Fantasy Football Today - Dynasty League 101: A Step-by-Step Guide to Setup & Rules! (1/21 Fantasy Football Today Dynasty)

Episode Date: January 21, 2025

John Bosch joins Heath Cummings on Fantasy Football Today Dynasty to help you set up your first dynasty league! They dive into essential tips, from choosing the best league formats and settings to finding leagues and setting up rules that work for everyone. If you're new to dynasty leagues or looking to improve your current setup, this episode is packed with valuable insights. 0:00 Intro 3:00 Dynasty League Constitution 7:55 How to Find a New Dynasty League 9:50 Best Communication Tool for Dynasty League 13:55 Auction-Based Drafts 18:00 Roster Size, Taxi Squad, Setting Lineups 24:50 Best Ball Lineups 26:45 Unlimited IR Spots 29:55 League Voting with Rule Changes 36:10 What Percentage of the League Should Make the Playoffs? 37:00 What Should Determine Payout? 41:00 Determining Playoff Spots 44:10 Favorite Scoring Settings 50:50 Favorite Crazy League Fantasy Football Today is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify and wherever else you listen to podcasts Watch FFT on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/fantasyfootballtoday SUBSCRIBE to FFT Express on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fantasy-football-today-express/id1528634304 Follow FFT Express on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6qyGWfETSBFaciPrtvoWCC?si=6529cbee20634da8 SUBSCRIBE to FFT Dynasty on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fantasy-football-today-dynasty/id1696679179 FOLLOW FFT Dynasty on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2aHlmMJw1m8FareKybdNfG?si=8487e2f9611b4438&nd=1 SUBSCRIBE to FFT DFS on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fantasy-football-today-dfs/id1579415837 FOLLOW FFT DFS on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5zU7pBvGK3KPhfb69Q1hNr?si=1c5030a3b1a64be2 Follow our FFT team on Twitter: @FFToday, @AdamAizer, @JameyEisenberg, @daverichard, @heathcummingssr Follow the brand new FFT TikTok account: https://www.tiktok.com/@fftoday Join our Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/FantasyFootballToday/ Sign up for the FFT newsletter https://www.cbssports.com/newsletter You can listen to Fantasy Football Today on your smart speakers! Simply say "Alexa, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Football Today podcast" or "Hey Google, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Football Today podcast." Visit the betting arena on CBSSports.com for all the latest sportsbook reviews and sportsbook promos. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Calling all sellers, Salesforce is hiring account executives to join us on the cutting edge of technology. Here, innovation isn't a buzzword. It's a way of life. You'll be solving customer challenges faster with agents, winning with purpose, and showing the world what AI was meant to be. Let's create the agent-first future together. Head to salesforce.com slash careers to learn more. Welcome to Fantasy Football Today Dynasty. I am your host, Heath Cummings. Join today. I'm a good friend, John Bosch,

and it's time for one of my favorite shows of the year. We're starting a new Dynasty League. Well, not really, but we're helping you if you want to start a new Dynasty League. John, thank you for being here. We did this last January. I really enjoyed it. Every time you're on, the first thing I ask,

what's going on at Fantasy Cares? All kinds of stuff. SFPL is going on right now. It's too late to get in really, but that's our big thing that we've got going on right now for those that are following the Scott Fish Playoff League. So it's our big fundraiser around this time of year where basically it's one of those one and done's, you know, you get one team, one player one time

for that whole playoffs. Once you use that player, you can't use that player again. It's always it's always fun to watch the strategy of those people that, you know, get the high scores early. But if you burn those players early, you might get burned real bad. And this year, we've got, I don't think a lot of people are expecting, you know, commanders to be around still. So there's probably a whole lot of people a little worried that if they make the Super Bowl, they've got no shot, They have Jane Daniels at the end. You know, they already used them up.

So it's fun. I like playoff fantasy. To me, it's just another way to play this fun game. So I play in a bunch of playoff fantasy. It's, it's exciting. Yeah. I, um, I would imagine there were a lot of people who planned on using the Detroit Lions and the Baltimore Ravens in the Superbowl.

And now they didn't get to use them at all, but the chiefs and bills are still around. So hopefully you choose correct in terms of which one of those teams is going to win those this week so you can save the right guys for the Superbowl. As always, we tell you all the time, go check out fantasy cares, see how you can get involved. Yes. The Scott fish bowl is probably the most well-known way. Throughout the year, we're doing all kinds of stuff to help raise money within this community. We get to play this fun game. We might as well do some good with it as well.

On today's show, we are going to talk about... Good timing to be signing up for us at P15. You can sign up already, yes. A lot of people already have, I'm sure. Uh, we're talking about setting up your first dynasty league and we'll talk about both maybe what rules we would suggest for someone who's never played dynasty before and also our favorite settings, which I like mine can get a little bit crazy. John's are just absolutely insane. I don't know how many leagues are you

currently the commissioner of John? I have a currently commissioner of. Yes. Uh, I actually passed commissionership off of two leagues. Okay. Um, so I think I'm down the commissioning like 14, but two of those leagues have within them, like nine leagues at least. So like I said, I don't know how to do the math, what it works out to be,

but somewhere somewhere in there, you know, 20, 30 leagues or something like that. As I said, absolutely insane. We always start with three questions for our guests. I actually went back to last January and looked at the league specific questions that I asked you so that we could do something a little bit different on today's show. So I want to start first off with the idea of a constitution. And if you think I'm not going to write out a constitution for my dynasty league, this is a fantasy football league. I'm just trying to have fun.

It will save you so much headache in the future when you're Adam Azor and you realize two years in that something's gone haywire that you never anticipated and you can just go check what is the what does the League Constitution call for in this situation? So if if you were giving somebody a template for putting together a dynasty league constitution what should what must it include? What should, what must it include? Yeah. And I mean, for dynasty, you have to have this redraft. You should have it. I mean, like everybody should know the rules of every league they're putting in, even if

it's just very, very basic things. But for dynasty, because it gets a little bit more complicated, it's, you're right. It is vital. I mean, the biggest thing you have to have, because most of these leagues involve money, define every bit of money extremely carefully. Make sure you know what the buy-in is. Make sure everybody knows what the buy-in is, how the money is going to be handled and where, when it's due, how it's going to be paid out exactly. I mean, all of mine literally break it down and show exactly what comes in and exactly what goes out.

