Fantasy Football Today - Ultimate Guide to Starting a Dynasty League: Settings, Scoring, Rules, Regulation & More! (1/9 Fantasy Football Today Dynasty)

Episode Date: January 10, 2024

Looking to dominate your fantasy league just like your redraft league? Look no further than Fantasy Football Today Dynasty hosted by our very own Heath Cummings! Download and follow Fantasy Football Today Dynasty on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and wherever else you find your podcasts.  John Bosch joins Heath Cummings on Fantasy Football Today Dynasty to help you set up your first dynasty league. The guys discuss favorite scoring settings, formats, rules, regulations, ways to find leagues, and more! Follow our FFT team on Twitter: @FFToday, @AdamAizer, @JameyEisenberg, @daverichard, @heathcummingssr, @ctowerscbs Follow the brand new FFT TikTok account: https://www.tiktok.com/@fftoday Watch FFT on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/fantasyfootballtoday Get 20% off Fantasy Football Today merch: https://store.cbssports.com/collections/fantasy-football-today%20?utm_source=podcast-apple-com&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=buy-our-merch&utm_content=fantasy-football-collection 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." To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ 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

What does possible sound like for your business? It's having the spend to power your scale with no preset spending limit. Redefine possible with Business Platinum. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms and conditions apply. Visit amex.ca slash business platinum. Welcome to Fantasy Football Today, Dynasty. I am your host, Heath Cummings, joined by my good friend, John Bosch,

and we have a special episode for you today. We get a lot of emails, tweets, questions about, hey, I want to start a Dynasty League, but I don't know what I'm doing. Well, we've got the guy here to help you do that. The commissioner of all commissioners, John Bosch. Thank you for being here today. Well, thank you for that intro. That's obviously not true. I strive to be Scott or Ryan when I grow up, but I've learned a thing or two from them. So hopefully I'm doing okay. People seem

to enjoy my league. So I think I do all right with commission you you do all right how many leagues are you the commissioner of uh so yeah thomas just asked that and i don't know because i didn't go and count it up but i think it's around 20 okay um that's a lot in there i mean it depends you do count like when i just throw in like these added best ball things you throw in when i just get bored and i'm like, Hey, let's do an auction. Who wants to do an auction for a best ball league? Right. You can't count the eliminators or, you know,

right. The SF Lee SFB divisions. Like, I think that gives you, that gives you all a pretty good indication. When he's giving you dozens of leagues that he cannot count, that's how many leagues that he does have as a commissioner. I do want to,

I always ask people what they've got going on and i want to ask you what's going on with fantasy cares right now oh we got a couple of things going on right now so obviously we are heading into the nfl playoffs so we have the scott fish playoff league the number nine year number nine of that so that's that's always fun uh so it's a one-timer league where you know you you donate you get your invite into it and then each week you get to pick players to fill a lineup can't begin now once you use them once that's it so prizes to give away for that we'll have sfb spots to give away uh probably jerseys or something too we've we've started

enjoying giving away jerseys so i'm sure there'll be prizes like that. In addition to the SFB tickets. Then we also, we partnered up with your old home football guys. It's a football guy. So football guys is a agreed to match donations up to $10,000, which is awesome. So we have that campaign going on too.

That one is fantasy cares.org backslash give back. And what you do is you donate. You pick a player that you enjoyed this season, you know, and we're collecting some money, fantasy care or football guys is matching it. And then fantasy cares will donate it. So your donation goes a little bit further. We picked a bunch of players in their charities that they support or their foundations, things like that. And so we've been able to raise a lot of players and their charities that they support or their foundations, things like that. So we've been able to raise a lot of money with that. It's great. Good, good stuff. I always appreciate that. I always remember people go on Twitter, follow Fantasy Cares, go to YouTube, subscribe to their channel. They give away a lot of cool stuff. And more importantly, we do a lot of good stuff in terms of just raising money for important causes. Let's jump into what we're here

to talk about on today's show. We will talk about setting up your first dynasty league. We're also going to talk about our favorite format and settings, probably not the same as what we would recommend for a beginner, or maybe it is. And then we're going to talk about building unique into existing leagues. How do you make small changes? I've got a league that's been going on for 20 plus years now, and I still, I'm the commissioner, I've been the commissioner the last five years, still cannot get these guys to switch over to any form of PPR, cannot get rid of the a hundred yard bonuses, but I get, maybe we'll make incremental changes every once in a while. So, so we'll, we'll try to help you with that as well. First, we start with three questions for our guest. I don't even know if you have any of these,

John, but what are, what are your non-negotiables for a dynasty league? I do. I have one very, very big one. The first question I ask when somebody says something about a new league, my first question is auction or draft. And if the answer is draft, I don't have to read any further into the bylaws. That's a key. I did one draft recently, Trade Addicts 10 with my friend Russ Fisher, because he's a friend. And this is the last time I will ever go. That was the first time I had done a draft startup in probably two or three years. It's the last one that I will ever do. You're going to do a lot of mocks this offseason. No, I do think, and I think there's probably

a lot of people wondering why that is because we know there's still more people doing drafts than offseason. We're going to talk a lot about drafts on this show. The reason that the difference between these two ways, it's bigger in Dynasty than it is in a

redraft league because you get to have these guys forever. Especially when you're doing your first startup draft, are you really telling me you only want two guys to have any chance at all at Justin Jefferson or Jamar Chase or if it's a super flex league at Josh Allen or Jalen Hurts or Patrick Mahomes? Like you get the 12th pick in a super flex dynasty league and all of a sudden, yes, there's all these great quarterbacks in the NFL. You don't get any of them and you never had a chance to, so you can make trades. That is why that's the

preferred method for a dynasty league. If you can get it together, I understand doing an online auction in real time is really difficult, a slow one. And John's going to talk more about that. Um, a salary cap draft, maybe that draft, maybe that way is a little bit easier. It's the best thing if you have 12 guys that all live in the same area and are able to do it live. That's certainly the best way to do it. Question number two, what's the biggest mistake that you see dynasty commissioners make? This is what ruins leagues. Taking anybody. Don't just put it out there and take the first 12 people that sign up when you're starting a league that the managers,

