by Joseph Mohr

Created on: September 12, 2007

Fantasy football is an enjoying pastime. Playing fantasy football often makes games that previously seemed uninteresting suddenly become compelling. Having a fantasy football team can suddenly, virtually overnight, make you interested in games that you would have never considered watching before. You may even find yourself routing for individual players on each time. Perhaps, you may even find yourself in a quandary about whether one of your individual players on your fantasy team is playing against your very own team's defense in a game you are watching.

The concept of fantasy sports is not a new one. It has been around a few years now and basically it works like this: you draft a team of players and their statistics each week count towards your totals which are then compared to the totals of another "player" in your league. Most fantasy leagues involving football use a head to head scoring system where in each week you compare stats to your opponent and then a winner is selected for that week. Then the next week begins and another opponent in your league is compared to you. At the end of a predetermined number of weeks of this competition a playoff ensues. Usually leagues are fourteen weeks with the last two official NFL weeks becoming the playoffs for your league.

There are a number of different variations of fantasy football and I could not possibly cover all of them here. Some leagues are played online on yahoo or nfl.com or some other similar site. Some leagues have a live draft that can take all night (if held in person - in online leagues you can also hold a "live" draft). There are some leagues where players are drafted for the teams very quickly with an automated draft using preselected player rankings edited by the individuals playing in that league ahead of time. There are elimination leagues. There are keeper leagues. And there are a ton of other possible variations.

In a typical league, such as the yahoo.com league I am currently playing in, a player's starting team is selected with an auto draft to save time. Each team is selected fourteen players and from that fourteen players each must set a roster each week consisting of a quarterback, two running backs, a tight end, a kicker, three wide receivers and a defense (a whole nfl team whose stats are compiled for that week). Scoring in leagues can also vary. A typical scoring system for weekly head to head competition in a yahoo league goes something like this:

Each player on your starting roster that

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