More often than not, if people are going to get upset in leagues, it's usually money involved. So if you define that money clearly and just get all that, that's the first thing I did. Like, did I really want to make sure it is in there? It's not the first thing I do when I set up a league, cause I don't really care about how much things are in stuff in leagues that I play, but I know it's an

extremely important facet. So, so make sure you have that defined. Um, on the, on the money point and this first question may turn into a long one, but I want to on the, on the money point and this first question may turn into a long one, but do you, like, I know you require league payments, like pretty much as soon as the last season ended for the coming season. Also, what about when people are trading away first round picks? Yep. We, I require that. So if you trade your future first, you've got to pay that year. So, uh, like right now in my leagues, you can trade your 2025s and 2026s

cause 2027s haven't opened yet. But if somebody were to pay their 2026, they would have to go pay their 2026 league fee, all minor on league safe. So it's real easy. They just have to click a link and, and they, and they can pay. It makes it real easy to track all the money for me. Absolutely. Of course you also have to worry about transaction details.

What time of year you are going to allow transactions. Do you like to have a little dead period in the off season? No. Like you said, I require my entry fees very early. That's cause I pay out very quickly. As soon as, as soon as week 17 now finishes, I mean, I get those payouts out within days. I was paid out this year within just a few days. And then my league entry deadline just passed like last week. I think it was maybe Monday or

something of last week. So my expectation is look, if you're gonna be in for 2025, we are in 2025. Let's go, get the money all out of the way, everybody get paid and let's move on. And people that don't pay, they get replaced. So that's why I like to move quickly because we are about to enter actually one of my favorite parts of the dynasty season,

which is dispersal season. I love it. It's when you get a second chance to fix your team if you really, really, really screwed it up. It's where new managers come in and you get that influx of activity and everything in the league. So to me, this is a time where I don't want to go to a dead period, to a dark period. The people that play in the leagues I run tend to be hardcore degenerates. So then I love them for it. I love everybody out there that plays in my leagues and you are hardcore

degenerates, we don't want that. We don't want that time off. We don't want to wait between now and, you know, the NFL draft before we think about our fantasy teams, we want to start playing them now and playing now. We want to keep playing year round. So that leads into my next question, because some people are going to hear this and think, man, I want to be in a dynasty league. I don't have 10 friends or I don't have 10 friends

who want to play dynasty fantasy football. How can people go find a dynasty fantasy football league? Join my discord server. No, that's, I mean, for now that is one way, but I mean, that's really social media at this point. You know, look on blue sky, look on Twitter, X, whatever you want to call it. You have openings in your leagues right now. I don't mine are all closed. Like I said, my my deadline once the once the

deadline the payment deadline passes, I start taking signups in my leagues. Usually at the end of November, beginning of December, like I put out a big Google interest form, and people fill it out, submit. And then when people tell me they're leaving, they get replaced. When people don't pay, they get replaced. I move quickly on it because I like to have it all done. I like to have the money part out of the way. I want to get the dispersals completed, everything done before my fantasy league rolls over so that when it rolls over to the next year, it's a nice clean fresh start with everybody ready. So social media, you know, look out there. There are plenty of managers out there. There's forums on like DLF and things like that.

Dynasty Nerds has a place where they look for open teams and stuff like that. But I mean, honestly, anybody is welcome to join my Discord server at any time. We have a place in there with a lot of active managers and multiple commissions house their League chats there now. So you have invited me to our League Discord chat and the one League that I'm in that you're the commissioner of, you have strongly suggested that anyone who's in the League join the Discord chat.

I... Well, I'm also saying it's not required. Right. It's not required. Just you should do it. Heath. Heath do it. And you know what? It's something new and I haven't done it. I don't I've never I don't think I've ever like I don't know. It's posted anything on discord. So I want you to just sell me on it right now. Why do I need to embrace Discord as it because you've gone with all of your

leagues. This is your league chat tool and I know I see more and more sites out there creating Discords for their site or for their personal self. Why? Why should I do this? So for me as commish the reason that I switched to Discord is we can blame Russ Fisher. Okay. You know, Discord is how we do our fantasy cares communications. Yes.

That is our communication channel is Discord. So he forced it on me. He was right. It is actually a pretty effective communication tool. So once I got used to using it for that, then I realized, okay, I have chats, I have Twitter DMs, lead DMs, I have Voxer chats, there's chats on GroupMe.

There's probably other chat apps out there that have lead chats. This year I just put it all in one. I was like, I want everything in one place. For me as a commish, it makes my job easier now. I had a wonderful person help me set it up. Tyler Schmidt, thank you. He did a great job.

So he set it up for me now from here, I can run it. And it gives me a lot more control over being able to get people in and out of the chats very easily. From a user perspective, what you'll see is the leagues that you're in. But then you'll also be, there's also a chat channel, like that all the managers in all my leagues, plus all the people in Matt Price's leagues, and all the people in other commission's leagues, like everybody's there. So it ends up becoming this place where

you can actually find good new leagues. You can find good new managers. That's one of my ultimate goals for it. Because as things fracture in the social media world and split more and more, it becomes a little bit more challenging to have the conversations that we need to keep fantasy football thriving and growing in the dynasty perspective.

So hopefully my Discord helps solve that. I'm gonna give you a that. I'm going to give you a strong maybe. I'm not committing. I am committing to taking our first break and when we get back, we'll get into setting up first time dynasty leagues. We are back. Jay Kwan says in the chat, discord rocks. I am curious because I know I'm a hundred years old, even though I'm only 45 or 46. One of those. I'm curious, because I know I'm a hundred years old, even though I'm only 45 or 46, one of those. I'm curious. I guess what Jaquan said right before that too, he said he left the league because rule changes were given out over like text and stuff like that.

