Reckon you could manage a team? Perhaps even an entire football league? Test your managerial chops with fantasy football to be sure.
We’ve mentioned fantasy football as a complementary activity to things like playing FM20, but it turns out that starting a football league is easy enough to do that any group of fans can get into it—especially with a little incentive.
If you’ve got some time on your hands, some like-minded football fans around you, and at least one of you knows how to use a spreadsheet, why not start a fantasy football league? Once you have enough people onboard, drawn up a charter, appointed a bookkeeper, and put an irresistible prize on the line, the whole thing could take on a life of its own.
Begin by electing a commissioner
Absolute democracies are a lovely idea until everything flies off the rails in the absence of leadership.
You’re not designating a supreme leader here. You’re just nominating or electing a facilitator of processes and a neutral arbitrator of conflict. Your fledgling fantasy football league needs a commissioner to affect rule changes, maintain fairness, and to ensure everything runs smoothly. The objective for the commissioner here is to maintain both the entertainment value and longevity of this enterprise.
With a devoted and attentive commissioner, your league could possibly go on for as long as Bernie Donnelly’s original “Donnelly Fantasy Football League”, which began all the way back in 1971—and it is still running despite the inevitable events that could occur over the course of a half-century. Stalk them on Facebook for inspiration.
Agree on a certain league (or build your own)
Pick a league that the team managers are familiar with or make your own by combining selected leagues.
It wouldn’t help the longevity or enjoyment factor of this endeavour if everyone is into European football but the focus of your fantasy league is an obscure division in a far-flung region no one has ever heard of. Ideally, the league of choice is one that everyone is already familiar with—preferably a prominent league with match broadcasts you can catch together, or at least a league with reliable match statistics available online.
To make things interesting and expand the pool of players that managers can draft or trade, the charter of your fantasy football league could feature an amendment that includes other regions or divisions. You could even go down to the lowest divisions, as long as there are enough teams and players for managers to choose from, and as long as you can catch the matches or check the stats.
Decide how scoring happens
The scoring of your fantasy teams could be dependent on the real-world performance of the players you pick.
Points could be awarded for players accomplishing any number of things: making an on-pitch appearance, scoring or assisting a goal, preventing a goal, maintaining a clean sheet—or even being fielded for a significant portion of a match.
Points could also be deducted for missed penalties, conceding a goal, getting carded, scoring an own goal—or if you’re feeling ridiculous, anytime a player spits or disrobes on the pitch. Naturally, the team with the most points at the end of the season wins the league.
Set budget limits for balance and fairness
Throw in a limiting factor like a budget and people can’t simply go around picking the most valuable players.
Limit the budget for drafts to make things fair and reduce the instances of multiple managers wanting to draft the same star player. Or, if you’d rather make an experiment of this, let a debate on the merits of hoarding expensive talent play out to see if money really can buy wins.
If you have some time to spare before the start of the next season, or if time isn’t a factor because you’ve decided to simulate the matches in FM20, you could also expand the draft process and throw an auctioning component into the mix—for the realism, if not the drama.
Put a prize on the line
While we certainly don’t condone turning this into a game of wagers, it would all be for nothing without some sort of incentive.
The prize could be financed by membership fees, and the trophy could be as thoughtful as a dirty bowl containing the sum of fees collected (minus expenses). Whatever the prize may be, you’ll find that having at least some form of incentive will spur a higher level of engagement.
Begin planning in the off-season
Everybody should be ready and able to catch Match Day 1 with their teams already filled.
Most of the European leagues let players have a breather between March and June. Professional athletes might be keeping fit to prepare for the start of the next season, weekend warriors might lace up their cleats and take to the neighbourhood pitch, armchair footballers might play some video games—but this is the time when your fantasy football league begins to take shape.
The draft window should ideally open right at the end of one season and close just before the start of the next to maximise the amount of time managers can spend on their drafting decisions. Feel free to include a transfer window somewhere in the middle of the season to release some of the inevitable tension and regret.
Draw up a charter
Once you’ve given your league a name, got everything else figured out, and put it all down on paper, you’ll have a charter to make your new fantasy football league as official as it is ever going to get.
From there, it’s all about keeping the league alive and expanding the roster. New managers could buy their way in, or be elected in, to replace any who resign; the prize could get bigger every season; the bookkeeper might even get a salary—the possibilities are endless. Who knows, maybe one day, this exercise in recreation may earn a mention in the same breath as the Donnelly Fantasy Football League.
Kevin Eichenberger would like to be credited for providing the inspiration to start your own fantasy football league. Let him know his legacy is assured here.