Fantasy Football 101

Welcome, new readers! If you're new to Fantasy Football (FF), or you've played for years, I hope you find this information helpful. My goal is help demystify the world of Fantasy Football, and offer simple advice and encouragement to anyone who partakes in a weekly NFL Pool (pick the winners), Survival Pool or a FF league. I love football, and numbers, and trying to keep it all in perspective.

In this first FF post, I'd like to start with the basics. Fantasy Football "skill" has nothing to do with gender, athletic ability, or maintaining an encyclopedic knowledge of sports. It's about assembling a team of players, deciding who to start, and quite often luck. Pure luck. So don't let the trash-talkers intimidate you. You're not actually playing football or coaching professional players; it all falls to the numbers. And you don't have to be a math whiz to succeed. But it sure doesn't hurt to have one on your side. That's where I come in. I love football and love numbers even more.

Feel free to ask any questions you like in the comments and I'll do my best to help you out.

I'm sure you can get great information out there but I'll give you my description of a few key items:

• Fantasy Football: Remember the first Basketball Dream Team in the 1992 Olympics (Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Patrick Ewing, ...)? It was a team of legends. In Fantasy Football, you create your own virtual dream team of current NFL all-stars. You, along with the other FF team owners, choose your players in a draft. Once your teams are formed (usually 10-12 teams total in a league), you're paired up to play against different owners in a weekly schedule. You get points for how your fantasy players perform that week in their real NFL games, as does your opponent.
  
  Points are earned for things like touchdowns, field goals, yards passed, yards received, yards rushed (run with the football), and deducted for errors like fumbles, interceptions and missed field goals. The team with the most points in the matchup wins the "game" that week. The teams with the best records at the end of the fantasy season (usually around week 14 or 15 of the 17-week NFL season) make it in to the playoffs, and the final two teams to your FF Super Bowl where you play for whatever your league decides: cash, trophies, cookies or bragging rights.

• Fantasy Draft: Although each draft works a little differently, the typical draft has 10-12 team owners get together, in person or online, and choose their rosters (list of players). I'll speak to the details of rosters and strategies in another post, but the basic idea is everyone chooses a quarterback, a pair of running backs, a pair of wide receivers, a tight end (essentially a receiver), a kicker, a team's defense and backup players. Everyone can't have Peyton Manning as their quarterback so owners take turns choosing players, keeping track of who's available as you build your teams. And don't worry, you don't need to be an expert when it comes to choosing players. There are lots of really smart sports folk out there that rank players for you, and plenty of tools and guides available to help you. I'll be posting some spreadsheets shortly that have helped me (and others) come prepared to their draft, and put you on the same level of the FF greats.

• NFL Structure: The NFL is divided into two Conferences, the AFC and NFC. Each conference has four Divisions (East, North, South and West). Each Division has four teams. That makes a total of 32 teams and a potential of 16 games played each week.

• Bye Week: The NFL schedule is 17 weeks long, but each team has one week off between Weeks 4 and 10, called the bye. This week is critical. You need to take note of your players' bye weeks when drafting, and more importantly, scheduling. Your players can't play on their week off. I'll be posting a set of spreadsheets to help manage this, too.

• Pick Em: An office-type pool where you predict the game winners each week. The person who predicts the most correct wins the pot. Usually there is a long series of tiebreakers for deciding the final, single winner. Most pools are not "against the spread".

• Against the Spread: A 50/50 choice would be too simple. So Las Vegas oddsmakers add "the spread". For example, if Baltimore is predicted to beat Cincinnati by a spread of seven or more points, your two choices are: (1) Baltimore wins by seven or more points, or (2) Cleveland wins outright or Baltimore wins but only by six points or less. Most pools don't include these complications.

• Survival Pool: A different kind of weekly pick em game where you only have to choose one team to win. The catch? Once you choose a team, you can not choose them again the rest of the season. Sounds pretty easy, right? Wrong. Upsets happen all the time. And as the season progresses, your choices are reduced. I personally love survival pools. They're not too complicated, but it's very tough to keep your streak alive.

I'll be posting more articles as the summer winds down with helpful spreadsheets (yes, I'm a spreadsheet guy), links, and tips.

Good luck!
~Mike