I can't say enough how every single problem that happens in a dynasty league comes down to that's a person issue. Yeah. Yes. So, I mean, really mean really if if you don't put time into choosing your managers the league is going to be in trouble eventually maybe you're not really lucky but right i i know a lot of of local leagues and this is going to be a bonus question because i had this in as a question and then i thought there was a more important one um a lot of local leagues are just the guys you went to high school with or the guys you went to college with or the guys who all their kids play on the same baseball team now. These are personal friends who might be terrible fantasy managers or terrible people to be in a fantasy football league, even if they're a good person. How do you handle if you need to kick a friend out of a fantasy football league um so

i've done this i don't i don't kick anybody out but i am extremely open with do not feel obligated to stay in my leagues yeah don't don't don't stay in my leagues because you feel like you have to or you're going to upset me you're in my league. You see the league departure thread that I put up every year. I make it so simple for people to leave. And sometimes people don't, even though they should, there are times where I've had people say, you know, Oh no, I'll be back. I'll be back. And I can tell they're hemming and hawing. I don't want them to feel like they have to be in. And a lot of times it is a friend and they are, they are doing that. So it's not me kicking them out. I usually just ask, I say, do you really want to be in this league anymore? Like I do. I just, I straight up asked, honestly, not a bad way to

end a relationship either. No, I've had it happen twice. And once the guy just didn't pay for a couple of years and this was like good friends. And so he was just out. And the other time was actually a coworker. And this, I'm not going to say who it was. And I don't know if anybody else knows who it was. I'd never actually had a conversation about it. I just replaced him and he didn't ever notice or complain. So that tells you that it was time to go. It was both of those. I probably waited too long. But the third question I did want to ask, what's like the other thing we get is a lot of people say, I don't know, 12 people who want to play in a dynasty league. What's the best way for people who have never played in a dynasty league, who don't have a bunch of people who also want to play in a dynasty league to join a dynasty league. So it is really nice when you have a redraft league, you know, your home redraft league and they want to transition in a dynasty league to join a dynasty league so it is really nice when you have a redraft league you know your home redraft league and they want to transition and have a dynasty league or add a dynasty league in addition to their redraft league like yes that's ideal and

it is really fun if you have a home redraft league that also then plays a home dynasty league because you have a bunch of crossover and it leads to a lot of fun but it is tough to find that because it's a lot more interest level. We'll call it for dynasty. You have to work. You have to do a little more work. Twitter is great. There are plenty of ways to do that. There are forums like on dynasty league football, dynasty nerds has a huge community. So some of the, some of the websites out there that have communities, I mean, that's where there's ways to find it. Twitter is obviously a great way.

If you're looking for just, you don't want to be in charge of forming the group and you're just looking for like a public commissioning service. I mean, obviously our friend Scott Fish runs Safe Leagues and they're a public dynasty league, basically. You know, they run a ton of them. So that's an easy way to go find a dynasty league basically you know they run a ton of them so that's an easy way to go find a dynasty league and jump in and i just retweeted and i'm gonna put a i'll put a call out for anybody who has openings and i'll retweet a few more of these today or this week so so check

out my twitter but i had just retweeted i think it was rich at uh oh where is rich i'm trying to find the tweet now and maybe he deleted the tweet because i can't find it anymore um i'll retweeted i think it was rich at uh oh where is rich i'm trying to find the tweet now and maybe he deleted the tweet because i can't find it anymore um i'll retweet some people who are looking for people to join their leagues because i know you had posted a bunch of openings i will tell you joining a john bosh league if you've not played in a dynasty league before probably not the right place to start um i've joined two of his. One I really enjoy and I've been in it for, I think, five years now. And one I was in for one year. I said, nope, that's not going to be for me. I'm going to leave now. And you're right. It was not painful at all. You didn't make me feel guilty about it. There was no shame. I even tried to trade some of my old players for picks so that

the person moving into the new team had some extra picks to work with. So I really tried to do the right thing by that league. But yeah, it's... I still talk to you too, Heath. It's amazing. You're here right here. I'm never talking to you again. Well, that's the thing though. When you have 30 leagues, it doesn't hurt so much when somebody leaves one of them. That's okay. Let's take a short break and then we'll get into how we'd set up a new league for a beginner dynasty league. Did you know 66% of utility damage is caused by not requesting a

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Data sourced from the ORCGA 2023 Dirt Report. Okay, so we've kind of already given you the first piece of the pie in terms of player acquisition. We are going to tell you that you should start off with a, you can call it a salary cap format, an auction format for acquiring your players where everyone has a certain budget. Do you have a preferred budget, John? I don't. I mean, most people go with like a thousand. It kind of depends on how you want the budget reflects how important you want $1 players to be. I mean, that's what it comes down to. If you want the $1 players at the end of the auction to be really important, then you set your budget at $100.

If you want them to be throwaway, like waiver wire level, then you set it at $1,000. Right. Yeah, I think choose your own number, but that's a good way to explain how the ranges will impact that. Do you prefer, and I think this can be whether it's a draft or it's an auction start, do you prefer to have one or have one separate for veterans and then one for the 2024 rookies. Like if you said we're starting a league in 2024, are you having everything done in April when the draft happens? Or are you doing one now and then one in April? Just depends on when the startup is. If the startup for me is before the rookie draft, then I include, you know, rookie draft slots or rookie draft budgets, if you're going to do auction or whatever you want to do, that should be part of the startup um or you can do separate budgets completely as long as it's all defined it's it's fine if it's after obviously then it's all just included for me it's all one big one big thing i wouldn't call this a non-negotiable as we move into the talk about

rosters um and how many players you should have on your team. One of the things that's growing closer to non-negotiable for me is Superflex. I just think if you have a league that has 12 teams or fewer especially, that quarterback position can get so devalued unless you make some real changes to the scoring system. And so I really do prefer Superflex. Do you as well? Oh, for sure. I've started one non-Superflex league uh, I don't know, probably 10 years. It's the one that you're

in and we both love, uh, but it is a 16 team league and it does have extremely unique quarterback settings to the point where like the quarterback still has value. Um, because bad quarterbacks are unstartable in that league. So, well, that's, that's a best ball league. And that's, that's another thing. Like, I don't, I don't know that a lot of beginners are going to be starting out that way, but I think one quarterback makes more sense in best ball than it does when you have to set a lineup. Also, um, you really like less, um, set in stone positions, right?

