About
This is a page to document the college football competition I do with my brother and dad.
Rules
This game is analogous to regular fantasy football, except instead of picking players and “playing” them in slots based on their position, you pick teams and “play” them in slots based on their conference.
Roster
Each player has a roster of up to 30 teams. This seems well-balanced for 3 players because it allows an average of 3x coverage for each conference and a “free agent” pool of 41 teams.
There is no minimum or maximum number of teams per conference a player can have and, in fact, intentionally overloading one conference at the expense of others has been a major factor in the gamesmanship.
Teams are selected in a serpentine draft (1, 2, 3, 3, 2, 1, 1, 2, 3,…) where the first round is determined by the lowest to highest finishers from the previous year (see scoring, below). Each player can protect a small number of teams from the previous year. This number may change from year to year if protected teams are upending competitive balance. As of 2022, the number of protected teams is 3, with at least 1 from a Group of 5 (G5) and 1 from the Power 5 (P5). I keep this rule because I like the idea of each player picking a small number of teams to become familiar with and form the core of their roster which they then build their team upon, rather than simply picking the best teams in order.
During the season teams can be dropped and added by request. Priority is given to the lowest performer for the preceding week, who alone may drop and add teams on Sunday, then on Monday the last and next to last performers can drop or add teams on a first-come, first-served, basis, and from Tuesday until Saturday morning anyone can drop or add teams, again on a first-come, first-served basis.
Scoring
Weekly
Each player must submit a list of the teams they want to play in each position for the week. There is no hard and fast due date and time, but no team may be selected after their games have started. In theory, players could submit only their pick for Thursday and Friday games before those games start and the remaining teams on Saturday morning, but in practice it is difficult to know if those games will be played without evaluating all the Saturday games as well.
Players must pick or pass on one team from each conference, 3 flex teams from the P5 (ACC, Big 10, Big 12, Pac 12, and SEC), 2 flex teams from the G5 (American, C-USA, MAC, Mountain West, and Sun Belt), and 1 wild card from any conference, for a total of 16. Thus, the maximum number of teams from a single conference is 5 from a P5 conference or 4 from a G5 conference.
Teams can be selected from a form which I will provide to each player.
Independent teams in all cases (including protections during the draft, see above) can be used for any conference, flex, or wild card spot.
Players will receive the net score for each of their teams, e.g. if the team wins 63-14 the player will receive 49 points, and if they lose 63-14, the player will receive -49 points. The sum of all played games will be the player’s sum for the week.
Note: it is mathematically possible to return a negative score for the week. While it has never been done, there have been a few comically, embarrassingly close calls.
Any of the teams that plays a “Week 0” and a Week 1 game can be played, but must be banked for later. Their score can be used in any spot the team can be used, during any of the first 6 weeks, but must be used, even if they lose. If it is not used by week 6, I will remove their wild card pick from Week 6 and replace it with their week 0 score.
For 2022, the Week 0 games are on August 27 and the teams that play both week 0 and week 1 are:
- Nevada
- New Mexico State
- Western Kentucky
- Nebraska
- UConn
- Utah State
- Wyoming
- Illinois
- Florida State
- Charlotte
- Florida Atlantic
- North Carolina
- North Texas
- UTEP
- Vanderbilt
- Hawai’i
Season Standings
There are two scoreboards with different scoring.
The total points scoreboard simply is a running tally of the weekly scores. The player at the end of the season with the most total points gets a “gold” trophy. The reigning champion from 2021 is Jacob.
The match play scoreboard gives players a flat number of points based on their finishing place per week. First place for the week receives 3 points, second place receives 1 point, and third place receives no points. This is biased towards winning weeks rather than consistently being moderately good to differentiate it from the total points scoring. The player at the end of the season with the most match play points gets a “platinum” trophy (if it’s me) or a “silver” trophy (if it’s not). The reigning champion from 2021 is me.
Others
I periodically browse the results to try to find interesting trends, which I share as they come up. I additionally keep a list of some honorary awards which serve no purpose other than being mildly interesting. My current list (more will follow as I think of them):
| Award | Winner | Week | Value | Description |
| Best Week | Bob | 2022 Week 2 | 539 | Most net points in a week |
| Worst Week | Zach | 2019 | 38 | Fewest net points in a week |
| Best Offensive Week | Bob | 2022 Week 2 | 729 | Most points scored by teams played in a week |
| Best Defensive Week | Bob | 2022 Week 2 | 190 | Fewest points allowed by teams played in a week |
| Bad Luck Award | Bob | 2021 Week 2 | 430 | Most net points without winning the week |
| Really Bad Luck Award | Jacob | 2021 Week 1 | 419 | Most net points to finish 3rd in the week |
| Good Luck Award | Zach | 2021 Week 10 | 198 | Fewest net points to win a week |
| Nailbiter Award | Bob | 2021 Week 1 | 35% | Lowest percentage of total net points scored by the week’s winner |
| Blowout Award | Jacob | 2021 Week 5 | 53% | Highest percentage of total net points scored by the week’s winner |
| Big 12 Award | Bob | 2021 Week 8 | 312 | Most total points allowed by teams to still win a week |
| “What’s a Forward Pass” Award | New | New | New | Fewest points scored by teams to still win a week |
| Biggest Win | Bob | 2019 Week 1 | 72 | Biggest win in a single game |
| Biggest Loss | Bob | 2019 Week 5 | -51 | Biggest loss in a single game |
| Shootout | All | 2021 Week 2 | 1346 | Most total points by all players in a week |
| Defensive Battle | All | 2019 Week 6 | 454 | Fewest points by all players in a week |
The biggest loss column doesn’t necessarily capture the full schadenfreude of some truly horrific luck all players have suffered. Here is a far from comprehensive list of some of the most painful losses suffered by all players.
- 2019 Week 5 (current record holder), Zach: Hawaii beat Nevada 54-3 at Nevada. That’s right – the jetlagged team won by over 7 touchdowns. Nevada was a 3 point favorite.
- 2019 Week 12, Bob: tied for biggest lost against the spread; 11-point favorite Duke was beaten by Syracuse.
- 2021 Week 4, Jacob: Wisconsin (6 point favorites) went into the fourth quarter tied 10-10 with Notre Dame and proceeded to lose 41-13.
- 2021 Week 4, Bob: 31-point favorite Minnesota was beaten 14-10 by Bowling Green, widely considered one of the worst teams in football (hadn’t won more than 4 games in a season since 2015 including an 0-5 2020) and objectively the least experienced team in FBS.
- 2021 Week 6, Zach: Western Michigan, 12 point favorites, lost 45-20.
- 2021 Week 11, Bob: Indiana (7.5 point favorites) lost 38-3 vs Rutgers
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
I would love it if somebody else used and enjoyed this, but no monetizing it! Just for fun!