Setting up a fantasy league is much easier than you might think.

There are some specific things you need to decide which impact your rules but for the purposes of this lesson we will stick to the basics.

The Questions

• How big do you want your league to be (how many owners)?
• How will you structure it?
• What positions do you want your teams to have?
• How many Starters do you want to have each week?
• How big do you want your roster to be?
• Will you have fixed or variable lineup structures?
• How will you handle the draft?
• How will you handle free agents?
• Will you allow trades?
• What scoring system will you use?
• How long will your regular season schedule be?
• How many teams will qualify for the playoffs?
• When do you want your season to end?
• Who will be your commissioner and how much power will they have?
• Will owners have a method of over-riding commissioner decisions?

How big do you want your league to be (how many owners)?
This is often impacted by how many people you can find who are interested. Most offices/work sites can support an 8-team league fairly easily. There are families that support leagues of this size. The more teams you add, the harder it becomes to keep people involved from year to year.

Our recommendation for beginning leagues is to start at eight teams. You can always move up to larger leagues as you gain experience.

How will you structure it?
This is dependent on the size of your league, but sticking with the recommended size of eight teams, we recommend you have all the teams in the same Division. As you grow your league you may want to have multiple divisions and/or conferences, but an 8-team league lends itself to a single division format.

What positions do you want your teams to have?
Though you can add positions for everything from Punters to Individual Defensive Players, we recommend you stick with a fairly basic roster structure. You should use quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers, tight ends, place kickers and a team defense (that includes special teams). This is actually the most common structure found in fantasy football.

How many Starters do you want to have each week?
The NFL starts six skill position players on offense. Though they vary the players and positions they always must have two ends and four backs. We recommend you follow this example but make it a little stricter. Force your ownership into a specific lineup structure. A common example would be to start one quarterback, two running backs, two wider receivers, one tight end, one place kicker and one defensive/special team each week. This makes for a total of eight starters.

How big do you want your roster to be?
If you are going to have eight starters, it is always a good idea to allow your owners to draft a backup for every starter. Therefore our recommendation is that you have 16-man rosters.

Will you have fixed or variable lineup structures?
A fixed roster is one where the owner has to start a specified number of players at each position with no variation allowed. Many leagues allow owners to vary their starting lineups by using what is commonly termed as “wild card” players. For instance a league might require you to start one quarterback, one running back, one wide receiver, one tight end, one place kicker, one defensive/special team and two wild card players that can be taken from the ranks of running backs, wide receivers or tight ends. This mirrors the NFL in that it allows a team to run multiple formations (one back, trips, twins, full house, jumbo).

For beginning leagues we do not recommend this approach. While it does allow an owner to make up for a weak position in his roster, it also makes the development of draft strategies much more difficult and it causes more work for the commissioner (he has to check each lineup to ensure it has the mandatory players as well as the proper total number of starters).

Rather we suggest a fixed lineup composed as previously mentioned.

How will you handle the draft?
While many experienced players prefer an auction to a draft, we recommend any new league start with a player draft. Additionally we recommend you utilize a serpentine draft structure. A serpentine draft is where the team that drafts first in the first round drafts last in the second. Basically you take your odd round draft order and flop them in the even rounds.

How will you handle free agents?
While each league must decide for itself how often they want owners to be able to acquire new players, our recommendation would be for a weekly free agent session where players are awarded on the basis of a team's need. Team need can be defined by record and total points scored. See FFL-104: Free agency for specifics on this.

Will you allow trades?
While allowing teams to trade amongst themselves causes complexity to the basic system it also encourages interaction amongst owners. Any time you get your owners to interact it can only be beneficial to a league.

One thing to be aware of is that some people will cheat. They will conspire with other owners to strengthen one team at the expense of the other. This is most often done in leagues that offer cash payouts and it is called collusion. There is nothing that can destroy a league faster than two or more owners colluding at the expense of the rest of the league.

While we do recommend you allow trading, we also recommend you have a trading deadline approximately two weeks prior to the start of your playoffs. This will help prevent collusion but you also must remain vigilant at all times.

If you feel a trade is questionable, you should be able to contact your commissioner. If you are the commissioner you should approach each owner separately and ask their reasons for making the trade. As long as both can give a logical reason, the trade should be allowed regardless of how one-sided it seems.

Different people evaluate talent differently and one never knows if their evaluation is any better than that of the person who looks stupid at the outset of the trade. Time will tell – you should not.

If you find that owners are colluding you should annul any trade they make, warn them and, if necessary, banish them from your league. Cheaters are never needed or desirable.

What scoring system will you use?
For beginning leagues we always recommend keeping things simple. In FFL-103 we discussed a Basic Scoring system. That is what we recommend for any starting league.