You know, as someone that's in my leagues, you see a message board post if there's something important and that's why I say like, you don't have, you're not required to join the chat. The chat is there is fun. But it does help with you know, explaining and people learning things and stuff like that too. But like I know, no commissioner should ever rely solely on a third party chat to communicate vital important information that should all be posted on the league so that it gets sends an email out to

every single person in the league. That's how I run mine. And that's, that's what I recommend there is vital communication should go through the league site. So and what happens is I join these group chats, and then three or four people go off on a tangent talking about things and then I mute the notifications and then I forget to ever go back. So like I said, I'm a hundred years old. That's Heath. Let's talk about setting up a first-time dynasty league. And I think the first thing that people have to decide is how do you acquire players? And I'm in one of your leagues that's called auction addicts. I'm not sure that you even have any leagues that are not auctions anymore,

but I know that that's your preferred way. So I want to do two things. One, I want to let you just have a little bit of space here to tell people why you prefer auctions over drafts. And then two, we're going to talk about if you're in one of those leagues where everybody just wants to do a draft because it's quote unquote easier. You got a bunch of heaths in your league, then we'll talk about the best way to do that as well. But sell everybody on auctions, John. Yeah, I love auctions. I will not join any league that's not auction based or blind bid based, which is a really scary thing to do. But I won't do draft leagues anymore. It's just, you're going to do a draft league, at least figure out how to determine the order off of anything that's not random. Yeah, figure out any way to do it so that it's not randomized. I do not like random, like random just drives me crazy. You know, oh, well, we ran through a random number generator and hey, you get the seventh pick in the in the startup. Like, well, you get the, you know, the fifth pick in the startup. Like, while you get the fifth pick in the second round,

that's just not the same because guess what? The advantage of the person at the 101 is they have access to the entire player pool. And they're the only one that gets to determine if somebody else gets that access. They're the only one that can trade it away. In an auction, everybody has access to everybody in the player pool.

You just have to spend more. Well, I mean, quite frankly, if you want it, you can go get it. You just have to spend more you have to outspend somebody willing was willing to spend this much. And that's the one on one amount. You can easily go over that you don't need their permission. So to make a trade to get to the one on one and dynasty, you're relying on somebody else allowing you to make that trade. In an auction, that's not the case. You just have to outbid them. So I am full on auction. I mean, to me, it's just, it's way more fair. I don't like somebody getting an advantage over me at the start based off of anything random. You know, Jake one's just here in the chat to agree with everything he said. He says,

yeah, I like this rock too. What's the, so I, the, the number one thing I hear from people is yes, I agree. It's a better way to do it, but it takes too much time or, but it's just too difficult to set up. So what is the easiest way in your opinion to get an auction set up? If somebody wants to, wants to do that for the first time, they're a little intimidated because they've only done drafts in the past, what's the easiest way to set that up so that everybody's kind of on even footing at the start? So the first point of it takes way more time is totally false. That is totally false.

If it takes too much time, it's because the settings were incorrect to begin with. So if you set up an auction with like a slow auction Yeah, and there's a player up for you know, 24 hours or something like that. That's a mistake So that that is what it used to be back before we all lived on our phones constantly My clock my auction clocks now are usually 12 hours at the most so Setting it at 12 hours, it moves. People don't go more than 12 hours without checking in on the auction at this point. You wake up in the middle of the night,

you check the auction. That's just how it goes now. So we've gotten way away from where it used to be. It takes longer. So if you wanted to, you can make an auction last as long as you want, you can make an auction go as fast as you want, as long as you're using the settings that are appropriate.

There's a lot of different options. I use my fantasy league, like I said, because their auctions allow you to do a slow auction, which every manager can put up a number of players. We have an auction board, there's anywhere between 10 to 12, up to 100 players on the auction board at any given time, which to me is nice. You get to see this whole puzzle of players,

you get to see the windows of where to bid and things like that. It's a good strategy puzzle for me. That's another reason that I love auction so much. If you can do it, the best way to do it is live. Get your whole group together and one player up at a time and you bid. That is the hands down best way to do it. That's harder to do. Get everybody to join together live and do it. And if you do that, you can do it in a day. It might take five or six or seven hours, but it's going to be really, really fun. And I mean, a lot of fantasy drafts, if you're doing a dynasty fantasy

startup, did a draft live as well, that's going to take the same amount of time. I mean, it's a dynasty startup is going to take longer. People are going to want to talk about trades, you know? So if you're live, it takes about the same amount of time and you're taking way more than, you know, 16 players like you would in Redraft. We do one Redraft live auction a year with the CBS crew and we try to do it as many people there in person but we can't get everybody.

So we do it, like we have the software to do a live auction online right there. 15 second clock to make bids. You can get it done in three hours, two and a half hours for a redraft. You could get it done in four, four and a half hours for a full dynasty. Whether you're doing an auction or a draft though, I'm curious, how do you like to handle the rookies? Because I know some people will just put them in the mix with everybody and you just have

one startup. I really like to have two just because I think that drafting or auctioning, like either way, is the most fun part of fantasy football. And so the more we can do that, the better. But do you like to have them all in one at once or do you like to split it up? So it depends and I define it when I write whenever I start a new league I define it There are times when I will include the rookies There are times when I won't usually it's based on when is the startup if the startup is before the NFL draft

Usually I do a separate rookie auction after the fact If it is if the startup is after the NFL draft, then it's usually just all one, one pool all run in together, everybody together. So it really, for me, it's defined by when the, when the startup is. You're starting a new league. It's 10 people, 12 people who have never played dynasty before. How many roster spots? I like 25, like 25 active roster spots. It's deep enough where you can keep some, got some, some, some guys that are stashes a little bit.

