Want to Start Your Own Fantasy League?

Starting your own FF league can be really difficult if you have no idea of where to start, so here are some steps to keep you from dropping the ball.

Step 1) Start early. Don't expect to be able to start a league a day before the season starts. Start calling people at least a month before the regular season starts. Be willing to put in some time. If you don't get a program off the Internet to do all the scoring for you, it will take a lot of time to go through the box scores. Remember that you will be getting a lot of phone calls and e-mails from the owners during the season.

Step 2) The first thing that you need to do is find a bunch of people who want to play. If you know a lot about football you can get anybody you want to play. On the other hand if you only know a little you might want some dummies in your league so that your chance of winning will be that much better. There is no real requirement on the number of people except that it should be an even number of people. Usual leagues are 8, 10, 12, or 14.

Step 3) Setup a scoring system for the league. This will be how the players you later pick will get points. For instance, if you have Jerry Rice on your team and he catches a touchdown, then he also scores points for your fantasy team. Here is a sample scoring systems:

Basic Scoring System

Performance Scoring System

The most popular option is to combine these two systems so that players get both points for scoring and yardage. You can also add in bonuses for players, such as 2 extra points for field goals over 50 yards, 3 points for rushing over 100 yards, and 3 points for passing for over 300 yards.