You're a lots of, lots of flexes. So what would your, if you were telling somebody who's starting their own league, not necessarily your ideal, but like the best way to start to set up a dynasty league, where would you be on running backs, wide receivers, tight ends, and flex positions? So the way that I typically base it is one, one, one, one. I want one quarterback, one running back, one wide receiver, one tight end required. Then one super flex. And then you add the number of flexes that make these total,

make the total number of starting lineup spots in the league about 120. So if it's a 12 team league, I want to be about 10 starters per team, right? It's an 18 league. It's going to be a lot deeper. So you might as well start a whole lot more players and have fun. I like the top about 120 players to be starting. So you can do the math between a 12 or 10 team league. It's a 10 team league. Obviously you would want 12 starters. So it would be one, one, one, one, a super flex, and then seven flexes. That's a lot, but I like, I like, I like to target 120 starters a week. And I'm more in the range of, I still like that. The super flex, the two running backs, three wide receivers, a tight end, and then add a bunch of flexes. I'm good with that. I love IDP leagues. John hates IDP leagues. I would not suggest IDP

leagues for beginner leagues. So we're not going to have that discussion. I would not suggest kickers or defenses, especially in a dynasty league. I'll put one more point in favor of the best ball scoring for dynasty specifically, as opposed to redraft is that in dynasty leagues, you can build a lineup with like 20 legitimate starters or 15 legitimate starters over the course of five years. And those guys are really penalized by having to choose which one of them to sit on the bench. I feel like, so I do prefer that for the dynasty format. Um, let's talk a little bit about entry fees. Cause I know that's one of the bigger questions we get as well. I would suggest one of two ways, and you tell me which one you like better or if you have

an even better idea. I love the idea of just two years up front and then everybody pay a year after that. You and the league I'm in that you commission, you have to pay your entry fee for a future year if you trade that future first. Is that your preferred way? That is my preferred way. And I mean, that goes back to, I put people in my leagues that I trust. I have trust in them. And I even opened it up last year or the year before we adjusted to now you can trade picks two years out. That was a recent change for me. So now you could, you know, we're about to roll into 2024. 2026 picks are going to be available to trade very soon. If you trade your first, you got to pay your fee for 2026. I think that's only fair. It should help if you need to bring in a manager. If somebody does leave the idea of why you get to play for free for two years,

even though you have no draft picks and your average age of the roster is 37. Like, well, you got two years of free to try and fix what somebody else messed up. So, you know, that's a pretty fair way to do it. And as long as you trust your managers to do that, it's, it's, it goes pretty well. When you're looking at scoring settings, I think most of this is personal preference. You can get in some trouble with like, I don't necessarily love the yardage bonuses because it just irritates the heck out of me when somebody has 99 yards and somebody has 100 yards and a five point difference.

But you could have a group of guys who think we only want to reward these monster performances. And so if that's the way you want to do it, that's fine. There's options for big play scoring. I'm not a big fan of that either. Maybe I just don't like fun. But do you have any scoring? Like I would suggest strongly that you go half PPR.

And I really like half point per first down as well. What are the scoring options that you really like? So those are very big ones, what you just nailed. And I will say rule one whenever talking settings is play what you like, people. Right. Play what you like. Everything's right. There's nothing that's wrong.

What's right for me? I actually do three quarter point per reception. So 0.75 is my typical. And then I like to give another 0.75 if it's first down so like a first down catch is worth one and a half for a lot of uh positions i do put tight end premiums in my leagues i think that's for solvers but people really do like it and it does make what what happens is uh you remember like when people said tiger proofing golf courses all it does is make it easier for tiger so like when you add in these tight end premiums, the good tight ends that you're already playing

get better and better. The bad tight ends, you're still not starting. But it is a fun little way to give some actual extra value to a position that for a while has been a little bit lacking, let's call it. It does look like it's getting better. It does look like it's getting better. Well, except for the top. It might be getting worse because we don't have Travis. I'm not sure we have Travis Kelsey anymore. I'm sorry, we have Kyle Pitts now again. We do, in theory, possibly have Kyle Pitts again.

I want to run something by you because I have kind of a theory that you need to, like, if you're talking about a league that's 10 or 12 or 14 of your friends and two or three of you really try a lot harder than everyone else. And everyone else wants to play and you want to keep the group together. You want to have fun. I think you probably need to move scoring away from what I prefer. What I prefer, like I said, 99 yards, one yard, there should be 0.001 difference between those. That really, in my opinion, rewards the skill aspect of it, which there's skill and luck. It's always balancing those two things. In my opinion, if you've got a really unbalanced league, you probably want to have more luck factored in. You want those other guys to have somewhat of a chance so that they keep playing.

Because I have definitely seen leagues that were started with friends where three or four of the guys became really diehard fantasy football managers. The other guys didn't, and the league falls apart. There are ways that you can lean into that luck aspect anything that rewards touchdowns more heavily and yardage less receptions less that tends itself more towards luck and that they i think the yardage bonuses are less predictable that probably tends itself more towards luck do you do you agree agree with that in theory and are there any scoring changes that you think either favor the skill side or the luck side more? Yeah, I mean, you nailed it because you're rewarding those that understand like volume wins fantasy and things like that versus just random luck plays.