It's deep enough to make it so that I don't have to worry about waivers as much, cause I don't like waivers. Um, so 25, you know, with 12, that's a good, good player pool. But it's not so deep that you can't find a guy that you need to slot in just for a one game appearance for some strange reason. And you can find some little waiver wire. So it gives a kind of a mix. I'm also, well, because I hate waivers so much, I don't mind going all the way to like a 40 roster spot. I would rather every single player be off of waivers.

And if I want to get that player, I go and offer a trade rather than try to do the waiver claim. Um, for me, that's way more fun. That would be really deep if you're starting a brand new one, but brand new, I would say start somewhere between 25 and 30. And it depends on what your next question is, dude, the tax injured reserve and taxi slash practice squad. Do you have preferred limits for those two?

So injured reserve at this point, because the, I changed my IR rules when the NFL changed their IR rules, uh, back in the day when it was once you're determined IR, you're out for the year. That I only had, I think usually was like five to 10. At this point now, players go on IR for four weeks and come back off. My leagues all have unlimited IR at this point. They'll give the guys out for four, eight, 12 weeks. I don't want you to have to make a transaction to cut that player or to cut another player because of that. So for me, it's just, go ahead and stash that guy on your IR, open that roster spot up to pull somebody off waiver wires

or to trade for somebody and replace that player with. So unlimited IR for me. Taxi squads, I tend to do somewhere between five and 10. It depends on the league. between five and 10. It depends on the league. I usually, like I said, since I go 25 to 35, somewhere in that five to seven is really my sweet spot. A little bit more than- I've played in leagues where this is different. When you say taxi squad, are you limiting that to rookies? So most of my leagues are limited to rookies. I have a couple where it's the first two years, which are really interesting. I actually, I where it's the first two years, which are really interesting.

I actually, I kind of prefer the first two years. I allowed you to stash more players. There's other ways to do the taxi where like people can poach them in their second year and if they're not on, you know, if they haven't been promoted yet. So that adds, if you can get to that kind of a detail, that adds some intrigue to the to that kind of a detail,

that adds some intrigue to the taxi squad rather than it just being a player that people stash. But for me, two years is my preferred. Most of my leagues are one year because that's pretty standard. Rookies only, you know, for one year. And that's real easy to set up everywhere. I want people who are hearing John talk about like,

the number of roster spots and people that you allow people to stash makes the waiver wire worse. So if you're someone like him who doesn't really like waivers, and I think you, what you'll find is that generally speaking, people who play in more than five or 10 leagues are the people who hate waivers because it takes them an hour or two or three on a Tuesday or leagues are the people who hate waivers because it takes them an hour or two or three on a Tuesday or Wednesday night. And people who play in five or fewer leagues really love waivers and see it as a good strategical part of the game. And I, I, yes, I agree with all of you. So if you are somebody who likes waivers more, you might want to look at something like 20 roster spots with two taxi squads. Um, I think that's our, now our YOLO IDP league is, is very unique because it's IDP also.

And John is not a big IDP guy. I love IDP. I'm going to be writing later today about my, I, my favorite dynasty settings and IDP will be in there, but we, we have 28 roster spots, I believe, and two taxi squads and five injured reserve. Um, but like there's just a lot of ways to manipulate it. You just have to know what the changes you are making. Like, I know a lot of times, especially early in my dynasty playing, I would make

a change or set up a rule a certain way and didn't really understand what the impacts of that rule were going to be. And then you get three or four years in and you're like, Oh, well, that's not what we intended for to happen. So more roster spots, worse waivers. It makes a lot of sense. If you think about it, I was, I wasn't sure. I think I know what you'll do here, but I was going to give you a chance. If, if you want to sell people on best ball, cause I know some people I hear

say best ball is just taking know some people I hear say, best ball is just taking some of the skill out of it, like choosing the right guys to start each week. And I understand that as well. What are your selling points for best ball? So I like both. I like the line of setting. I hate setting my individual lineup

because I'm terrible at it. But that's a personal thing that I'm just bad at. So I also like the best ball because that eliminates that. And all of a sudden that's just about roster building for me. So I, but I do like to have a mix. In my league portfolio, I like to have a mix. So you know, setting the lineup, you're right. It is it's skill.

It's one of the things I'm deficient in. There are other people that are better at it, but it also brings in a lot of variance if a guy just gets hurt, which is really frustrating to me. You know, a guy gets hurt in the first quarter of a game and you started him and he just can't, he can't score any more points the rest of the game, things like that. What I've really come around to is what Ryan McDowell has started with some of his most recent leagues is kind of a mix where instead of full best ball or full lineup setting you end up putting like 15 people on an active roster and then like 12 of them start based on their best based on the best 12 scoring. So

yeah it's really intriguing to me because I understand that not everybody's gonna like a full best ball and not everybody's gonna like a full lineup setting. So I never instituted that in any of my leagues, but playing in them, it's extremely fun because you still have to make the decisions then. So they're still the decision points, but then you do get some of the insulation from if a guy gets injured or if a guy just has a terrible game. Like sometimes that happens and it's, you know, it's not really your fault that you started him. It was the right, the right process and the wrong result. It kind of minimizes a little bit of that

variance. So I'm really enjoying that set up a lot. I like that. You know, I sent John up a fairly long rundown of questions, but I told him there's no telling what direction we're going to go. And I'm seeing some questions that I really like in the chat. So we're just going to go that direction for a while. Mel in the chat says with unlimited IR spots, how do you control the team who will hoard players because when they're listed as out, they can go in the IR spot or you just change the setting. And I think it's very important if you're going to have unlimited IR spots that they

must actually be on injured reserve or PUP. Do you agree with that? Yep. That's how minor all set minor all set for IR only if you're on injured reserve, you've got to be on NFL injured reserve. It's not just out for a game. So that's a setting. Um, and you can, if you choose the other setting, like that's fine too.

