simple – teams are ranked based on the total fantasy points they have accumulated for the year.
CATEGORY 3: Breakdown. This is a cumulative H2H record measurement that acts as if you are playing every team in the league every week. For example, let’s say your team scores 120 fantasy points in Week 1, and everyone else in the league scores between 80-100. Your Breakdown record would be 11-0 for Week 1, because you would have defeated every team in the league had you played them. In Week 2, let’s say you have the third highest point total – one team scores 120, another team scores 110, your team scores 100, and the other nine teams score worse than 100. In Week 2, your breakdown would be 9-2, giving you a 20-2 record in Breakdown through the first two weeks of the year.
Combine the three categories, and you have your Power Rankings.
Q: What scoring system does ALACS Fantasy Football use?
A: In a tribute to one of the better sportswriters of our time, we use a scoring system crafted by ESPN columnist Bill Simmons, also known as the Sports Guy. Complete scoring rules can be found here: ALACS Fantasy Football Scoring. We may make a minor change or two by the time the season rolls around, but this is the gist of it. Make sure to read the note regarding Flex Spot usage – it’s a unique system, but it was a great success when we used it for the first time last season.
Q: How are you going to fit all of us into one league?
A: We’re not. The ALACS will support as many 12-team leagues as we can fill up, and each of the leagues will have equal ALACS significance. The structure of the leagues will be geared to keep friends together within each league as best as possible, while still making the leagues balanced competitively. This may be tricky to pull off, but I realize that it’s more fun for everyone if they’re playing with people they know.
However, it should be noted that it will be IMPOSSIBLE to keep everyone happy in this regard – there’s simply no way to ensure that each “group of friends” that participates in the ALACS will be able to all play in the same league. Of kids hailing from Lake Oswego, there are already more of us than could fit in one league, so seniority/experience will likely take priority when it comes to league placement.
Q: Will we start using Keepers in fantasy football?
A: Nope – Fantasy NFL will remain the one ALACS fantasy game in which we do NOT use a keeper system; rosters will start from scratch each year.
(LATE EDIT)
Q: How do Playoffs work in ALACS Fantasy Football?
A: None of the ALACS Fantasy games have playoffs; having a league title decided by playoffs has always struck me as absurd. The idea that a team could dominate the competition all year only to lose because the Colts sit Peyton Manning every year in Week 17 is simply ridiculous; it amazes me that so many leagues are run this way. We reward people for having the best team over the course of a season, not having the best team in Week 17 when half the NFL isn't playing. Again, the Power Rankings system described above determines who wins the ALACS football leagues.
That should do it; if you have any other questions, post them in the comments.
Looking forward to the best fantasy football year yet for A Level Above.
That should do it; if you have any other questions, post them in the comments.
Looking forward to the best fantasy football year yet for A Level Above.
No comments:
Post a Comment