It’s that time of year again. The time when you tell your buddies that you are too busy and too downhearted to join a Fantasy Football league again, only to find yourself trawling through the internet, reading articles just like this one…
We know that it’s time consuming, we know that it’s frustrating but… it is fun and you’re going to play it this year and next year and the year after that. To help you stop your FF league from going stale we’ve put together this handy list of tips to keep your league fresh and exciting.
If you have any of your own, be sure to let us know about them in the comments section below.
1. Draft Parties
Inject some fun into proceedings again. Don’t just create a WhatsApp group and tell everyone in it to start thinking about the Draft, make an event of it instead. Invite your friends around to your house on a Friday night, buy in some beers and make your FF Draft into one big party.
2. Virtual Press Conferences
Everyone has a smart phone in their pocket that is capable of recording great video content. Make it a rule in your FF league that the biggest winner and loser of each game week has to a press conference reflecting on their performance.
Really get into it too, give heartfelt apologies to the ‘fans’ or call out your opponents for underhand tactics.
3. Awards
Rubbing it in and lauding your achievements over your friends is one motivation, but that can soon run out. To keep things exciting and ensure that everyone in your league stays engaged come up with awards or prizes.
If you come up with enough awards you can even present them at an end of season awards ceremony. Some ideas to think about are “The Juggernaut” for the team that scores the most, “The Sieve” for the team with the leakiest defence and “The Washington Redskins” award for the biggest loss of the season.
(BenchwarmerBran introduces his 2021 FF awards.)
4. Mix Up The Scoring
If you have been playing FF for a couple of years now or longer, you might be getting a little bit fatigued with the scoring system. There’s nothing to stop you and your buddies though from adding in new scoring methods.
You could create a handicap system, add in bonus points for big margins of victory or introduce rivals games, where the winner see’s their points doubled.
5. Create a Blog
Fancy yourself as a bit of a wordsmith? Create some extra hype and intrigue in your FF league by starting up a blog page where you can cover the week’s events, write profile pieces and create fictional interviews with the league’s players and coaches.
(A beginner’s guide to starting up your own blog)
6. Introduce Punishments and Forfeits
Halfway through the season when the main runners and riders are in place there are always those one or two players at the bottom of the league who give up. To avoid this, introduce punishments and forfeits for the player who finishes bottom of the league and the biggest loser of the game week.
7. Incentivise Scoring
Want to make your league way more exciting? Award your final playoff spot to the highest scoring non-playoff team in the league. This is a guaranteed way to ensure that players prioritise offense over defense which will make your head-to-heads and final league standings way more competitive and way more exciting.
8. Add Individual Defensive Players
If you don’t like the idea of the tip above, you could go the other way and introduce Individual Defensive Players to your FF league. This would see coaches having to pick players like Richard Sherman and Cameron Wake to fill up their squads.
In doing so it would add a more realistic feel to your league and could result in tighter, more even contests.
9. Auction Draft
Instead of going for a traditional Draft why not steal the idea behind fantasy soccer and give each coach a starting amount of money. Whenever they want to add a player to their squad they must make a bid using that currency.
Other players will be able to bid on the player too meaning no one coach will be able to get all of their star picks as they’ll quickly run out of cash.
10. Create a Survivor Cup
Having a cup running alongside your FF league is a great way to keep things fresh and exciting. Make it a straight knockout featuring every team in your league and play it every other week or so to make sure it runs in tandem to the league.
It will give coaches who are out of the reckoning for the playoffs another way to taste glory or it will give the big boys a chance to scoop a league, cup and playoff treble!
