Entries from July 2007 ↓

Q: Hi, we have a keeper league with 12 teams. This year, a couple of the owners dropped out so we had to find some replacements. Should these new, first-time owners have the option of taking over the vacated teams and keeping players from those teams that are eligible to be kept?

A: Thanks for the question. This particular fantasy league dispute is older than my mother and equally as impossible to comprehend. If your league has a personalized set of fantasy football rules, add some clarification around this dilemma immediately and take solace in the fact that this will be the last time the issue causes a problem.

In the short-term, there’s really only one fair resolution. Bring it to a vote - the newbie owners excluded, majority wins. Since a ‘No’ vote adds a few more top players to the draft pool, which benefits all the owners who are voting, most likely the new owners will not be allowed to retain keepers. Nothing you can do to deter someone from voting for whatever benefits them most personally. However, after the season ends, but before next season, when no one has anything to gain anymore, conduct a second vote, this time including all league members, to set a precedent for each new owner’s keeper rights.

As a reference, it is my experience that most leagues do NOT allow new owners to ‘inherit’ keepers from a previous franchise as it is undoubtedly an advantage to have that option. Most leagues prefer to force the rookies to ‘cut their teeth’ in the league by starting with a blank roster, a slight disadvantage, but completely acceptable as it puts the onus on the new owner to earn the respect of the senior league members. No free meals in fantasy football, I’d be voting to stick it to the noobs if this were my league.

Q: I run a twelve team fantasy football keeper league whereby each owner is allowed to keep 3 players from his roster for up to three years. One of our owners has a wealth of talent at running back and is currently keeping Laurence Maroney, Frank Gore and Larry Johnson. Still remaining on his lineup is Ronnie Brown which is not planned as one of his keepers but he would like to trade this player to another owner in our league and a 8th round draft pick for the 4th round pick of said owner. I as commissioner am against this as it subverts the three keeper rule giving this owner not only three keepers but also an additional pick in the fourth round for a player that he had no intention of keeping. I have been running this league for five years and I was in another league for three years before this one but I am not sure it there is some sort of precedent for this. In our rules there is no mention of this being illegal but it is a strict keeper rule in that each team should only enter the season with three assets at max and two at minimum. Let me know your thoughts.

Our league has only allowed trades with draft picks on draft day as it did not interfere with keepers on that particular day. Also our league does not require a 2/3rds majority on trades only a league council consisting of two members plus myself and also two alternates when needed. The only time we require 2/3rds vote is on rule changes.

A: Thanks Xman. Since your league has never allowed trades for draft picks - except on draft day - you need to be very careful here as you are about to set a precedent for trading policy in your league for years to come. Regardless of how this particular dispute is resolved your league needs to set specific rules on when and how a trade can take place and inform all league members so you can avoid similar issues going forward.

That said, I think the issue at hand is a no-brainer. You stated that your league allows for a maximum of three keepers and a minimum of two keepers. Regardless of when in the off-season your league members are required to officially name their keepers - the maximum number remains three. When the whistle blew on the last play of last year’s fantasy football season, the owner in question relinquished control over his full roster and instead was left with three “keeper slots”. Trading Ronnie Brown at this stage in the game assumes that Brown is still part of this owner’s squad and the only way this is possible is if he has been designated as one of the three keepers. This of course leaves the owner with only two slots left to use on Maroney, Gore or LJ.

A fantasy football roster is different from a real football roster. The fantasy team doesn’t lift together in the off-season or attend mini camps together or go out and get hammered together on the town. The minute the fantasy season ends, uniforms are returned, playbooks are handed in and the union is dissolved. The players don’t remain huddled within some digital locker room while their past owner spends the summer deciding their fates for the upcoming season. This owner had until the trading deadline of last season to deal Brown for draft picks. Now he can keep him and then deal him for picks if he so chooses, or not keep him but allowing the trade to occur is essentially affording him 4 keepers (or assets as you pointed out) and that seems to be a blatant violation of your leagues charter.

So that kind of sucked. We fed him water shots for the rest of the night (on the bartender’s recommendation), a classic move that was made much more comical when he grimaced at the taste of each successive shot, but I’m thinking I still got the brown end of the stick on the evening.