I lose a lot to variance. I hate variance. It bothers me. My guy didn't get that 40-yard touchdown. He just had three catches for 50 yards, but he didn't get that 40 yard touchdown he just had three catches for 50 yards but he didn't get one for 40 so why did i score less ah that's that yes i i i am very much like you that i prefer to reward the consistent production over the course of time right i do think either way it will it ends up short-term, short, small sample. Those that rely on variance

might have some success. But long-term wise, I think usually the people that put in the work, even in a variance or luck-heavy scoring system, I think it still eventually works its way out. But it just won't go along the way. So I totally get that. Right. And I love variance because variance is the reason that 60 or 65 or 70 million people are playing this game now. Because if the best players always won, not near as many people would play this game. So I'm a big, big fan of variance, except for when it cost me championships, which it does seemingly every year.

Let's talk. Speaking of variance, it's a good time to transition to playoffs because when you get to week 14, 15, 16, 17, it really is just that one week of how did it go. So I know you had a thread on this a while back about whether you should have half, more than half, or less than half of teams make the playoffs. What's your preference? My preference because a 14 team league is kind of my ideal size is six players. I don't like 50% of the league getting in in leagues that I run that are 12 teams, 50% of the league gets in,

even though I don't like it, that just works out. So that's why I like a league that's a little bit bigger. I like a 14 team league. It makes it a little bit harder to compete. It makes everything just a little bit harder in a 14 team league. And only six get into the playoffs then as opposed to. So that's my ideal setup. Yeah. I think four, four, a 10 team makes a lot of sense for 12. It just doesn't like I don't like 12. I'd love five, but there's no way that makes sense for working the playoffs. I do like we have a 14 team league and I do seven. So it's still 50%. But the reason I do it is I like that extra advantage that it gives the best team in the league.

I do think with as much variance as happens in the playoffs, and we'll talk about how we distribute winnings. And again, that's a personal preference thing. But I really like the make the semifinals, get your money back as a part of the scoring system. Some people like winner take all. I don't like that much at all. But if you go with the seven teams, then the only team after the regular season

that's guaranteed to get their money back is the team that won the regular season. I get in trouble for saying this, but it is more difficult to win the regular season than it is to win in the playoffs. It is. I like to give regular season prizes and playoff prizes. I like that. Do you like weekly high point awards or just a prize for winning the finishing as the one seat so it depends on what the buy-in level is if there's enough money there i love a weekly award it's a little bit more commission work so i'm not a super big fan of it um from that standpoint but it can be fun and especially in the dynasty league it gives everybody something to play for

now granted if your buy-in is like, let's just throw a number of like a hundred dollars out there and you're only winning five bucks, people aren't going to end up caring. Right. But if you make that weekly prize, like a quarter of the buy-in 25% of the buy-in, that's kind of worth going for still.

Right. No, you're in good shape. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So so i i like that a lot when it comes to determining who makes the playoffs how many spots are you giving to record how many spots are you giving to points how many spots are you how many spots are you given to we're going to talk about all play here in just a second i'm not sure if you're going to suggest

that for a first-time dynasty league or if you're going to suggest that for the league that you prefer how are you determining playoff spots yeah so for a first-time dynasty league or if you're going to suggest that for the league that you prefer how are you determining playoff spots yeah so for a first-time dynasty league you're right it for me with six teams going in i think it should be four based on record i would save two spots for points if you only save one that's good but you might as well save two. And that's better. My goal is always to get the top six teams, the best six teams over the span of the entire regular season into the playoffs. Somebody's always going to have an argument. Well, I won all my games. Well, like that's the worst argument you can make to me.

So for my leagues, I typically do a one seed is the best record. The two seed is the highest points not in. And then I go back to record for three seed. Then I go back to points for the four seed. Then I go back to record for five seed. And you mentioned it. And what I give my six seed for is all play win percentage, not in because that person, they may have just had just absolute terrible very terrible schedule

luck variance whatever you want to call it they have a terrible record so they're not getting it on that maybe their points they just didn't have the blow-up week but like they instantly outscored people throughout the season but never had massive weeks so they didn't get that big bonus right there so for me that's what i that's what I prefer to use now. And I will say in every league that I use it in, I do feel every year we get the top six teams and anybody that gets booted out based on that there, once you, once you really look at how they're, you know, arguing, well, my record was so much better. Well,

you've got some pretty easy games. Yes. I really like the way that the FFPC does it. Now there's only four teams that make the playoffs there, but the one seat is the best record. The two seat is the most points. The three seat is the next best record. The four seat is the next most points and just go that way. One, two, three, four, just alternate either way. Now I have a hard time. I don't know why, but I get a lot of pushback on anything more than let's give the sixth seed to the top scoring team that isn't in like that's okay. Or let's guarantee that the top scoring team gets in anything more than that. People really want to emphasize, well, it's a

head-to-head game and it is a head-to-head game. If you want to do it that way, that's fine. But I think the way John said is a good way to make sure you get the best six teams in. I think alternating for record points, record points. The one thing I don't like, especially if you have a bigger league where eight teams make the playoffs or in a situation where four teams make the playoffs and the first, the winner doesn't get a buy, don't give that four seed to the top points team because you're not rewarding the champion of the league. You are, you're punishing him by making him play the team that scored the most points. Yeah, completely agree. And I mean, in my leagues, you end up getting to, um, you end up getting to call out your opponent. So, uh, my, my, my, and all my leagues, the top two

seeds get a buy the three seed in the first week of the playoffs gets to choose their opponent from the four, five, and six seed. And then the next week, the one seed gets to choose their opponent from the remaining teams, because you're right. I don't want to punish the, the one seed or the three seed. That's an absolute punishment to give them the best team that just didn't have the best record. Right now we've got a question in the, not in the regular chat, but in the, in the private chat, Thomas, Thomas sends us a question and it's a good one league median scoring. And so this, I believe you call it victory points, um, or you don't call it, but that's the victory points. Another way to look at it, but people where you have one game

against your opponent, and then one game where if you finish in the top six of the league, or I say, I've heard it both ways. If you finish in the top six in the league, or basically if you beat the league median scoring, which I guess is the same thing, that's, is that the preferred way of doing standings for your leagues? I am more and more liking this.

