The Golden Rule

My golden rule for success is that there are no sacred cows. Every team is expendable, every team’s value is relative to the landscape, and every strategy is subject to change

Picking Teams

At the top, it’s pretty easy to pick the best teams first because college football has serious parity issues. No matter how good the conference is, teams like Ohio State, Oklahoma, Clemson, Alabama, and Georgia are going to rack up a ton of points.

Beyond those, it’s easy to look at average (average strength of schedule, offensive and defensive averages, etc) but I think that’s a mistake. A team that wins 12 games by 2 points is far worse than a 6-6 team that wins their 6 games by 21 points and loses 6 by 17, even though both teams finish the season +24. That being said, such a strategy relies heavily on your ability to pick those wins and losses, and especially in G5 in-conference games that can be pretty difficult. I still think it’s worth the risk, especially if you want to compete for the match play trophy – you’re going to have to win a lot of weeks, and it’s easier to absorb a really bad week.

Another factor is a team’s value relative to its conference. I made the mistake of drafting the best projected MAC team way to early, and the MAC is terrible. As a result, I didn’t get that many points out of them and, in fact, got more points out of a few far worse teams played selectively when they had FCS games. Instead, you should look for teams that are a big jump up from the next couple of teams in their conferences. In the Pac 12, I took the entire conference as a loss because the top 2 teams, Oregon and Utah, had already been taken before I had a good chance to get them, and the none of the rest of the conference stood out (which was a good call, the next best team was 8-4).

On the other hand, you can really hurt the others if there are a few middling teams and then a big drop, you can really hurt the other players by loading up. This especially adds value if you’re willing to hold until later in the season, when bye weeks and conference games line up and other players may have no other option. This gives you the option to (a) trade your excess teams you aren’t using for higher-leverage positions or (b) force your opponents to take zeros or risky picks that result in losses.

A good independent is invaluable, but it’s also easy to overvalue independents. For starters, most of them are among the worst teams in FBS if not college football. Second, some of them play very tough schedules, so it’s hard to find the extra points and reduces the likelihood you’ll be able to use them to fill in for a weakness.

In-season Management and Team Selection

In-season management follows many of the same principles as drafting, with a few caveats. Regarding the weaker part of your roster, it’s often better to consider teams temporary and pick them up for a short stretch or even a single game. I used this strategy with Buffalo in 2021, which I picked up early in the draft, my 12th overall team, because they started their schedule off with a FCS team. They won that game 69-7, then only won 3 of their remaining 11 games by scores of 35-34, 27-26, and 45-10. They are emblematic of the MAC, a conference so bad that the only surefire route to success is by happening upon one of the teams that happened to be playing a tune-up game or homecoming, but other conferences can follow this same guidance.

On a weekly basis, there isn’t a lot room for strategy that I can see. The best course of action is to go through the list in order and fill in the best teams in their own conference, then the flex spots, then the wild card spot, as other positions fill up. My strategy with independents is to save them for last then replace the least likely winners with more likely independents, if possible.

Why?

All of this raises the question – why publish your strategy for your opponents to see it. Aren’t you competitive? Won’t it make it harder to win if you’re doing the work for them?

This is a very good question. However, I have my reasons.

1. I want to win, but it’s almost as much fun to figure out the best strategy. I would be happiest if I won very close competitions with the highest cumulative point total between players.
2. It’s not altruistic at all. I can only obtain hold onto less than a quarter of all the teams. There are tons of data points going untested which I can test by watching how other players perform with a similar strategy. I’m very much following the tech world’s example of providing a “product” when the users’ data is the actual product, which I am taking.
3. Can you really believe what I’m saying? Here’s a secret: there’s at least one idea on this page that is a trick to get you to doubt my honesty, which poisons the whole thing. By observing your actions and which pieces of advice you follow, I can deduce which parts seem the least correct, then reevaluate my reasoning to see if it makes sense or gauge how deceptive I can be and get away with it. Remember – trick plays are rare.
4. It’s all of limited value in practice. There are a lot of tradeoffs to consider, and I’m not sure you could really plan out your strategy in fine detail based on these notes. Instead, it would provide a guide of loose principles to keep in mind as you draft teams and manage your roster. That makes the process more of a fun competition of who can best synthesize intuition, good planning principles, and an ability to read the changing landscape.

Coming soon…

The draft will be held starting the evening of Friday, August 26 for as many rounds as we can fit into the evening, then finished Saturday, August 27 in the late morning/early afternoon. Once teams are set I’ll add a new post with a summary of the draft, team lists, and surveys for each player to pick their teams on a weekly basis moving forward.