I don't have, you know, a big dislike for allowing guys that are declared out to be slotted on the IR. Just don't have unlimited spots if you do that. I don't even mind. The big thing to do with unlimited spots is you have to make a rule that you can't pull a player off a waiver wire and put that player on your IR. Okay.

Then there are people that just go and grab every single IR player off the waiver wire, even if this player is never going to play like ever for them, they will do it. Because why not? If it's there to allow it. So basically, I have a rule in place where, while we have unlimited IR, that player must be coming from your active roster, they cannot be picked up and then put on IR. If you pick them up while they were on IR, they are not IR eligible on your roster. So it must be on your roster when they go on IR. Hypothetically, no best ball in a league. So you're just what, how many starters would you have and what positions would they be?

Depends on the team number for me. I like the, or the, the league member number, I should say. Let's say it's 12. Number 12 teams. For me, that would probably be 10, 10 or 11. I like to have a deep lineup. Again, we play, I play with deeper rosters. So if you're going to have players on your team, you better be putting them in, putting them to work at some point. If you, if you go with something small, it really lends to just get studs and duds, go completely studs and duds.

I try to target like 120 to 140 starters total among the league. So if you've got a 10 team league, 12 to 14 starters. If you've got a 12 team league, 10 or 11 starters, somewhere in that range, 120 to 140 starters. If you've got a 12 team league, 10 or 11 starters, somewhere in that range, 120 to 140 starters. If you look at that from on a week to week basis, and I mean, we don't play defense kicker in my leagues. So you're looking at just quarterbacks, running backs, tight ends, wide receivers. That number, the 120 to 140 each week seems to be a number that every once in a while, you're

going to have to slot in some guys that you were not planning on having to start. You know, the BIPOCOLIPS hits and there's six good teams on buy, that decreases that pool real fast. So all of a sudden to get to that 120 starters, you see some names that you don't normally see. But to me, that's kind of fun. There's a reason that you want to build those players at the bottom of your roster and it gives you that motivation because there are going to be weeks where you have to slot them in then. So for me, for me, somewhere, that's what I try and target 120 to

140 total starters per week. Let's go back to the chat. We had a question as a commission. Do you allow for the league to vote if you change roster size? And I think something I've become more aware of the further I get into this game is like changing any rule in a dynasty league is really difficult. So you can answer this specific question, but like, are you requiring pretty much unanimous approval to change rules?

Are you just doing it as a commissioner, whatever you want? How, how is it, should a dynasty rule changes happen? My leagues are not a democracy. Um, I do have rule change rules in my rules. So, but my mind say, you know, basically rule change is defined in my rules. Whereas I can act unilaterally laterally if I see that it's the best thing for the league. There are some things where I'll throw it out in the chat and just have a discussion about it, try to gauge feedback, see what other, see what really the league wants to do about something.

I don't change a lot of rules. I did change the trade deadline universally in all my leagues years ago because I played, when I first set them all up, they all had a trade deadline universally in all my leagues years ago because I had played, when I first set them all up, they all had a trade deadline. Then I played in leagues without trade deadlines and I saw firsthand, okay, this is better, but I also know this is like a 50-50 split. You can poll anybody and it's always gonna come up. Some people love trade deadlines, some people hate them.

I want to come out of my leagues after witnessing what happens in leagues without them. So I just unilater people hate them. I want to come out of my leagues after witnessing what, what happens in leagues without them. Uh, so I just unilaterally removed them. I announced it. I told everybody and I said, you know, I understand that this changes how you feel about this league. That's fine.

I get it, but I'm running the league and I want the league to be what I want it to be. So that's where I start. Now I try not to be a jerk. Like I said, I usually do throw it out there and I get discussion, engage it, have a chat. There are some things where I will put it to a vote. If it's something that I don't think either way is going to really affect the outcome of the league one way or another, but it feels like it's really, really split, I will put it up for vote. If it's changing a rule that's already in place, I think I have them all defined based on how many it is. It's usually like eight out of 12. If it's a 14-team league, like it's a

nine out of 14. It's not a simple majority. To change something that we vote on, you have to have a super majority essentially. If it's something that's not defined, which is what we come into, that's usually where there's rule changes. It's something that's not defined in the bylaws. Something happened and we weren't expecting it. Like when COVID hit and there was massive changes to bylaws there that we couldn't vote on all this stuff. I just had to figure out what do I want to do in my leagues. The unfortunate but fully fortunate scenario with tomorrow Hamlin like that, that that was something I didn't have anything in my rules about that. Like a game just like something like this happens, you can't you can't have planned for

everything. But I stole a rule from Scott Fish years ago, that basically says, if something unforeseen happens, the commission will act in the best interest of the league. It is the best interest clause. And I've had to invoke it multiple times in that kind of a scenario where like, look, I don't know, I didn't know this was coming. There's no way to do that. So more often than not, like the rules don't change. It's more in addition to a rule

or something like that. If it more in addition to a rule or something like that. If it's something vital to the league, you know, changing one QB to super flex, things like that, that's the league has to vote on that. I'm not making that kind of a decision. Um, because that changes the entire setup of a league. So in that case, obviously you should just start a new league. Yeah, I think that that one specifically, the one QB to super flex, he's just almost impossible unless you want to set it for five years down the road or something. Joe brings up something I think will be real short, but one of my favorite settings is the additional matchup against league median.

100% agree. Joe really liked that rule. Hard to even find an argument against it. Let's I want to get to a few more questions here before we get to our second break. We'll go a little bit more rapid fire on this. Any preference on when to do rookie drafts or auctions? For me, it's after the NFL draft. I want as much information to be known as possible because I think it allows the managers to make more informed decisions. There are, I am intrigued by watching those leagues that do it before the NFL draft.