Only thing again, anything that reduces luck or variance for me, I like it. Some people don't like that because then they feel like they have to win two games a week. Well, no, you just have to score in the top six and you probably win your game. And you're going to win that league median scoring. For mine, you can set up victory points actually in a few ways. You could set it to be the top half, or you can set it to be the top third, and then the middle third, and then the bottom third. So I have some leagues where we set it like that, and you get like two points if you're in the top third, one point if you're in that middle section, zero points if you're in the

bottom chunk. So it's just another way to reduce that variance. And yes, it is a head-to-head game. We all love to have that win. You still get that feeling of having that win. It is dulled when you then lose because you just happen to play a bad team. Well, guess what? You shouldn't really be celebrating

that you just beat a bad team. But when you win two games in a week, you're a high sc score and you beat the team that's also a high score. That feels outstanding. So it feels great when you pick up two wins in a week. Again, another one of those things where I think it depends on how much you're trying to make this game about. We need to make sure the best team wins and how much you're trying to make this game about. We want to make sure the best team wins and how much you're trying to make this game about, we want to build a fantasy league that holds our friends together and half of them

don't pay near as much as attention as the rest of us. They're probably going to get really weirded out by this idea of league median scoring. But if you've got 12 guys who are really into fantasy football, I think that that, uh, that is the best way to do it. I want to transition here a little bit, unless you think we do you think what, how are you determined? Let's, let's go one more thing for people who are just doing draft leagues. And so the following year, they're, they're rookie only draft. We need to, let's, let's talk about that because if it's, if it's an auction format, it's pretty easy. Well, we'll talk about that too. How are you determining who gets the top seed or who gets the top pick in a rookie only draft and draft order for that matter?

So this, this is a, this is something you can literally do like an entire show on just this one setting. And there have been people that have done entire show debates on just this one setting. It is, it's the same in the auction league actually,

because mine it's, you still get a draft pick and then it's just on it's a, you get a different budget slotted based on where your draft pick is. So for me, I do potential points for non-playoff teams. I totally understand that potential points, then maybe it reduces that person's ability to rebuild appropriately. I have large taxi squads. So if you want to hide rookie points and develop your squad and not be punished with your potential points, that's fine.

I would say flowers my taxi squad all year this year in your league. Yeah, it doesn't score a point. So you're not punished for developing your roster over a two year period. I actually kind of like taxi squads being a two-year going forward i i wish i would have started out that way but i only started it as a rookie uh when i started leagues i would like to transition all my leagues to be a two-year taxi squad so a guy can stay there for two years and i understand that then people say well you're not starting your best best lineup every week well sometimes that's a bad thing in dynasty like

when you're trying to build an actual like i want to compete to win multiple championships you do have to develop a full roster and that gets tough to do in a league that uses potential points so i totally get the drawbacks for me it's it just put them on taxi then you can hide those points i don't mind were the broncos starting their best lineup the last two weeks this season where the raiders starting their best lineup the last two weeks last season no it's just it's kind of part of the game jets haven't started their best lineup in like years. Oh, sorry, Jets fans. I like it. Even though you have Jets colors on today,

I do want to ask, because that gets into the next thing that people ask about, and that is tanking. I made the mistake of making my tanking rule that you have to at least start guys who are active. You can't start a bunch of guys who are injured. You can't start a bunch of guys who are injured. You can't start a bunch of guys who are on IR or whatever, not playing. But then that's just a major headache for the commissioner.

I think if I started a new league today, I would just say that tanking is legal. It makes sense for teams to try not to win. The only way you're going to get in trouble for it is if it looks like you're selectively doing it against your friend to help not to win the only way you're going to get in trouble for it is if it looks like you're selectively doing it against your friend to help them get in the playoffs so tanking is another thing you could do an entire yes a lot of these settings in dynasty there's you can have entire arguments and discussion called discussions um i started out my leagues

the same way you had started out yours because you want to protect this starting lineup you want that competition you are dead right the only person that hurts is the commissioner then who has to not only worry about their own lineup they have to worry about everybody else's lineup too and that's just not fun. So for me, I have now just said, go ahead, tank away. I don't care. Start whoever you want. Because my leagues don't reward just the head-to-head record, then it doesn't matter who you play, when you play them, if you win or lose. If you want to completely remove, well, I played this team when they were being really good, when they played really well, and then somebody played them and they were lost.

One, you should have just beat them and taken care of your own business. That's kind of my initial impression. But then you just use all play every single week, and everybody play everybody every week. And then you completely remove that. But nobody wants to do that because that's not fun. And I get that. So to me, I just, I I've removed it. It is, um, it is a challenge. Uh, you have to have experienced players that understand

that somebody playing nobody in a week does not actually change the league as long as everybody's on that same page and aware that it's allowed. There are some people who are very against that. And if your league is totally against it and everybody wants to monitor everybody's lineups, that's fine. I have some things where in auctions I do have – I have everybody police it because I'm not going to be the one policing it. And if you see an illegal bid or an illegal nomination or something like that, just tell me. Like you all all watch you rat them out i'll enforce the punishment you rat them out

i'm not going to do the policing uh yeah i think that's that's another question that i go let's go into another topic that could take an entire show you said the word the P word, punishment. There's two types of guys who might get in this place. The guys who just aren't paying enough attention and keep making the same mistakes. And the guys who every single rule that you set, they are going to be trying to take advantage of it. And they're going to be doing it in the most annoying possible way to the commissioner, because it's always going to be in the gray area. It's never quite a full black and white violation, but then sometimes it gets into that. So when you say punishment, what sort of things do you punish for? What sort of punishments do you lay out? So as a manager, I operate and live and love

the gray area. I will go right to that line. I don't cross lines. Rules are set. Boundaries are set. I will always operate within the boundaries of any league, but I will make sure that I know what those boundaries are and I will push them whenever I can, because I am that person as a manager. I really do try and write my rules as a commissioner to combat me as a manager. Um, the, I mean the, the easiest way to do punishments, which they suck. I mean, I'm never going to say like, I'm going to kick you out of the league over something. I don't like that. Except for collusion.

