Fantasy Football?

O.k., maybe not. 

Looks like I got a "touching up" by Aske in this weeks games

When setting up your league’s playoff format (assuming the typical single elimination tournament that most leagues use) the first thing you’ll want to establish is the number of teams involved. Most leagues involve six teams in their playoffs. This creates a simple three-week bracket where the top two teams get byes into the second round. While this is a very standard format, (it’s what I use in my 14-team league), is it the best format for identifying your league champion?

There are a couple of things you may want to consider before adopting this format. The majority of fantasy football leagues are either 10 or 12 team leagues. If you use this format in these size leagues you are allowing 50% – 60% of your league to qualify for the playoffs. Kind of NBA/NHL-ish as far as playoff participation goes. The NFL allows just over a third (12 of its 32) of its teams into the playoffs. Even in 12 team leagues you could easily be looking at teams with .500 records or worse, qualifying for your post season. Certainly the playoffs are exciting and having a majority of your owners qualify keeps interest high throughout the regular season. However you have to offset that with the fact that in a single elimination format, one bad week can take out the best of teams.

Do you really want to give owners of mediocre teams a shot at your league title? This comes down to personal preference and I think six teams in a 14-team league give you a quality post season. I think the number for 10-team leagues should be four teams. Any more than that guarantees you to have a below average team in your playoffs. 12-team leagues fall in the middle, you could make the argument for either, though I lean toward the six-team size because it makes your regular season more interesting and keeps more teams alive for the playoffs until the last weeks of the season.

Now that we’ve determined how many teams will participate in your post season, how do we determine who they’ll be? Typically, overall record is used to determine your playoff teams, however many leagues are reserving a playoff spot based on total points. This makes sense when you consider that a team’s won/loss record often has as much to do with luck in scheduling as it does with the actual team’s performance. How many times have you been that team that scored the second highest amount of points in your league for the week and lost the game? Adding a playoff position for a total points champion is a good way to ensure the best teams qualify for the playoffs. My league reserves the final wildcard for the highest scoring team that hasn’t qualified on overall record.

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