Fantasy Football Rules

Just a few short years ago, I looked down on those who participated in fantasy sports leagues. I considered fantasy football and baseball to be the sporting equivalent of Dungeons & Dragons, a nerdy game to occupy the time of nerds. Of course, this opinion came from a guy who, as a kid, used to play entire 162 game seasons of Stat-O-Matic baseball and kept stats, so it was kind of ironic.

In reality, it was only a matter of time before I was knee deep in fantasy leagues. These days I’m involved in more fantasies than Chasey Lain.

Having gone from anti-fantasy league to fantasy veteran, I’ve acquired a little bit of knowledge when it comes to the all-important draft day. I don’t have any delusions that I am a fantasy football expert, but doing an average of three drafts per season, I’ve picked up on a few tips that come in handy on draft day.

Last issue, El Presidente laid out a 7-point plan to disrupt your fellow league owners with a verbal assault. This issue, we’re going the opposite direction and giving you a list of things not to do during your draft.

They may not all help you put together a championship team, but they’ll prove handy when you head into your draft’s war room.

Don’t come unprepared

Every league has a guy who shows up five minutes before the draft starts and wants to borrow your magazine for a minute. Apparently the plan is to copy down all three hundred NFL players and their stats before the draft starts – not much of a strategy.

Even if you don’t take your fantasy league seriously, the least you can do for yourself is be somewhat prepared.

If you draft without a magazine it will ensure a couple of things – 1.) your team will suck 2.) the draft will last 12 hours because you won’t have a list of whose been taken, so you’ll constantly be drafting players who were taken four rounds earlier and 3.) because of #2, everyone in the draft will hate you.

There are around 4.3 million fantasy magazines that are being published every year at this point and that’s not counting titles like Swank and Black Tail that could potentially be lumped into the “fantasy” category.

Do yourself a favor and spend the $3 at Walgreens to score a magazine before the draft, watch a little NFL Live (if nothing else than to just laugh at Sean Salisbury) and do some research to make sure you’re prepared for draft day.

Don’t scream “that was my guy” after every pick

Nothing is more annoying than when a guy who has the 12th pick in the first round screams out “Damn, that was my guy!” when LaDanian Tomlinson gets taken with the #1 pick.

It’s an acceptable reaction when you legitimately targeted a late round steal and that guy gets snatched up a few picks before you planned on taken him. It is not acceptable when you consider all 500 players in the NFL to be “your guy” and thus feel the need to make sure that everyone else knows that they stole one of your potential picks with every selection.

If you are this guy, just understand that everyone else in the room is dreaming of rolling up their magazine and cramming it down your throat to shut you up.

Don’t draft one of the Grammatica Brothers

I don’t even know if either one of the brothers are going to be starting for an NFL team this season, but it’s just a steadfast old drafting rule not to take one of the Grammatica’s. For two reasons:

1. It’s every NFL fan’s God given right to be able to enjoy it when one of these clowns does a cartwheel after hitting a 20-yard chip shot and accidentally snaps his ACL in half. If you have him on your team, you can’t take pleasure in his demise like your suppose to.

2. You don’t want to hate your own team.

Don’t trust fantasy magazines

Earlier I mentioned that it’s crucial to have a magazine for the draft. While this is true, it’s also critical that you don’t trust the magazine that you’ve got. It may sound like I’m flip flopping more than Skip Bayless, I realize, but the fact is that the fantasy mags are printed several months in advance. Every publisher wants to be the first on the shelves, so by the time you grab one, it will lack any recent updates regarding injuries, etc.

Say for example you are drafting a sleeper QB late in the day and your magazine says that, with the addition of receiver Muhsin Muhammed, Bears QB, Rex Grossman, is poised for a breakout season. Since you assume that your fantasy magazine is all knowing, you swoop in and take him.

As soon as you call his name, you get word that Grossman is out for 4 months with a broken ankle suffered in the preseason and now your sleeper pick is poised to throw as many touchdown passes as you over the first half of the season.

If this happens, don’t look at your magazine and wonder why it didn’t provide you with the update.

Don’t spoil the fun if one of your fellow owners drafts an injured player

El Presidente mentioned in his column that his league has a policy of telling a guy if they just drafted an injured player by mistake.

That’s not nearly as fun as the alternative.

If your league doesn’t employ such generous rules, it is your responsibility as a league member to fall completely silent when another owner drops an early pick on someone like the aforementioned Grossman, without knowledge of the player’s injury. Once sufficient time has passed to ensure that the pick is official, it is also your duty as league member to immediately inform said owner about his unfortunate selection and proceed to mock him for the rest of the draft.

If nothing else, the slip up and subsequent humiliation might rattle the owner and result in one less team competing for the top spot in the league.

Don’t draft while drunk

It’s perfectly okay, even expected, for you to drain a few coldies with your friends during the draft. If it weren’t for alcohol, the four or five hour draft process might be a little too much.

Drinking is part of the fun of the fantasy sports draft process, however there is a negative side effect to the festivities. If the beer begins to flow too early and goes down a little too easy, one can be found guilty of DWI – Drafting While Intoxicated.

If you find yourself asking if Corey Dillon has been selected yet when you’re in the 5th round, you’ve probably gone above and beyond the call of duty. When you draft Stump Mitchell as your third running back, it’s time to step away from the Natural Light 12-pack and let the fellas finish up for you.

Don’t draft the defense of a team that plays in the same division as your offensive guns

It’s a pretty simple concept really, but one that seems to get ignored on a regular basis. If, for example, your team’s offensive output partially depends on Trent Green as your QB, then you don’t want to draft the Raiders defense, because twice in the season, you’re going to shoot yourself in the foot. Rarely does that match up come out positive for your squad.

Either Green tears up the Raider defense or vice versa and regardless of how it goes down, your points generally cancel each other out. It’s hard to explain the gamut of emotions that a fantasy owner goes through when his Quarterback throws an interception to his defense. It’s like being in the crowd at the Drago-Balboa fight in Russia, people wanted to root for both to do well, but knew it couldn’t happen.

So there are 7 helpful tips on what not to do in this season’s fantasy draft. Couple these with El Presidente’s verbal assault tips and you should be well on your way to a successful fantasy football draft.