Make fantasy FUN again!
Author’s Note: Above all else, your fantasy (dynasty) experience should be fun and rewarding. Sometimes this means you need to get away from the constant grind of game-day scoring, stats, metrics and analysis which, if out-of-balance, can significantly reduce the enjoyment of this great game. To that end, I hope you will enjoy this slight departure from our normal content. Please feel free to share it with your league-mates. This is a free article available for all to view.
The journey begins…
It’s 5:30 AM, Sunday morning. My weekly ritual during the season.
I lightly step to the door so as not to wake my sleeping wife while holding onto the hope Ollie, too, doesn’t realize I’m about to make my morning migration. For if he does, extra steps must be included. I silently and deliberately turn the handle and begin to step through when I hear it. A guttural yawn followed by a violent whole-body shake and rattle of his collar. Ollie realizes, as he does on most mornings – Dad’s up! Oliver, Ollie for short, is our 11-year-old Australian Labradoodle. The son I never had.
I stand at the threshold and wait for the dog to finish an impressive stretching session which concludes with a lengthy, and perfectly executed, downward dog maneuver before he, too, is ready to join me on our morning routine. Now, instead of heading directly to the football room, I head downstairs to let Ollie out, fill his food bowl and consider choices for my own breakfast, my mind squarely on the day of football to come.
Ollie finishes his business, pushes his way back into the house and bee-lines for his food bowl. Some days he eats immediately, other days he looks at me with the same expression I’ve had dozens of times while surveying a starting roster devoid of talent due to bye weeks, IR designations or simply poor performance – completely uninspiring.
We head upstairs. Oliver takes a detour and waits for me to let him back into bedroom where he can finish what we started seven hours prior, more sleeping. I, however, head to the man-cave where I will formally start, and finish, my Sunday.
I know better than to immediately wake my computer. Once that occurs, what is to come is ordained. Instead, like most days, I start with 30 minutes of the NFL Network, a stretching routine and a light workout routine to clear my mind. I’ve found the NFL Network provides the only pre-game programming I can tolerate. ESPN is too wide-ranging and unfocused and Fox is an utterly-horrific amalgamation of cringy skits, bad humor and ultimately devoid of any useful information. Dare I offer that the best part of Fox coverage on Sunday is the brief respite offered by each commercial break?
It doesn’t take long – time to get to work. I press the lightly illuminated button and my dual 23” monitors leap to life.
I quickly peruse my email and my weekly lineup advice article to ascertain how many of our faithful Premium members require my assistance this morning. In preparation for Sunday, I live by one rule: DLF members come first! If I’ve prepared well in the days prior, only last-minute questions require my input.
My feeds are awash in activity as news streams in from around the NFL with the latest team and player updates. Even at this early hour, news is coming at break-neck speed. A receiver who I have shares of has tweaked a hamstring and may be inactive. One of my quarterbacks has been fighting the flu but is getting pre-game fluids and should play. What!? Josh Gordon has gone AWOL again and won’t play.
I flip over to Twitter. I’ve been mentioned in more than a dozen polls and I attempt to help out as best I can. My football feed is scrolling at an impressive speed, impossible to follow. I randomly pause it and jump in to help as many as I can asking: Who should I start?
After another few minutes of getting up to date, it’s ME time!
I open the MyFantasyLeague dashboard where I begin the process of managing my dozen dynasty leagues and, of course, a few industry redraft contests I participate in. But my passion is dynasty!
What follows is a Sunday morning choreography of league management, a dance of sorts. Those of you with multiple leagues know exactly of what I speak. I start at the top of my league list and work my way down. Any other method and one of my teams may slip through the cracks and I could start an inactive player. It’s a common occurrence from some in leagues I participate in but as an owner of the largest dynasty fantasy football site on the planet, a mistake like that carries potential consequences. And don’t get me started about the stigma of having a bad year or, worse, finishing last. It can’t happen!
Lineups have been set.