Collusion. Oh yeah, Chad. That's not even a punishment. That's just, that's an instant. Look, if you're cheating, you're not in this league anymore. I'm never talking to you again. You are blackballed like that. If somebody ever cheats to win,

I mean, you're not winning that much money. Like you should not be trying to cheat to win any i mean you're not winning that much money like it right it it you should not be trying to cheat to win any of these leagues because you're playing for the wrong reason then so now collusion totally different thing but with punishments things for me it's like if you just mess up because you didn't read the rules that's gonna bother me if you didn't pay attention or if you you know you aren't making uh something that's, you know, you, you aren't making, uh, something that's legal, you, you mess up on a bid when I've told you, make sure you're paying attention to how you're bidding, stuff like that. Usually you're just going to end up losing a little bit of your

auction budget. Uh, you're going to lose like your fourth round draft pick. If you do something, some, some people may, you know, say pay by the deadline, or if you don't pay by the deadline, you're going to lose your fourth round pick. If you know say pay by the deadline or if you don't pay by the deadline you're going to lose your fourth round pick if you don't pay by the next deadline you're going to lose your third round pick but we didn't entice people to pay quickly things like that i'm not a huge fan of it because i don't like punish people that's not that's not what i'm here for like i don't want to have to do that part but there are times where I will usually it's auction budget in my, and it's never anything severe. I mean, you lose like five, 10, 25, a hundred. And then in a lot of my bylaws, it says, if you get to this point, you're going to have a discussion with me. You're coming to the principal's office. Is there anything, is there anything left for somebody

starting a new dynasty league that you think that we may have left out or that we need to cover? It's got to be fun. Yeah. Above all, I mean, like, we play this game because it's fun. Make sure you have people in your league that want to have fun playing this game. For me, there's a couple of ways to form leagues i either have an idea that i can't get out of my head that i want to try and so then i will write all the rules and then i will put that out and i'll have people say they want to join and i'll select people out of

that or there's a group of people that i want to play with so i will talk with them we'll form the group and then say well how do we want to what kind of a league do we want to play? Then we have a discussion there. But either way, like for me, a dynasty league, you kind of have to have something that gives you the hook that keeps you in it. Whether if that's just the group, that's enough. Like that is legit enough. I played in leagues where the settings are, you know, somewhat vanilla. We'll call them standard, whatever you want to call it. Really fun group. That's what matters. Like you've got to have fun playing this game. You're going to put a lot of time that you shouldn't put into this. We could probably be doing a million other things with our lives, right?

That's the famous opening to the league. Right. I just thought of one more thing that we definitely left out, trade deadlines. Another thing that could have been an entire show. The League that I'm in with you, obviously, we do not have a trade deadline. My favorite trade that I ever made was three or four years ago. It was the first year that Michael Thomas got hurt when I traded Michael Thomas away for Cooper Cup, who wasn't Cooper Cup yet, and still didn't win the championship and was just crushed for like six months

because I couldn't believe that I gave up Michael Thomas for Cooper Cup. And then Cooper Cup was the best wide receiver in fantasy football, and Michael Thomas was never good again. That happened week 17. So for a new league, would you still stick with the idea of no trade deadline? I would.

Okay. I unilaterally changed all of my leagues a few years ago. Because all my leagues used to have a trade deadline. Again, this was for my own protection as commissioner. I thought, again, play as you want. Rule number one, play as you want. I'm not attacking anybody. You got to say this because people get real mad about the trade deadline discussion. I am not in favor of the trade deadline. I don't want to ever tell another manager in my league how they should run their team. I don't want to ever tell another manager in my league how they should run their team.

I don't want to inhibit them from having the option to run their team how they see fit. If you want to make a trade to try and win the championship in week 17, that's good. Go for it. Try to win. The person that's getting something from you, it's probably good for them. It actually helps parity. A lot of times when I see people that argue against it or argue for a trade deadline so adamantly, basically it comes down to, well, I don't want to have to try and keep up in the playoffs in an

arms race. Right. Okay. Why not? Because you want to have something for your future, but you think somebody else might not. Sorry, I'm not going to rule in just to give you that protection. If you don't want to do it, you don't have to make trades, but I'm not going to tell somebody else they can't. That's what it's coming down to for me. I agree with you on trades. The people are asking for a new topic in the comments, and I don't think we entirely agree on this one. At least our league is not set up the way that I prefer it. The next question is waivers. I think we both agree on using FAB.

You should, I like a $1,000 FAB budget for the season. You can make that a part of, if you're doing an auction league, you could also make that a part of a full salary cap, like however you want to do that. I think we both agree on fab. I prefer to have in-season fab runs once a week, and then it's open free agency after that. Yeah, I agree with that. That's actually what I do like.

Except for the league that we're in together is a bankroll league. Right. So it's a little different because in that league, your blind bid becomes your auction dollars, and then your auction dollars become your blind bid. So it carries and it builds. Right. So in that style of a league, I do prefer you're never getting somebody for free. But we do have zero dollar bids.

Bid zero. But you're never just going to pick somebody up off the waiver wire for free you're always going to have to pay something or at least put in some effort uh but i do try and run i do in in those style leagues of which i have a lot because they're one of my favorite styles um i i do have it run like every every day and then on sundays it runs twice a day. On Mondays, it runs twice. So even if you forget, oh, crud. Oh, this guy's out. Now I need to go find another replacement. You should have another run. If you're going to have it set that way of having it only be acquired by that waiver wire run and never first come first serve, you got to have them run a lot.