Yeah. I think as a, you've got to have a unique group of individuals that want to do that because you can see a player's value just completely tank, complete or skyrocket honestly like they're playing with fire and there's there's an appeal to that for me so so I get it I would say from a standard perspective do it after the NFL draft because NFL draft stock is a huge factor in dynasty value what team somebody goes to where they get drafted right the NFL is telling us what they think about a player. They do a lot more research and they are probably not always probably in most

cases, a little better at this than we are, or they're at least going to tell us who they think they're going to be better at. And then they, that player gets the opportunity and everything way more. So it's information. I want my managers to be informed. I want to be informed when I'm playing in them, but I do see the intrigue of the, uh, the high risk, high reward before the NFL draft. And then it's a different kind of league.

Um, and it takes a special group, but if you've got it, enjoy it. Well, I think that's a good point. Like just to remember, if you know, um, we're going to answer a few more chat questions after the break. And, and I've seen some about like less fantasy inclined friends. And if you know, you have one of those leagues, then some of the crazy things that John and I like, you probably should not do. You may even want to have a debt. If you've got a league where you've got two or three guys who really just pay a lot more

attention and try a lot more than everyone else, then you may want to have a little period during the offseason where you're not allowing ad drops so that those two guys don't just stack their roster with every player that should be picked up during that period of time. Three more rapid fire questions before we get to the break. What percentage of the league should make the playoffs? For me, it is less than 50%. However you define it, I do not like half the league making the playoffs. So in a 12-team league, that makes it really tough. I would figure out a way to do a five-team playoff and give the number one seat a buy. I know in a 12-team league, like six is pretty standard and I've even got a 12-team league where six make it because it's just what works.

But that's why I like a 14-team league better. 14-team league where six make it because it's just what works. Uh, but that's why I like a 14 team league better. 14 to six make the playoffs. I understand why you don't like the 50%. And I think inherently I agree with it, but I love a 14 team league where seven make it because that one seat is so much more valuable. And I, I think that being the best team through the regular season and pretty much all fantasy football leagues undervalued. And you can fix that with the next question is how, what's your preferred way to chop up the, the money that's involved in terms of

percentages going to first other things like high point or like what do you like to pay out for? Everything. Like I said, but this is why I define exactly how the money gets allotted in my leagues because I like a lot of people winning money. Right. Frankly, it makes it easier for manager of retention as a commissioner. So I love a weekly high score award. It doesn't have to be a lot. Everything depends on what you're buying obviously is and how much money is in the pot, how much you have to go around. But if you're playing in a $100 league

and you've got $1,200 to go around, the winner of the league doesn't have to get $900 to care. If the winner of the league gets $750, they're still going to like winning that league. Well, they're probably going to have some high points too if they win the league. Correct. They're probably going to win some other things along the way. But you know, putting in a weekly prize of five to $10 for just being the weekly high score, it keeps people motivated the entire year. It gives just a little bit of a drive. I like a yearly high score. I like paying out the runner up.

Third place, eh, you know, if you miss the finals, like I don't really like paying out third place. If you're gonna do it, make it just the buy-in. I'm not even saying that you have to agree with me if you're listening to this or that this is the right way to do it. I'm just expressing my opinion. I do not want to play any more fantasy football matchups after I've lost in the playoffs. I'm mad. I don't even want to look at that team for a few weeks. Just leave me alone. I don't want

to play in a loser's bracket. I don't want to play for third place. I'm done. Do you know what happens in a third place in a third place game? But even if you win it, you know what you instantly do? Would I have won the championship? Yep. I don't even want to see my roster. I do not want to look at the score. And you're looking at the score of the championship game.

And if you would have hit it, oh, it makes it, it makes it worse. I don't want my $50 back. I don't care. You're right. I won third place in a league. I was the returning champion. I made it to the semifinals. I lost to a 12 year old in the semifinals who has won the league like three times now. And so I was knocked out by him. And then I had to play in the third place game. I won $75 or something. I don't know. Yay. But I had to watch as I outscored both teams in the championship by 60 points in the final

week and I was so mad about it. So yes, I, that, that would be my advice is don't make people play beyond that. But that's one of the other reasons that I like the 14 and seven is if you give a bonus just for getting to the semifinals. Then whoever wins the regular season, it automatically got that bonus. And I guess if you give up two buys, then just first and second automatically get that bonus for finishing as a top two team. I'm OK with that structure as well.

A lot of the leagues that I've started to play in now, the Ryan McDowell leagues, which are insanely commission heavy. Um, and even leagues that I've more recently started, they're, they're multi-copy leagues that end up being, you know, 42 teams, 60 teams, stuff like that. So there's a lot of teams in, in leagues like that. Then there's a lot of money to go around at that point. Then it is, Hey, if you make the playoffs, you're getting, you're getting a payout. Like, I love that structure.

It's a lot harder to do that in a 12 team league where six teams make the playoffs. But I, you know, if you've got a massive league and you're playing in one of those, I think you do, you pay for everything you advance. You advance out of the regular season, you get in a prize. You advance out of the first week of the playoffs, you're getting a prize. Like I love that payout structure a lot. And then finally, what should determine who makes the playoffs? We talked about league median scoring. Some leagues are just have one matchup every week where you're playing

head to head. So should points come into play? How do you determine who makes the playoffs? So this is where I justify allowing 50% of the teams in the playoffs, in the 12-team league that I run that has six teams in. Because you should never, the first thing you should scratch out of your rulebook if you've got it in there is the top six with the best record get in. That's terrible. Playing against the median is huge. That allows for an extra win a week. There's things like victory points where you can set up where you can play against the median and you get victory points. I think that's how auction addicts is set up, where if you get a win, you get two points.

If you beat the median, you get two points. If you tie, you get one point. Actually, I think auction addicts is a three tier meet, not median. So if you're in the top third, I think you get two points. If you're in the middle third, you get one point. And if you're at the bottom third, you get zero points. So there's systems that you can set up to basically give people a reason to play more than just the head.

If it is something like just a singular head-to-head matchup schedule, I do like double headers too though. But if it's singular head-to-up schedule. I do like double headers too though. But if it's singular head to head, my playoffs will be set up. First seed is best record. Second seed is the top point performer that did not get in yet. And then I rotate back and forth.