It’s now 9:30 AM on the left coast, 30 minutes left to game time. Pre-game reports are ramping up and last-minute inactives are crossing the wire. NFL Network launches into yet another commercial break – Didn’t we just see this exact set of commercials four minutes ago? In a fit of masochistic tendency, I flip to Fox in hopes of catching more game reports but, instead, I’m assaulted by some buffoon impersonating Terry Bradshaw or Jimmy Johnson, complete with bad hair piece, in yet another inane skit. Upon completion, the cameras are back on the hosts pretending to laugh at what they certainly realize is an exceedingly poor attempt at entertainment. My foray back to Fox lasts no more than two minutes until I realize the error of my ways and I swear I won’t falter again.
One last check of all inactives and a final check of my lineup advice column and Twitter.
Game time!
To fantasy footballers, nothing beats the expectation and excitement of a Sunday morning. It’s like Christmas, seventeen weeks in a row. But for those of us with multiple teams, there’s something else.
It goes something like this ….
It’s 10:50 AM and, already, Patrick Mahomes is having himself a game. I’m giddy in that he’s put up 22 points and it’s not even half-time yet. Tyreek Hill has two touchdowns and 128 yards and Travis Kelce has a touchdown of his own. I know I’m starting Hill in another league as well. In another game, Todd Gurley is running roughshod over a hapless defense and I own shares of him too. This is going to be a great week! I flip over to my scoreboards and find while I’m destroying my opponent in one league, I’m facing both Hill and Kelce in one game and I’m down by 61. To make matters worse, Gurley is being started against me by three of my opponents in other games. Furthermore, Leonard Fournette is now on the training table, again, and won’t be returning so I’m down a running back in at least two leagues, but at least he’s being started against me in one game.
The same story plays out each week. It’s the fly in the ointment of having multiple teams. With 12 teams, on a good week I may go 8-4 or 9-3. In the rare week, I’ve won every game. On bad weeks, it’s not nearly as favorable.
I know some who participate in over 50 leagues. With one particular coach, who also happens to commish most of the leagues I play in, during a discussion about this very topic he opined: I just watch the games and root like hell because I know I’m starting the players somewhere.
Hard to argue with that!
But for me, some of the fun is removed if I can’t be fully invested on Sunday. Something is missing.
And to my point, let me take you back in time to 2003. I will also ask for you to provide me with a bit of grace as I weave in a message about personal growth.
In 2003, the league that ultimately founded DLF held its inaugural draft. This league featured 12 friends and friends of friends. As would be expected, it was easy to become fully invested. But over the years, something else began to emerge, especially as we launched DLF in 2006.
I became a dynasty snob.
The change came on slowly and it began impacting my enjoyment of this great game. While I was fully committed and lived for Sundays, I began to judge others who were playing the dynasty format but didn’t immerse themselves or put in, what I felt, was enough time to be competitive. My discontentment grew when these actions, or inaction, allowed others to capitalize and impact the league in what I perceived to be a negative way.
I joined other leagues to combat this feeling with the hope that they wouldn’t suffer from the same element. One league grew to more than 15 at one point. And a funny thing happened on the way to the game. In every league, different strategies, different levels of commitment and different approaches to the game were evident. Each coach was enjoying the hobby in a way that worked for them individually. Some were more involved, others obviously didn’t have as much time or desire. But I started to realize the problem wasn’t with others, it was with me.
During the darkest hours of my malformed doctrine, I had decided I needed to exit my primary league, the one with my friends, the one with the great rivalries and history which had been developed over years. I couldn’t continue to accept lack of commitment and dedication to impact a roster of “my” players or their resulting performance as a team. After all, of all my leagues, this team was the one I was closest to.
Beyond the feelings for my primary league, the addition of multiple new leagues made for more management, more commitment and, in every case, greater investment. I had a difficult time enjoying my beloved Sundays as I couldn’t find a remedy for enjoying the games in which performing players leading me to a victory in one league were delivering a loss to me in another. I found myself focusing on the players I was starting most who weren’t also opposing me. Passable on some rare weeks but a fool’s errand in most others.
