Cut and Dry : Fantasy Football Magazine

Year of the breakout!
By : Tim Stephenson

July.17th, 2010
CDFFM : Edition 1.

Profiling the leagues fantasy relevant players for the purpose of better preparing our readers for their upcoming fantasy football drafts. A well prepared drafter, is a championship contender! With the tips, knowledge and strategies presented in this edition, we will give readers the ability to not only draft well, but manage well. We want you to be just as successful in December, as we'll help you be this summer.

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Page I : What is fantasy football?
[Intended for members new to fantasy football]

So you're ready to take the leap. You're friends have been playing fantasy football for years, leaving you scratching your head over such scenarios as a Cowboys fan hoping for Eli Manning to eclipse 300 yards this week! You may have asked questions like, "How can you be cheering for Frank Gore and Steven Jackson in the Rams-49ers game?! " Well, lets make this picture crystal clear for you! Fantasy football works as follows. You will begin by selecting a website that you would like to use for your league, you may create a league, or join one that someone else has previously created. The most common websites available are,

www.nfl.com
www.espn.com
www.yahoo.com
www.fleaflicker.com

You may want to visit each site first, if you do not have working knowledge of their fantasy football templates. Most hardcore players are divided on which is truly the best, I can tell you that I personally use fleaflicker for the 6 year league I run, and have had no problems with it during this time. I have also used ESPN extensively, which I would also recommend. Each site has it's perks.

After you've made your selection, you will then join a league ( I will continue to speak as though you have selected to join a league rather then creating one, for clarity purposes. ). Most league will consist of 10 players, 9 and yourself. Size can vary anywhere from 6-20 players per league. But 10 and 12 man leagues are by far the most commonly used. The two main factors you want to look for when selecting a league would be, when the live draft is happening, because if you can't make that time or date, you probably don't want to join that particular league. The other is the league scoring/settings. This covers things like, how many points you will receive when your quarterback, runningback or wide receiver scores a touchdown, if your league awards 1 point for a player catching a pass, refereed to as a PPR league, point per reception or roster requirements such as starting two quarterbacks instead of one, or using defensive players as well. For example, a common roster may look like this,

QB -
RB -
RB -
WR -
WR -
TE -
DEF/ST -
K -

BE -
BE -
BE -
BE -

BE spots are for your bench or back up players. So you've done all this, and you're ready to complete your draft. When you enter your live draft application, you will find out which position you will be drafting in, the draft order. Anywhere from 1-10 if your league has the standard 10 players. Most drafts are what we call snake drafts, what this means is if you draft 10th in the first round, or last, you will pick first in the next round, 11th overall? Understand? So your selections would be as follows 10th, 11th, 30th, 31st, 50th, 51st, etc

Once your team is selected you will be able to select your starting roster for week 1 of the season, your best players you can put in each spot to hopefully score more points then your week 1 opponent. Like real NFL football, each week, you will play someone else in your league, pitting their players up against yours, using the real results of the NFL games to determine the winner. Most basic scoring rewards 6 points for a touchdown just like in the NFL. Yardage is usually awarded on a 1 point per 10 yard ratio. So if your runningback gains 100 yards, and has 1 touchdown, he's just earned you 16 points towards your total score! It's that easy. Again, you should become very sure of your leagues scoring format prior to drafting as it should affect the type of players to want to select earlier in the draft. A ppr league for examples makes wide receivers much more valuable then a standard league does! You will play 12-13 of these regular season match ups during the league amassing a record, 8-5, 2-11, or 12-1 if you follow the advice that will be laid out later in this magazine! The regular season will culminate with your league playoffs being played in weeks 14 and 15, with the championship game usually decided in week 16 of the regular season! Now you're ready to start your fantasy football journey, tread carefully from here though, you are about to enter a brotherhood that makes the Illuminati look like the cabbage patch kids.

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