Once you have gained experience, even if it is only one year, you will have a much better feel for how things work and you can then decide if you want to add complexity to your scoring system.

How long will your regular season schedule be?
Referring to our recommendations from above, you will see that an 8-team league lends itself very naturally to a 14-game regular season. This is accomplished by playing every other team twice, once home and once away.

How many teams will qualify for the playoffs?
We believe the regular season should mean something so we don't ever recommend that more than half of the teams in your league make your playoffs.

However, it is perfectly acceptable to set up two sets of playoffs for your league. Both playoffs can run concurrently. One for your league's championship and one for its “Toilet Bowl”.

Some leagues have gone so far as to having the winner of the “Toilet Bowl” actually receiving an engraved Toilet Seat (please only use new ones for this).

If you play a 14-game season and start your playoffs in week 15, then you will have your championship game in week 16, which is a very good thing when you consider how many NFL starters only play part time in week 17.

For your 8-team league we recommend two playoff structures with the top four teams qualifying for the championship bracket and the remaining four going to the “Toilet Bowl”. Further, we recommend that the losers of the games in week 15 matchup in week 16 so you can complete your league seedings for the next season's draft. This also let's you give the “Toilet Bowl” award to the team that loses the “Toilet Bowl” playoffs.

By giving a humorous award to the team that does the worst in your playoffs you provide built-in incentive for your lesser teams to improve in the coming years.

When do you want your season to end?
We recommend that regardless of the size of your league, you endeavor to finish you regular season in time that your playoffs finish in week 16. This means that you have to know how many weeks will be required to complete your playoffs. Larger leagues require up to four weeks to run through their playoffs. Most leagues require only two or three.

Who will be your commissioner and how much power will they have?
The first thing to realize is that even though you may be the driving force behind the league, your personality may not be ideally suited for commissioning a league.

This is a hard pill for many to swallow.

A commissioner must in all cases be ethical and honest. In some cases a commissioner must be willing to allow another owner to take advantage of them.

Any time there is any doubt about where a player should go, a commissioner must be willing to give up that player to the other owner.

Any decision that could appear to be unfairly decided in the commissioner's favor must be decided against a commissioner.

Any time there is a dispute between owners, a commissioner must be able to forget relationships and decide the dispute based on the facts presented, even if he likes one owner and despises the other.

If at any time a commissioner's integrity is called into question he must be willing to step down. The integrity of the league must be the over-riding factor in any decision handed down by a commissioner.

This is not an easy mantle to wear. Some people are ideally suited to be commissioners others never succeed no matter how good their intentions.

But if you find such a person, then their power commensurate with their responsibilities. It will fall to the commissioner to settle any disputes and decide between the various owners. This can only be accomplished if the commissioner has the power to go with the title and the respect of the owners.

Will owners have a method of over-riding commissioner decisions?
This is always a good idea, but it must be a rare event. Therefore you should limit the number of times an individual owner can call a commissioner's decision before the league. By limiting each owner to only one or two appeals, you ensure the owner only appeals something they feel passionate about.

Further, you should limit every trade from being disputed for personal reasons. If two owners make a trade that benefit each of them, it should not matter if it hurts another owner. People make trades to help their team – they should not have to worry about protecting their competitor's teams.

Still you will occasionally find yourself under the rule of a bad commissioner. In this case the league should come first. That means the league must have the ability to overturn a commissioner's decision and even to remove the commissioner if need be. This is a very delicate decision that should never be taken lightly.

Write it down
Finally, once you have asked and answered each of the questions listed above, write the answers down in the form of rules. Try to eliminate any possible loopholes but be cognizant that no matter how tight you make the rules, someone will find a loophole that will need closing.

One thing that may ease you into this whole process is the use of a web-based league management system. I can wholeheartedly recommend Yahoo.com's Fantasy Sports section. Football should open up sometime in July or August and it is free to host your league's with them.

If you are willing to spend a little money, another product that will help you greatly, and one I use for most of my leagues, is FLM (Fantasy League Manager) by Sideline Sports. The folks that run it are top shelf. Customer support is outstanding. And you can use their product for free for the first six weeks of the season to see if it fits your needs. After that you pay a relatively low fee for the statistics and the fee goes down for repeat customers.

Once the draft has started, do not allow any rule changes for that year. People make draft decisions based on the rules going in. To change the rules after the draft starts is inherently unfair to those that properly prepared.

Save all rule changes for the off-season.

With the rules in hand, you can now move on to acquiring owners for your league.

Finally, if you are between the ages of 10 and 18, and would rather have someone else run the league for you - I can recommend Terry Cannon's Youth Fantasy Football Leagues. Terry offers multiple leagues with players being separated into specified age groups. Further, Terry does this to promote the hobby and as such offers these leagues at no cost to you.