Alternate Fantasy Football Rules

Once thought to be a game for only the nerdiest of sports enthusiasts, fantasy football has reached such main stream popularity that anyone who does not manage at least one team is often considered a second rate fan.

In an effort to market to fantasy owners who might not have the starting line-up of every team memorized, vast amounts of information has been made accessible for the casual player. Free access to online league tools at sites such as Yahoo and ESPN makes it easy for all ages and levels of football knowledge. If you don't know who the best running backs are, just take a look at the vanilla scouting reports provided by Yahoo's football experts. Not sure if you should take a rookie QB in your draft? See what they have to say on ESPN.com.

This easy knowledge, to some degree, has removed an advantage from people who don't need Yahoo's suggestions on who to start, who know to draft back-ups based on bye-weeks, and who actually understand the risks of taking a Denver running-back in the draft without being told. Information is power, and there's a ton of it out there these days. To make playing fantasy football more difficult, many leagues have become larger, instituted keeper rules, or have alternative scoring.

So what else can be done? What's next on the horizon? A problem I've had is that no matter how well you build and manage your team, there is no way for you to stop your head-to-head opponent from having a fluke week and beating you. As it is now, you just kind of have to accept that you can't stop other teams from scoring points. But what if you were able to "play defense" against your opposition?

I've thought about giving an idea of mine a test run. Every week each owner would get to choose one player to "defend" against. "Defending" would basically entail making a prediction about the production of that player in terms of yards or touchdowns. This can be kind of confusing, so I'll use an example featuring two fictional teams: MikeVicsDawgz and the Belicheaterz.

This week the owner of MikeVicsDawgz is playing the owner of Belicheaterz. MikeVicsDawgz sees that Belicheaterz has Ladainian Tomlinson, and he wants to defend against him. Before Saturday at noon (Wednesday at noon for weeks that start on Thursday), MikeVicsDawgz must post his prediction on the league message board.

Let's say his is prediction is 111 yards for LDT. If Tomlinson runs for 111 yards or more, Belicheaterz will only score points for every yard past the 111th (so a 130 yard game would be scored as a 19 yard game). If LDT runs for less than 111 yards, then MikeVicsDawgz will lose points equal to the difference between the prediction and the performance (so a 79 yard game would lose MikeVicsDawgz 32 yards worth of points). The same process would be applied if MikeVicsDawgz chose to predict touchdowns instead of yards. Obviously this works best if fractional scoring is used.

If Belicheaterz thought that the prediction was very accurate, and could damage his chance of winning, he could choose to sit Tomlinson before his game began. MikeVicsDawgz would NOT get to make another prediction.

Since there is no way to officially apply changes like this on a site like Yahoo, the standings would not reflect the modified scoring. The league commissioner would be forced to keep track of point totals and records and post updates about both on the message board. This would effectively create two competitions in the same league: the regular Yahoo Championship, and the Advanced Championship.

Playoffs, unfortunately, would be complicated as the match-ups would likely differ between competitions. However, Yahoo still tracks team point totals even if you do not make the post-season, so it would not be impossible.

This is an untested idea. If you've got any additions or criticisms to make, feel free to post a comment.