So I go record, points, record, points, record. My sixth seed is the best all play record. A lot of sites will track that they will track the all play record. So if you played every single team every single week, you know, it'll show you that report. So that's what the sixth seed is reserved for my for mine. So it goes record points record, record, points, record, all play record. For me, I feel like I almost always get the six best teams in. There are times where you see somebody that was, you know, in the standings, they show in the top six, they get bumped out. I have seen teams that have been bumped up quite a bit.

And it's almost inevitably just because if you go back and you look at their schedule every week, they were just that team every week where they scored a lot. They got outscored by somebody that just happened to score more or they were an okay team, but they managed to play the team that had their best week of the season repeatedly. So it takes out, again, variance, not a fan. It removes a lot of that variance if you don't base your playoffs just on best record, which you shouldn't. Let's take a short break and we'll wrap things up here on FFT Dynasty.

So we're going to talk about favorite scoring settings. I'll give some of mine. We'll ask John what he wants to add to that. But first I wanted to ask you a question because I see a lot of times in leagues, it seems like the scoring settings are set up in a way to make it to where the positions are more equal. You see that with tight end premium scoring, we saw it with only giving four points per pass touchdown. I think it was one of the justifications originally for PPR scoring. Is that the point of scoring or is it to more accurately reflect their value to an NFL team?

I think part of the goal was in trying to make the scoring settings make every position equal is to just have it so that we can play however we want. The pieces all end up being the same. That is how most of my leagues are set up. So I can't say that it's wrong, but also, like, I don't care. If there is a league setting that just makes quarterbacks the most valuable thing, so what? Then everybody knows quarterbacks are the most valuable. So as long as everybody knows what the settings are, even if they don't know it the first year, they're probably going to learn it by the end of the year

and they'll have to adjust then. There's really nothing you can do to make the wrong, just straight scoring settings. No matter what it is, it's uniform across the league. You know, as long as you're not trying to like hide something, as long as it's published and it's out there, everybody has the information. Everybody can look at how it's going to affect every single player at every single position and go ahead and compare it at that point. Like, yeah, this is a good point. I like it when QBs and defenses score a little bit more, but to that point,

should a defense in fantasy score be as valuable as a quarterback? Like, I don't know, it doesn't feel like it reflects the NFL right now, although a good defense is nice to have, but not good quarterback, it seems to be way more important. So, Right. And I, and I think like I, one of the things that I'll just, I'll just go through my scoring settings like this is, I think if I start a new league this year, and I've told

myself I'm not going to, because I'm cutting back leagues, but that never actually works, uh, my ideal settings would be six points for all touchdowns. Rushing, passing, receiving 0.1 for all yards rushing receiving kick returns including negative point one for sack yards lost we need to start penalizing these quarter racks. Sacks are a quarter rack stat more than they are an offensive line stat. Offensive lines matter too but we're going negative point one for quarter racks. Are you giving point one for passing. I'm sorry. I apologize. We're gonna good points. I'm not like I was like if I'm in this league, I'm going to be x to infinity. We'll go point. We'll go point oh for the

standard point oh four on on QB. I am going a half point per rushing and receiving first downs. Yeah, I am going a half point per rushing and receiving first downs. Yep. I am going full PPR with a one point bonus on tight end receptions, but not the first ounce, just the receptions. 14 teams, seven make the playoffs. And then I do like IDP. I like full IDP because I'm insane, but at least two defensive linemen, at least

two linebackers, at least two defensive backs, one point per tackle, two points per sack, one point per tackle for loss, three points for interception, one points per past defense, two points for forced fumble, two points for fumble recovery. John just completely blanked out during all of my IDP discussion because he's not going to do that. But in terms of the offensive scoring, John, any feedback, anything that I'm missing that you like to add? Now, that's pretty close. I tend to do, I actually do 0.75 points for reception in my leagues because I'm okay with half PPR. I'm okay with one with full PPR. I'm okay with both.

So guess what I did when I started making leagues? I just kind of split the difference in what was 0.75. It works out really nicely. Players that have a bunch of catches, look, that is helpful in the NFL game. So it's helpful in the fantasy game. Yardage wise, I think we're pretty in lockstep there. I don't have return yards in my leagues. I kind of wish I did because I like when those players

get a little bit of a bonus. Help out Debo in one or two weeks this year, like usually, big, big help there. So I kind of like that because it gives some, it gives, you know, some of those wide receivers that you might not normally start, gives them a chance to score some points if they have to force them in there.

So I don't have return yards, but I like it. Points for first down is huge. When on this sheet that you sent me and you know, like you're like, what are the most important points for first down is massive. Not enough leagues have and it should be a standard setting. But it's more important than what the PPR setting is. Zero PPR, whatever, that's fine. But at this point, you should be awarding points for first downs. I tend to do half point for like, half point for receiving first down, just

because I don't do full PPR. So it's it's kind of like a little bit scaled off of that. A lot of times I do a quarter point for a rushing first down and then a 10th of a point for a passing first down. So the quarterbacks get a little bit too, if they make that throw past the six, throw it short of the first down, on third down people, you know, give me that first down.

So it's kind of a tiered system for how I award the, the, uh, the first down scoring. And then I do bump the tight ends. Uh, the people just love tight end premium. I am an advocate that tight end premium doesn't matter unless it makes a player flexible. It doesn't matter if you're only comparing them to your tight ends at their position.

It doesn't matter. Well, I think it, I, so I think where the only way I would argue with you is. It doesn't matter. Well, I think it, I, so I think where the only way I would argue with you is I think right now in dynasty, it has a huge impact on Bowers and McBride because they catch so many more passes than the other tight ends. They become even more value. Like they're clear first round picks in tight end premium leagues in dynasty leagues right now.

Whereas Bowers might be in just regular leagues McBride, certainly probably not. Uh, but no, I think that's a good point. I wanted to ask you, I compare it to tiger proofing golf courses and they were like, well, let's just make it so many yards now. Cause he can hit it so much further. All that did was benefit him. Right. It's so for me, Titan premium, it just makes Bowers even more value.

