The Future of Fantasy Continued

The Future of Fantasy Continued
by Dan Salem and Todd Salem (1-25-13)

[Part One from Monday]

TODD:

I think FCS (Fantasy Championship Series) is already taken but I am a huge fan of unnecessary acronyms. How about FYF, pronounced like fife, the flute-like instrument.  Full-Year Fantasy.

In answer to your FYF question, you would not have to choose between starting Adrian Peterson and LeBron James. My version of FYF works like this:
- Each sport has a starting lineup and the weeks themselves are irrelevant
- Scoring isn't points based so whatever each player accumulates goes towards a team's total

Do it any other way and owners could skew their rosters depending on the month to win the most weeks, without ever having the best teams. So in your example, if Peterson was starting at running back and LeBron was starting at power forward, you would gain points for whatever stats they gathered. The problems begin when trying to decide how many points each action is worth. Whats the basketball equivalent of rushing for 100 yards and a touchdown or vice versa?

I can see why you think FYF is too big of a hurdle to climb. It would be a huge undertaking to work out all the bugs and problems associated with it, too big for us to do this week.  But SOMEONE will eventually figure it out.  After years of failure, Full-Year Fantasy will be THE. NEXT. BIG. THING.

Your addendum to fantasy football is interesting and it already exists in a way. There are leagues that play fantasy football through the real-life playoffs. Teams can protect some of their players and the rest go in a pool to be redrafted. The key is to select players who not only will perform well, but who also have the best chance of sticking around for multiple rounds of the playoffs. For example, even though Adrian Peterson is a stud, he only lasted one game this post season and his team was the underdog going in. Peterson might not have even been worthy of a top three running back pick because of those parameters.

The week eight injury supplemental draft sounds like a similar plan, only more infuriating. I actually kind of hate it. So someone who drafts amazingly and ends up with the deepest team in the league through sheer will and commitment ends up getting punished in week eight? Am I understanding this correctly?  I'm not quite on board with this idea. Read: this idea is stupid.

DAN:

You completely missed the point of a supplemental draft and its really nothing like a redraft for the playoffs. The injury draft isn't intended to punish the top team who drafted great and through sheer will has the deepest team in the league. That WOULD be stupid. It's intent is to combat the major issue I see with fantasy sports in general. No one wants to trade!

Every person wants to give up their crappy players for someone's good ones. Its taken me a long time to 'figure out' what level of quality is necessary to garner interest from an opposing team for a trade. I'm proud to say I've gotten trades approved in every fantasy sport. However, many have been with you because you actually understand this level of quality and enjoy trading. Most people are boring and think if they stand pat then their roster will eventually come through. Those people lose.

The idea here is to create a midseason. Perhaps its even a buy week so everyone can dial in and reassess their team to see if they have dead weight and what their needs are. Instead of just putting two players into a draft pool, every player is weighed on a one to ten scale of performance. You have to put seven points into the draft for example. And if you select a six or seven in the midseason draft, it comes with caveats assuming no other team got anyone higher than five. If you're in last place, I think you sacrifice five points the following week to grab a top tier player. This allows for a potential mulligan for those teams that go unlucky drafting. Trying to put some skill back into the game is a good thing.

As for FYF, naming a sports competition after a girly musical instrument is dangerous ground. And I completely disagree with the notion of NOT deciding between All Day Adrian Peterson and The King Lebron James. That's the fun part!

FYF works because you HAVE to make that call. And stacking your team wouldn't be possible with the proper position slot restrictions. I love the idea of weighing a 100 yard game versus a 10 assist game. The fact that you are smashing all sports into one is the appeal to me. I'm not saying it will be easy, we agree on that, but its the whole point.

TODD:

There is definitely tons of room for improvement in the fantasy sports landscape. We haven't solved anything here, but perhaps we got the ball rolling. FYF needs a lot of work and since neither of us are the man to do it, we'll play the waiting game.

I have to poke further at this mid season injury draft in fantasy football.  I understand your reasoning; I'm just not sure it is worthy of a game tweak. Part of the fun of fantasy sports is finding out the personalities of the other owners: who will wheel and deal, who is overly attached to certain players; who is an idiot. This goes right along with finding a trade partner. Forcing the dealing with a convoluted mid-season system seems shortsighted.

The same goes for overcoming injuries. It's almost all luck with injuries in fantasy football and finding replacements and jumbling rosters with a mid season draft because a handful of stars get hurt every season does not fix that problem. If your first round pick gets put on IR, I'm not sure an unprotected, middle tier fill-in during week nine is going to make much of a difference.

You didn't completely waste your time though. The point ranking system has real potential. I feel like it might be perfect for the off-season of a keeper league: you get to keep a certain amount of "player points" in whatever combination you want. Knock yourself out and keep one twenty-five point guy (or whatever) or keep three solid starters at eight points a piece. I like that; that has major potential. Of course, it would be hell trying to get everyone to agree on each player's point value. Once that's done, by a governing body or what not, this system has a slight edge over keeping players based on auction pricing alone.  A player evaluation would be more in line with their past season performance rather than their dollar amounts from the previous March, which is often arbitrary a year later.

Fantasy!

[If you missed Part One from Monday]