Starting an Fantasy NCAA League

 (edited: 6/03)

Finally, a couple of years ago, I and a few of my friends decided to put something together.  We had a blast, and this year looks to be even better than the previous ones!  I figured that others may be able to benefit from the many hours of brainstorming that took place to put together our league, the NCAA Project.  So here are some tips, ideas and general ramblings that may be able to help you get this idea of yours off the ground.

Where to run your league -- I don't like to spend too much money for fantasy football.  For me, it's about the fun and friendly competition.  There are a couple of places out there that charge $20+ for a franchise and they have their benefits -- they take care of stats, FA, rosters and do all the webpage stuff for you.  However there are drawbacks, most notably cost and inflexibility of rules and scoring.  (Note:  CFFL.com and U-Sports.net offer the most flexibility out there and will run you about $20-$25/team.)  If money is an issue, I suggest you run the thing on a message board.  It's not as much of a hassle as you'd think.  Send me an email and we'll host your league here for free at the Warroom.

Who will be in your league? -- The success of a league really depends on who is involved.  One or two deadbeat owners can really kill a good league, so it's important that you get guys involved who are willing to commit to being involved.  Be sure to let them know up front of everything they'll be required to do (live draft or online? scoring of games, etc.).  It's better to have less owners as long as they're all committed -- and here's the great thing:  While the 117 Division 1A schools make it possible to have a huge league (ours is 24 teams), in college ball, you can have a league with 6-8 guys if you want!  It's all about which schools are eligible for your league.  Here's more on that.....

What schools should you involve? -- NFL leagues are easy -- there are 32 teams and leagues can either include all teams (as most do) or one conference.  There are 117 NCAA Division 1-A teams, however.  I have seen leagues try to make all Div1A players eligible, but this seems quite unrealistic for your average size league.  First of all, that is a LOT of players to keep track of!  Also, I, personally, don't like leagues where every player on every roster is a stud.  Consider this - if you have a 10-team college league, that's a ratio of over 10:1 of colleges:fantasy teams. Now carry that over to the NFL.  I don't know about you, but I couldn't keep much interest in a league with only 3 teams in it.  (Still, to be fair, I know of some people who like having all 117 teams involved.)  

What do you do if you don't want all 117 teams?  You have plenty of options.  If your league is a local one, you can always limit the player pool to teams from the local conference or perhaps make it two conferences.  The only drawback to this setup is that you can get stuck with the Baylors and Vanderbilts.  Note: most fantasy NFL leagues consist of 10-12 teams where there is an ratio of NFL:fantasy teams of about 3:1.  For depth of the player pool, I suggest you seek out a similar ratio in your college league.  Our league consists of owners from all over the country, so we decided to do something a little different last year -- each of the 12 owners added 3 teams to the "eligibility pool" and we drafted from those teams on the list.  This gives everyone an opportunity to make the schools that they follow a part of the league.  (Beware, you could end up with some strange additions and unfortunate omissions).  Now that we've grown to 24 teams this year, we have a committee select 48 teams and then let everyone add one of their own to fill out the list.  While a few teams with viable fantasy players end up getting left off, you maintain a comfortable number of players and are able to stay away from the useless rosters.

Scoring -- If you're going to be running this thing on a message board, it means that you're going to have to have owners score their own games.  For that reason, I suggest a very simple scoring system.  Here's what we came up with:

I recommend you use the stats at the New York Times (powered by SportsNetwork.com).  They're the official stats (and they get the stats for all games) and are usually up in a timely manner.  To be honest, we haven't had the best of luck with ESPN or Yahoo.  They're sometimes inaccurate and don't always have all of the games.

We decided to keep defense very simple because of limited stats that are kept.  We also have a  home field advantage. We decided it was huge in the NCAA and wanted to include it.  (We made it a touchdown - 6pts)

Each week owners are required to score their own games and post it on the board.  To make things easier, we gave the home team the responsibility of scoring the game and the visiting team the responsibility of verifying the score.

Free Agency -- If you're going to run this thing at a site, this will be taken care of for you.  If you're going to do it on a board, you'll need to think up a system that works for you.  We used to have a 1 FA per week limit and it's all done on a first come first served basis.  For 2003, we've altered the rules a bit to allow for 2 FA per week and have 2 weekly pickup periods.  Owners can only pick up one player in the first period.

Schedules -- With smaller leagues, you'll probably end up doing schedules like most NFL leagues.  We do something different  in the NCAAP -- each team is responsible for scheduling it's own games!  It is quite exciting and very hectic!  I'll let you check out the rules page if you're still curious.  The reason I'm mentioning it is because it's a vivid way of how we're trying to give our league a college flavor.  Quick sidebar - while you can very easily take a NFL fantasy league setup and plug in college players, I strongly believe that you'll have more fun with your college league if it has a college flavor.  Be creative and have fun with it!  We have a Rivalry Week - each team plays the same opponent every year in Week 10.  Now that our league has expanded to 24 teams, we split into three conferences and have a conference championship in Week 11.  There are many ways to give your league that college feel.  Perhaps our biggest college feature is Bowl Week.

Bowl Week -- While I'd love to see the NCAA finish their season with a playoff, having bowl week in your fantasy league makes for an exciting end of the season that will set this league apart from your NFL leagues.  We rank the teams in our BSCS (our version of the BCS) and assign bowls from there.  #1 plays #2 in the Hellmann's "Bring out the Best" Bowl and so on.  With 12 teams last year, everyone played in a bowl.  This year, you have to qualify.  The BSCS takes things like record, total points, and power ranking (hypothetical record had you played each team every week) and ranks each team.  Points are then subtracted and added for quality wins and pathetic losses.  It's a work in progress that has evolved each year as we seek to improve upon it.  The great thing is that it promotes controversy -- what's more NCAA than that?!

Keepers and Recruiting -- We thought long and hard about making our league a straight re-draft league or having keepers.  We decided to let each team keep up to 3 players to give teams some kind of identity.  Teams lose their #1 draft pick if they keep one player, their first and second round picks if they keep two and their first three picks if they opt to keep the maximum three players.  It's all up to you.  Last year, we added the ability to recruit an incoming freshman during the off-season.  We have an auction on the message board where a school can bid on a player -- saying what round pick in the upcoming draft they'd be willing to give up to have the rights to an incoming freshman player.  The recruiting process was a success, however, one thing we did not address until this year (that I strongly suggest you copy/develop) is a "Recruit Keeper Chart".  Since most true freshmen do not make an impact on the field, we found that only 2-3 people were able to fully capitalize on the recruiting process (since in our system, keepers would cost a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd round pick and most sophomores-to-be weren't worth the price.)  Here's the chart:

The chart works like this:  If you use a 10th round pick on a recruit, and he starts rides the bench the entire year (on your team, not in college), you can keep him next year at the cost of your 9th round pick (he would count as one of your 3 keepers).  That player's keeper value would be decided by the chart each year (in the above example, in year 2 he would be counted as a 9th round player) as long as he is still on your roster.

  Again, this is just another example of something you can do to make your league distinctly NCAA.  You don't have to do things this way, but once more, dream a little! There are so many great things about the college game that you can transfer to a fantasy league!

Last thoughts.....  There are a whole lot of minor things that I didn't mention, like starting lineups and injured reserves.  Most likely, you've been in your share of regular fantasy leagues and know the things you'll have to account for in your league.  If you're just starting out, though, feel free to email me and I'll gladly help you get things started.  

by John Horvath, co-founder FFWarRoom.com