I’m wrapping up year 25 of playing FF and the excitement is as high as it has ever been. I’ve had to modify my style to help suit my changing lifestyle (wife, 3 kids, demanding job, Church making Sunday mornings challenging). I increased the #of leagues to 12 this year but now play mostly in highly competing 16 team IDP contract leagues with huge rosters. I love the management aspect of the leagues in the off-season with contract restructures, franchise tags, offers to tagged players, and free agent auctions in February-April. Then in June or July I get my rookie draft fix it. All of these features are slow and drawn out so they don’t have to be too taxing at any one point. The biggest draw is that there isn’t as much in season fighting over free agents, just roster decisions. I found that I no longer have time to spend hours and hours in season researching and putting in waiver bids. I do some of this but not a ton.
My advice:
- I’ll strongly echo those that said don’t look at your matchups and don’t look at scores until after the Sunday night game. Enjoy watching your favorite team or players on Sunday and not being tormented by the ups and downs of each play. We can’t control the scoring so it is what it is and just see what you need on Monday night. Some leagues I don’t even check until the week is over.
- Don’t bother with the win probability %. This just adds frustration frustration when your team that was a 65-35% favorite loses. That isn’t even that big of an upset. Pocket Aces lose to 2-7 offset 1 out if 5 times!
- don’t fall into the trap of thinking it’s all luck. Yes, improbably weeks happen and the worst teams can beat the best teams. You can put your teams in better position to mitigate the unfortunate breaks. Your team will also be the benefactor of being lucky just as much ad it’s unlucky. With my 12 leagues, rarely does my most dominant team with the championship however if I get 2 championships out of 12, I’m thrilled.
- You have to be realistic with expectations that in 10-16 team leagues, you’re only going to win once every 10-16 years! If you’re always winning, you probably need to find more competitive leagues. If you never win, you might want to try less challenging leagues. Very few people would enjoy blackjack if you only won once every 10-16 times.
- play multiple different formats. I play in a little bit of everything so it keeps it entertaining. I also like to rebuild teams so occasionally, my goal isn’t to win but instead to set myself up to win in 2-4 years. This makes rookie drafts more excitinf
-play in leagues with rookie drafts! The sting of a bad year is removed when your reward is top notch rookie picks
- Don’t let it interfere with other priorities (family, etc.) There was a time when I spent so much time researching that my family was always annoyed with me and it amplified my disappointment when I lost or I had a bad week. Find what works for you and keep the top priorities as the top priorities! You won’t enjoy fantasy football as much if other parts of life are unenjoyable. If relationships, health, job stress, money, etc are becoming difficult to manage, scale back or take a break from playing and come back when it’s the right time.
- Don’t be afraid to admit the hobby gets stale. There are a lot of things that I don’t enjoy as much anymore. My 3 young boys have changed a lot for me and for many years, I had to find new hobbies or found I couldn’t enjoy some as much as I used to. I’ve also found that I’m starting to get back into some of those hobbies after a long break or now that my kids are at “easier” ages.
