The easiest and most accessible way to stay close to the sport you love is playing fantasy. At this point perhaps everybody knows what fantasy sports are and how they are organised. Just for the sake of it we will give a quick explanation before diving in the universe of some of the best American sports and their Fantasy leagues.
You fantasy team is the team you create from players taking part in a certain league and sport. You are then rewarded points after each game in real life based on the performance of the players you have selected. The goal is to accumulate more points than your opponents who are usually your friends. The effect is overwhelming. Games become more interesting and people even sometimes find themselves rooting for a rival team because one of their players is on it. It is great fun and allows you to follow your favourite sport year round. You will now see how exactly.
First of all comes selecting the type of league you wish to play in. It depends on the scoring system. Both NFL and NBA ha e pretty much the same types of leagues available. They are divided into two main groups. Rotisserie (Roto) and Head to head (H2H). Roto leagues have points assigned to every stat in the game. For example such am NBA fantasy league might award 3 points for a block, 2 points for an assist, 2 points for a rebound and so on. Its NFL counterpart usually gives 6 points for a receiving or rushing touchdown, 1 point for every 10 yards gained by the player etc. Your game week result is calculated by adding together all the points generated by your players. Each week your weekly totals are added to your previous score and so at the end of the season the player with the most total fantasy points wins. This format is no longer the most popular one because often a player wins the league relatively early in the season. This type of league allows people to accumulate a lot of points too early and become untouchable by the trailing players. Some of the positions in both sports you should aim at getting are:
- Qaurterbacks
- Point Guards
- Centers
- Wide receivers
- Running backs
Head to Head leagues will basically create matchups between the participants in the league. For one full week your total points will be compared against another player’s. The person to have more total fantasy points at the end of the week wins the matchup and is awarded a W. So if you play in an NFL fantasy H2H league you will have 13 game weeks. This means you can finish with a record of anywhere between 0-13 and 13-0. But why are we talking about 13 weeks when there are 17 in a regular NFL season? Well this is because weeks 14 to 17 are reserved for the fantasy league playoffs. In H2H leagues the first few teams go on to play “playoffs” thus determining the winner. There is no fantasy play during the real NFL and NBA playoffs because more than half of the players do not generate stats at that time. Why? Well, not all teams qualify for the playoffs, that’s why.
H2H’s scoring format branches off to other scoring types but we will quickly look into just one of them. You can select which stat categories to compare. Let’s say you select nine. Each week your aim is to win as many categories as possible. If you win 6 and lose 3 of them then your stat for the week is 6-3. If next week you win 5 and lose 4 then your total record after 2 weeks will be 11-7. There are fantasy playoffs again towards the end of the year.
After you have made it all clear regarding the scoring type of your league it is time to take a look at the draft. The fantasy draft is a lot of fun in both NFL and NBA leagues. This is where you select the players on your team. Players take turns and pick 1 athlete at a time. Draft order is randomised by the league. Most fellas usually go with the so called snake draft in order to make it as fair as possible. This draft type makes is so that the last player to pick in each round is the first to pick in the following round. The draft grid starts looking like a snake and that’s why the name. Most experienced players start doing research at least a month prior to their draft. They know which in which round every star should be drafted without “reaching”. As you draft someone you want to make sure that there is no better option currently on the board. If there is, then you are reaching. This is what you want to avoid. There are plenty of blogs, articles, discussions and even podcasts giving away tips on how to improve the way you draft and play fantasy sports in general. There is one thing they all say, however: “You do not win or lose your league at the draft”. This means that you should engage in trades throughout the season and must also pay attention to the waiver wire. This where all the undrafted players are. Many times some of them will turn out to have a great season unexpectedly. If a free agent performs better than one of the players you have drafted, then make a claim and pick them up.
The free agents signing mechanism also varies. Some leagues have waiver order in which participants randomly start with a different level of priority. In a 10 player league for example someone will have the highest seed (1) and someone the lowest (10). If a player having the 3rd seed bids for a free agent along with a player who has the 7th seed, the higher seed will win. After a successful waiver claim your seed becomes last – number 10.