This issue, seemingly without a resolution, was quickly draining the enjoyment and satisfaction of my fantasy activities. How could I participate in so many leagues, be competitive but also enjoy the best part of the game, Sunday football and rooting for my players?
Back to my primary league.
I had crafted my exit email to the commish announcing my departure with instruction to wait until I was completely ready.
And then the answer came to me.
If my primary league was the one I was most passionate about with the players I was closest to, why not focus all my Sunday energy on that team and, with one small tweak, try to recapture my love of the games and the day? This league had the cheapest entry point each year but my biggest emotional attachment. The answer was all too obvious.
From that moment, the path was clear. I immediately told the commish to not send my withdrawal message and that I’d be staying in the league. And I set upon my new strategy.
That was over a decade ago and to this day, the same strategy allows me to fully enjoy my fantasy experience without the catch-22 player element plaguing every fantasy coach with multiple teams
The solution ended up being wildly simply, a change in philosophy was needed. Winning would be secondary and enjoyment would be the primary goal!
Before you rage-quit this article, shaking your fist at the fact you won’t get these last few minutes of your life back again, hear me out.
I still love winning. I still have that competitive drive to make each of my dynasty rosters an unstoppable force which is feared on Sundays when my competition views the match-up. My competitive nature and ability to research has always provided me a leg up and the dynasty format is perfect for people like me. The more time you put in, the more successful you will be. It is a very simple equation and it proves out in the dynasty game as well.
I haven’t ‘paid’ for any of my fantasy leagues in well over a decade, always earning more than I pay out in fees so I know where my bread is buttered.
But in one league, my primary league, winning is very secondary. Instead, that team is the one which drives my fantasy fervor each and every week. That team is the one where I focus almost exclusively on amassing a squad of my favorite players, making trades for rookie selections in the next rookie draft and, in many cases, starting players who I want to watch on any given Sunday over those who may have the better matchup that week. If I’m able to start multiple players in a marquee matchup, all the better.
In most every week, my primary league is the only score I’m checking when the first games kick-off, choosing not to look at the scores of my other games until after the second set of games begin. I don’t want to lose focus on the enjoyment of my Sunday by getting caught up in a dozen ever-changing scores.
Don’t get me wrong, I still love to win and wish to be competitive every week, every year. But the changed mindset from an expectation of winning to the greater desire for enjoyment changed everything about my football experience on Sundays. With one not-so obvious adjustment, I recaptured what fantasy football is about – anticipation and enjoyment of the games and rooting for your favorite players.
In all honesty, I can’t tell you Sundays are completely bereft of frustration as I am still very emotionally tied to this team. If they don’t perform well, I feel it in much the same way as when any of my real-life teams don’t perform well. But that is the investment we all have with our favorite teams and players and it comes with the territory.
In my estimation, there’s no right or wrong way to implement this strategy. You can choose the level of balance desired which provides the increased level of enjoyment. Wish to build a squad of as many players from your home team as possible? Go for it! Desire to put an absurd level of priority on rookie draft picks and young players? Make it happen! Have a favorite quarterback-receiver combination (mine was Daunte Culpepper and Randy Moss)? Sell out to get them!
The choice and balance is yours to make.
If you’ve been suffering from flagging enthusiasm and are considering walking away from dynasty because it isn’t as fun as it used to be, my hope is that perhaps this strategy could offer you way forward you hadn’t considered.
We are at the very beginning of draft season and there’s no time like the present to jump in if this strategy is intriguing to you. Whether it be a change of mindset in an existing league or you are looking for a new league (https://safeleaguesffl.com/types/DLF.php) altogether, options abound for you to take your dynasty enjoyment to the next level.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this departure from our normal strategic content and that my journey can provide the wind in the sails of your own.
I would love to hear your thoughts and comments as you consider a change for yourself or as you progress with this new approach.
You can find Jeff on Twitter at @dlf_jeff
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