Finally bought my first fantasy football magazine of the season. It’s a little late in the year but I’ve been doing most of my research online for the past few years. This year I went with Fantasy Football Index. They have a decent site that gives you access to regular updates with the purchase of the mag. Hey so what if they had Alexander on the cover last year and, this is funny, Tatum Bell two years ago.

For my money, after trying a number of other publications, this is the go-to magazine. The two things I look for are an in depth analysis and rankings by position as well as a team-by-team breakdown. Fantasy Football Index 2007 offers both… as well as a number of other goodies like expert mock drafts, sleepers and busts, rookie forecast, o-line rankings and the often overlooked but ultra important 2007 schedule with team by team bye weeks.

To each their own, of course. Brandon Funston of ESPN wrote a good article years ago on How to Draft the Right Fantasy Football Magazine. It’s a little old (from 2001) but the different standards by which he measures fantasy football magazines still hold up.

Here’s a link to a unbelievably thorough review of 13 top fantasy football magazines for 2007.

In search of late night munchies after a recent wedding at the Jersey Shore, some collegues and I decided to actively seek out what I now believe to be the nastiest and most unedible fast food in existence - White Castle.

Now I grew up eating - and loving this crap but after nine drunks gorged themselves in my hotel room last weekend, I can now induce vomiting simply by picturing my comforter covered in sauteed onion bits and suspiciously grey hamburger pellets. A heroic effort it was, but at the end of the day we had barely put a dent in the 3 briefcase style Crave Case 30 packs we brought back.

In the words of Reading Rainbow’s LeVar Burton, “don’t take my word for it.” You decide which pic is the real White Castle burger.

Fantasy Football is quite possibly the most important development of the last 10,000 years. Sure one could make an argument for a number of other noteworthy inventions such as fire, or the wheel or birth control, but none of these innovations have ever provided me with that feeling of excitement you get on Sunday morning’s in the fall.

Just a quick side note: Fire was actually harnessed by man much earlier than 10,000 years ago. If you don’t think evolution is the devil’s hoax and you want to learn more about how we evolved from monkeys into the mouth-breathing, extra-value meal eating, paper pushing marvels of science we are today, read anything by Ian Tattersall (I don’t get paid if you click), curator of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC.

Anyway, you know the feeling, your bets are placed, your lineup is set, you got Peyton Manning playing indoors against the Niners… and as if God himself owed you bigtime from last nights hold em’ game, the old lady is AWOL until at least halftime of the Sunday night game.

Ah, yes…. I’m getting excited already and I haven’t even mentioned beer or pizza.

With the 07-08 season looming just out of reach like the finale to a free porn sample that cuts out after 10 seconds, I felt obliged to dig into the history of this glorious past time.

Apparently the origins of fantasy football can be traced all the way back to 1962 when Bill Winkenbach, a businessman with some vested interest in the Raiders laid out some rules that would evolve into the GOPPPL (Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Procrastinators League). Great name - it’s interesting that even during its inception, fantasy football is given no love as an worthy past time. I checked a bunch of sites but the best info seems to be at How Fantasy Football Works so definitely check out that site.

NFLPlayers.com actually has the original rules and draft results from the first ever fantasy football league posted on their site which you should definitely check out. I like to imagine “Billy Wink” and the boys sitting around grilling their buddies for their terrible picks over full glasses of aged scotch in a smoky hotel room. Sometimes I picture scantily clad hotel employees handing out cigarettes and getting lightly spanked. I can hear it now - “Blum your so f’d you old dog - your rolling with Frank Gifford and Ronnie Bull at halfback”…er… or something like that.

It looks like U.K. fantasy football has been around for about 16 years. I don’t know much about those chaps but I can tell you from experience that in Ireland it is very difficult to find a sports bar featuring American football. It’s all rugby and soccer. Now football is obvious number one on my list, but when you sit and watch some rugby player with blood gushing from his face, charge headlong, and unpadded I might add, into a 6-ft monster on the other team, you can start to understand why most Europeans are dumbfounded that American’s can sit and enjoy a baseball game.

Back on topic, to Bill Winkenbach and the other OG’s of fantasy football - thank you for this wonderful gift. It makes it a much nobler decision to choose multiple TVs and 1pm whiskey shots at the bar on Sunday afternoon over my mother-in-laws 70th birthday when I know I’m fighting to preserve over 50 years of tradition. Salut!