He's already super. Yeah, absolutely. So I wanted to give you a second. Like a sticky worth anything still. What's your favorite crazy league right now? My favorite crazy league is it's Ryan Mcdowell. It's not even one of mine. It's just my favorite things league.

It has just about everything. And I mean, Ryan is pretty infamous at this point. He started the Kitchen Sink leagues, which were everything but the Kitchen Sink, hence the name. But his my favorite things when he messaged me and we started talking about it, I was like, Oh my gosh, Ryan, I want to play in this league. I do not want to have anything to do with running it. Because it is so commission intensive. The big, big things with that in his, he's got another

league called death comes you. These are, there's vampires in them. So if vampire leagues have become like my new addiction, uh, if people don't know what a vampire league is, basically the team starts from way behind the eight ball, they get an auction budget of, I think it was like 10% of what everybody else got. So, and they get no future draft picks. So in one of them, I'm the vampire

and then in another league, I'm one of the mortals. So I get to play it from both sides. It's really intriguing because if the vampire wins, they get to steal a player off that roster that they beat. So there's a lot of strategy in choosing your matchups, which we do on a weekly basis. every week, there's no set schedule. You, there's a call out order. So you choose who you're playing. Um, that's really what just, it's so beyond like,

like I said, I asked for a crazy league. I got a crazy league. That's, that's, I always know I can do this once a year. You've got 25 years worth of crazy leagues that you can go through for us. So I do appreciate that. We had one more question from Garrett in the chat started my first dynasty lag league last year with apparently less fantasy inclined friends. Any ideas to boost in and out of season engagement?

This is, this is the age old question of how do I make inactive people active? and ideas to boost in and out of season engagement? This is the age old question of how do I make inactive people active? Change the people. You can't change people, you can change the people. You can't force activity. There's all kinds of things you can do and I'll give you a couple of ideas. I do them in mine, we have fun with them,

but the active people have fun with them. people that aren't active they ignore them because that's just what happens It's it's there's really nothing you can do to force somebody to be active You can try you can institute like trade requirements and things like that But people either don't do them and leave the league and hate it because of it. Or they just do just the bare minimum to like get to the rule. And so they don't get kicked out of the league. So to me, those don't really force the activity. A big key is choosing the right managers to start. That is always key.

A couple of things that I do in mind that, again, the active managers in mind, I do tend to have fairly active managers because I recruit at the end of the fantasy season and that's the only people that are looking to join leagues in December are people that are really looking to join leagues in December, right after the rest of everything is out. So that's one of the reasons I recruit

for my leagues at that time. I know I'm getting managers that they don't want to break. They want to constantly do something. In my leagues, we do in February, that tends to be kind of the dead period because dispersal season's over at that point. We haven't really gotten to the point where we're talking about like heavy end of the rookie season yet. So we do a best ball draft the rookie season yet. So we do a best ball draft or best ball often, mine, sometimes. But basically it's just something we give a little bonus. It's never anything big. A lot of them are just bankroll leagues where you get an extra like $5 of bidding money or something like that. So there's no real prize. It's just some sort of an activity for the league to get together, do a draft at the beginning of

the season. The rookies aren't on their NFL teams yet, so it gives every one of my managers a chance to kind of start looking at some names they might not have seen yet. And I've gotten the feedback that people like that. It kind of forces them to jumpstart. But then they're a little bit ahead in their other leagues, they've told me. So it's a really nice little activity thing right there. We do another best ball league in July or August. Kind of after we've kind of all waited. And at this point now, like training camps kicking off, people are getting excited. And they want to just do something. Rather than start a new league, we can just do another little best ball where we give another little prize. Those are, those are really like the most successful things I've ever had where you

can throw in like kind of increased activity artificially. Um, so I think something like something you do in, in, in some, at least one of your leagues, um, is I think you have a deadline of maybe the day after the super bowl or a week after the super bowl where you have to get your roster legal again, cause people have taxi squad players that are going to have to come off. People have IR players that are going to have to come off. So you're going to have to cut a bunch of players to get to legal again, going into the next season. And then you can have a vet auction or a vet draft in March.

And then I think one of the other things is that by limiting activity for a certain period of the summer, especially like maybe after the rookie draft until training camp starts, you can create a little bit of excitement around the first free agency period of the preseason. And so that can get people involved. Like you haven't been able to add anybody for three months. You may even get some people messaging you. Hey, when can we add people like that?

That absence makes the heart grow fonder. So if it's open all year long and they're just getting emails every three months to tell them that, Oh, Joe just picked up another player that I should have known was available and now I feel bad about myself as a fantasy football manager. I'm not sure that works, but if you can limit their activity for a month or two where they're not allowed to do anything, then they might be more willing to get involved. We're going to have to limit the rest of the show, John, because we are

rapidly approaching an hour. This, this tends to happen when you and I get together. I always love having you on, enjoy talking to you. Again, I'd remind people, go check out fantasycares.org. Go follow John on bluesky at John Bosch and he will be promoting all kinds of stuff and ways you can get involved with the Scott Fishbowl and other things.

Thank you for being here today, John. Thanks for having me as always. It is always fun. This is, you know me, this is like, I'm not going to talk about players because I don't do that kind of research, but I will talk about leagues forever because to me, this is, this is, I'm a gamer. I like games. I like puzzles. I like things like that. So this is what makes my brain work and go crazy is finding a new way to just play a strategy game that involves football.

I also wanted to thank Thomas. Thank you to the YouTube chat. You guys giving us the questions, everybody listening. I wanted to remind you that I will be doing a one-man mailbag at the very end of the month, prioritizing those five-star reviews over on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. So get those in, get your questions in. I'll answer as many of them as I can. And if I can't get to them on the pod, maybe we'll do a special article as well. We will talk to you on Friday. ["Paramount Podcasts"]

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