I've been running one league for over 20 years now and I have found it to be essential to keep tweaking the rules over the years to keep things interesting. My guys swear that it's the best league that they have ever been in, but it's not traditional to say the least. Here are some of our big changes throughout the years:
1) We switched to doubleheaders about 15 years ago.
2) Around the same time, we started doing an NFL tournament. We put aside about $400 for a tournament based on the NFL Playoffs. We keep 3 players from the regular season and then do a draft the week before the NFL playoffs start. It extends our league for another month. We started with 10 teams qualify for the tournament, but we're down to 8 in recent years. It gives teams incentive to keep playing at the end of the season because everyone wants to make the tournament. Now we do it with the top 7 teams make and the last team is the highest scoring remaining team over weeks 12-14.
3) We switched to auction drafts about 13 years ago. Everyone loved it. It's a draft that we do in person. People will fly in for it.
4) A couple of years later, we added an online snake draft a week before our auction draft where we would draft Defenses, Kickers, IDPs, and lower ranked QBs/RBs/WRs/TEs. Basically it got people excited for the league a little earlier than the draft.
5) We introduced blind bids for our live auction draft. We've done anywhere from 12-24 players in a blind bid format. It's probably everyone's favorite part of the draft.
6) We started doing IDPs about 15 years ago. Anywhere from 1-3, sometimes flex, sometimes position specific.
7) We started out standard scoring the first year and moved to .5 ppr. We've doing 1 ppr and 1.5 ppr for TEs for the past 5 years or so.
8 ) We do blind bidding waivers, but we award $10 per team for every NFL pick against the spread correct.
9) For years we had 4 playoff spots. For the past 5 years, we moved to 5 teams. All five play in week 15 and the 2 highest move to the Fantasy Bowl plus the next 2 play for 3 third place. This year, we mixed things up again by having 3 teams advancing to the Championship round with the combined scores in weeks 15 and 16 to determine first, second, and third. Why? Just to try something different.
10) We switched to Victory Points a few years ago. Now every game matters on MNF. You might only get 1 or 2 addditional VPs depending if you finish top 4, middle 4 or bottom 4.
10) This year we switched to best ball scoring. It's been the greatest thing ever. Fournette goes down in the first quarter? Well no problem as long as you have depth on your roster to score more than he did. No more wrestling for an hour on which five players to use for your second flex spot. Now every player on your roster matters. While we give up weekly line-up strategy, now we have to come up with strategy about managing your roster. Should you carry 2 defenses or kickers? 2 or 3 QBs? Just one? How many IDPs? Do you drop a player that might help you long-term for a short term help that might help you win a game or get an additional Victory Point? Do you try to get a player that plays on MNF or SNF so that you can drop him Sunday in case you need help in scoring at another position. eg Let's say that your 1 kicker only scored 3 points. Do you drop a player to get the kicker on the Sunday or Monday night game? Or maybe you do it early because you have better options during the earlier games. You constantly have to monitor your roster during the weekend. Plus, everyone has more players going, so more players to watch and that impacts the results of your games plus everyone's games and those impact your victory points. It's definitely non-traditional , but we all love it so far.
We've never discussed using an o-line or a parallel league (not yet anyway). We always have a league rules meeting to kick off the league in early August. We tend to do some minor tweaks to the scoring system or some bigger changes like those listed above. It's not for everyone. I realize that some people prefer stability and tradition. Our rules changes just helps keeps things fresh for us.