So people will have a chance to pick somebody up. Yeah, I like running it overnight on Wednesday night, Thursday morning, and then starting Thursday at whenever it runs, it's just first come first serve for the rest of the week, except for the guys who were dropped. And I think the guys who were dropped need to go back on a waivers run probably Saturday morning is the way that that works. We do. I like that a lot.

We do agree on that. Yeah, so I think that's enough. Let's take a short break. No, go ahead. Go ahead. You had one more thing there. No, no, no. I'm saying the only reason I had any difference is because of that bankroll aspect.

Right. Let's take a short break, and we'll get into the weeds just a little bit more on, on some of the, maybe the things we wouldn't suggest for a first time league, but our favorite things about some of our dynasty leagues. Okay, John, I'm going to,

I'm going to go first. Cause I know yours is going to be a lot crazier than mine. I just, I just want you to talk about either your favorite dynasty league right now or your favorite couple of settings for a Dynasty League. What I've come to really enjoy is a league that used to be called a keeper. It was more of a keeper league. And now it's just turned into a salary cap Dynasty League where at the beginning of the year, there's a $200 salary cap. And then in season, that expands to a $300 salary cap.

Now there's still $100 in fab that's kind of separate for that. But if you spend that fab on a player and he gets, you get him, then he's on your roster and that gets added up to the salary cap. So that's why it goes 200 to 300. There is still the weird thing about that. There's still a rookie draft, but the players are assigned a salary cap before the rookie draft. So the $50 number one pick in every league might not go number one in this league because he might only be a dollar according to somebody else might only be a dollar. So how much a player costs really factors into what their overall value is,

especially because values are frozen for the first year. And then after that, they go up by $5 every year. So you can't necessarily keep someone forever. You might see a deal where a $45 Travis Kelsey gets traded for a $1 Sam Laporta, and everybody thinks the Kelsey guy got ripped off. I traded a $1 Puka Nakua for a $25 Travis Kelsey this year. Yeah, that type of thing happens. I was so pleased with myself. I had Tank Dell on almost almost drafted him in almost every rookie

draft. And after week two, I thought, you know, I should diversify a little bit like or week three or week four, like after he really started took off and I traded him for a couple of old wide receivers and I lost in the semifinals and I don't have tank dell anymore for the next 10 years so that hurts but i really love that salary cap aspect of just like keeping a true salary cap throughout the season so my favorite format of dynasty is not dynasty at all uh it's actually um my initial league is a salary cap league like right or my my home league i should say not my initial league is a salary cap league like right my my home league i should say not my initial league but my my home league that i refer to as kind of my original league at this point because my longest standing one uh when we started it we wanted a salary cap and it is a

salary cap league so uh it's kind of a form of dynasty we can sign up to four-year deals and stuff like that so it that is a setting that i'm right there with you that is still to this day my favorite style of fantasy football when you you commit a certain amount of money for a certain amount of time to a player and like i just said i traded a one dollar pukun dakuwa i had a four-year deal at one dollar heath and i traded it for 25 travis kelsey this year because i needed to have that tight end so evan ingram just sat on my bench during my championship game uh and yeah when i was saying salary cap that's the difference we don't have contracts like you acquire a player you can keep them for as like their salary keeps going up but you can keep them for as like their salary keeps going up but

you can keep them for as long as you want i do think they think about one thing about that league that we didn't cover in the beginner section when you're talking about veteran free agents and acquiring them in the off season do you do that as a part of the rookie draft in any of your leagues or rookie auction in any of your leagues? Or do you always like to keep those two acquisition methods separate? I have leagues that do it both ways. Like some leagues that do it one way, some that do it other ways. It just depends on how the league is defined. Always. That is a key for any dynasty league is clear cut bylaws. Something should be written out. It shouldn't be, well, this is how we did it a couple of years ago. It should be, this is how we do it because the rules say that. I have some leagues where the veterans are included in the rookie draft.

I have other leagues where you do just a rookie auction. And then right before the NFL season kicks off, you do a free agent auction, which is fun because then you get to have another auction in. Like who doesn't work? Who's not an addict for an auction, right? So I mean, that is what we do in that auction addicts league. We have a rookie one. And then right before the NFL season kicks off, we have a free agency one, there's gonna be a couple of rookies that may have slipped through the cracks. They're going to be available, there's gonna be some veteran free agents that you weren't expecting the year before, that now they're going to be maybe important enough to put on a roster. So I don't run off season waivers because of that. I am not a fan of having to pay attention and run to the waiver wire over the summer. I get that a lot of

people do. And again, if you love it, enjoy it. That's great for me. I'd rather just have all that build up. If there is a big signing of a guy that's not on your rosters and he's on the waiver wire, you're going to get to see people get excited for that rookie or for that free agent auction. When all of a sudden this guy's going to be available and that's fun. Yeah, I did change one of my leagues where we had offseason acquisitions and I just I understand people want to do it. They say it's a year round game and true. That's fine. If I was doing that, I would have waivers only, and I would run waivers only once per week. But what I really like is when you get to, whether it's the first week of training camp or the last week of training camp, whenever you want to open it up. And then all of a sudden, oh, Puka wasn't taken in our rookie draft. Or James Robinson wasn't, Isaiah Pacheco, like those guys.

