Running a Fantasy Football League

I know not all ( or pretty much any) of my regular readers do the fantasy sports thing, but I thought it might be interesting to detail what I go through this year as the commissioner and team owner of a fantasy football league. So yes this series of posts will be all about sports, so you can skip it if you are uninterested.

So I have been a member of the same Fantasy football league for 6 years now, and took over commissioner duties 2 years ago. As commissioner I have 3 primary duties: recruit team owners, Set up the rules and web site, Run the league draft. I also am occasionally (but very rarely) called on to adjudicate trades. The majority of the league members work for my company or have worked here in the past. And whenever an opening comes up I have to search here in the support desk for new members. Which is usually not too stressful, I usually only have to fill 1 or 2 slots. Since I run a free league, it generally isn't too hard to recruit, because all people have to give up is time.

The first 2 years I had the league site hosted by 1 company (EA Sports), but while it was a pretty good web site during the season, it has always been a pain for people to get set up on the site. So this year I am moving the league to another site which is more tested & true. I plan on doing that part this week, although I will probably write another post where I describe in detail the actual process of setting up the scoring method because I think that is the part of fantasy football that people have the hardest time grasping.

I plan to host the draft at my house, which is usually a fun process of people getting together, talking football and full of boasting and trash talking. I sent out an e-mail today asking for people to give me their availability days and dates, then I get to try and set a date as early as possible.

Now I know that there are some who may mention that I say every year that I am through with fantasy football, yet every year I come back. Well there are 2 factors this year: first, I won this league last year so I have that pressure off my back. Second, I picked the web site for hosting based on the idea that I would not get live scoring updates, therefore I wouldn't know scores until Monday morning, which makes it easier emotionally because I can't sit in front of the computer watching the scores change.