And then seeing the bidding that goes, it brings a little excitement to the beginning of the season. And how much, like, do you want to just go ahead and throw all your fab this season on this guy who's gotten a bunch of training camp buzz, but we haven't actually seen him play in a real NFL game. I love that aspect of it. So I agree with you entirely. I prefer really no free agent acquisition. I do put free agents in the rookie draft. In our YOLO league, we've got a six-round rookie draft. And about round three, round four, we start seeing some of the veterans

go. I'm perfectly fine with that. But there's no adding players for the next three or four months until we get to training camp. And then we get to see people go bananas. And sometimes they turn into Puka Nakua. And sometimes they turn into guys. So I can't remember their names because they didn't ever actually do anything in the NFL. I was really wondering what name you were going to pull there because I was going to be impressed if you remembered somebody that blew up and then blew away well the name that comes to my mind first I'm not sure he actually blew up enough because I was one of the guys hyping him my second year at football guys I thought it would be a great idea I'm going to go to chief's training camp I'm going to tweet out what's happening at camp yada yadaada. I fell so hard for John Baldwin and he made some superstar catches at

camp that year. And I don't know that he ever had 500 yards receiving in an NFL season. That's okay. Let's talk real quick. You mentioned bylaws. That's not something we said at the top and we probably should have, you should have a full list. It doesn't have to necessarily be on the site. You're playing some, some leagues might, the bylaws are in a Google doc, but everyone has asked, has access to it and they're able to go find it sometimes though. And this may have happened to you since you like to have 17 million different kinds of rules from everybody else. You came up with this great idea. You wrote it all down. You found 12 people, you get through year one and you're like, oh, that's why nobody's done that before. It sucks mess up, let's be honest. When I messed up something in the rules,

I usually bring it up in the chat. I'm pretty open and honest with all my managers. I'm not trying to hide anything. Like, look, there's times where I messed something up or I thought I wrote this rule. It was meant to go this way. Everybody kind of thought that's how it was going to go.

It's not how it went. So we, as a league kind of aren't really operating the way it says. I bring it up in the chat. We have a discussion about it. I don't always put things to a vote. Like I said, when I abolished the trade deadlines in my leagues, I did that unilaterally. I did not put that to a vote because I didn't want to have a vote where half the people said, let's keep it. Half the people said, let's get rid of it. These are my leagues. Like I wanted to just change it.

So I just did. There are some things, you know, a lot of times where if there's setting things, little things, I'll put those to a vote. But ultimately as the commissioner, I have to have managers that trust that I am going to do the right thing for the leagues. And this is adopted from Scott fish, the best interest clause that is in there. It's in every single one of my bylaws. Like when there is something that needs to happen quickly,

I will just take care of it. Um, I usually get started gushing in the chat. I gauge the temperature, you know, of everybody's feelings. If there are, there, there's some things I already suggested for in a couple of leagues where in auction addicts, I threw it out there, like, should we transition to super flex? There was a few people that pretty quickly shot back. Not every league has to be super flex. And I was like, okay, that's not going anywhere this year. So I don't need, I don't need to have this discussion. I don't need to have, I don't need to put it to a vote. That discussion ended rather quickly. So I think you brought up a really good point there because those two examples you gave the trade deadline and the super flex,

one of those changes is if it's made anytime in the next year or two is going to have a big competitive change on the league. Um, in terms of certain teams already have four good quarterbacks, some teams, I don't know, mine might have zero. Um, so like, that's a huge thing that needs to have probably the approval of everyone in the league before you change something like that. Some things I think it's fine. I'm the commissioner. I don't really care. I don't really see why it matters that much. Let's have a vote.

If more than half the league wants to do it, I'm fine doing it. And some things the commissioner just sees, no, that's wrong. That's not what we intended. I'm going to change it. If you don't like it, you can leave. Is that a fair enough way to describe the barometer for how you make changes in your leagues? Yeah. And I mean, ultimately, like I know that people are playing in my leagues because they want to have fun in them.

And that's really if there's something that is impeding fun, that's a rule that I'm going to fix real fast. So, yeah, I mean, that is'm going to fix real fast. So yeah, I mean, that, that is, you have to have that confidence. You have to have that trust as the commissioner, both in your managers and your managers have to have that. It's a relationship. I mean, it's, it's something people are in my leagues because I think I do a decent job at commissioning and I feel like the managers of my leagues, trust me,

it doesn't always go that way. There are definitely some people that that kind of, I don't know, use of power or whatever you want to call it. It rubs them the wrong way. And like they want their voice to be heard. They're mad about everything. They leave the league. You probably don't want them in your league anyway. That's the league. You probably don't want them in your league anyway. That's the key. Usually if they're that kind of a person that's just going to get mad about everything,

I have never been unhappy to see them go. And usually we bring in somebody else that's a lot more in the flow of the leagues. So again, manager selection. A couple of just rapid fire here. I want to make sure we didn't leave anything out. So we've got 10. I think we had settled on earlier that we like that 10 starting spots for a 12 team league. How many roster spots,

first time league, how many active roster spots if you have 10 starters? So I typically do, uh, like two and a half X starting lineup. Yeah. So it would be 25 taxi And how many taxi squad? So the more the merrier for the taxi squad for me. And when I first started writing leagues, it was usually 10, 25, and then it was five. Five. Like 10 starting lineup, 25 was five. Perfect. How many IR spots? Make it 20. Make taxi 20. Make IR unlimited. Unlimited IR.

Never make a person cut a player because they got hurt. Must be on ir or pup yes to be on ir ir or pup for me yep i or pup not just out they can't just be missing a week you've got you know and then a very important question because this is basically i'm not sure if the chat's heard anything we've said all they've done is debate whether dj more is elite for the last hour and so i have to ask john because i want to satisfy the chat i think we are we are men of the anything we've said. All they've done is debate whether DJ Moore is elite for the last hour. And so I have to ask John, cause I want to satisfy the chat that we are, we are men of the people is DJ Moore elite. I am still a DJ Moore fan. He's my highest paid receiver on several of my salary cap teams. Uh, yeah, the correct answer is the DJ Moore is 100% elite if he's on my team

and you're trying to trade for him. And he's not quite elite if he's on your team. I would like to trade for him. That is going to do it for Fantasy Football today, Dynasty John. It is always a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you for coming on here. I hope this really helps some of you out in forming your new Dynasty League. Again, I'm going to be tweeting some stuff out in terms of people

that are looking for people to join their Dynasty Leagues if you want to do it that way. If you have more questions, please jump in the YouTube chat next time. Ask those questions. We'll try to get to them. Send us an email.

Send me a tweet. We want to help you guys enjoy this game as much as we do. Thank you again for being here, John. We will talk to you guys next week.