42 Fantastic New Fantasy Football League Ideas

Fantasy Football league ideas have been coming across my desk over the past 34 years of play, and many of them, I have personally instituted in some of my leagues. They’re awesome!

Back in my day, we had to wait until Saturday to watch cartoons. (It was inhumane!) And we’d get detention for passing notes because texting didn’t exist. And my Fantasy league was Basic TD-only scoring. The Fantasy Football league ideas were few and far between back then!

42 Great Fantasy Football League Ideas

Here are some of the best Fantasy Football league ideas I’ve come across over the past three decades of play. Some were suggested by readers through the years, and some were ideas created while playing in other commissioners’ leagues.

Fantasy Football league ideas Involving Schedules

Sometimes, we can make some minor tweaks to our Fantasy schedules which could add a ton of life to our leagues.

1. Set Up Two Double-Headers

With a 14-week regular season for most Fantasy Football leagues, it’s really tough to gauge who the six best teams are, especially when you consider how many times a good team loses to a bad team, just because they had stars on byes that week. So one way you can fix that is by making more regular season games! Thankfully, you don’t have to worry about wearing your players out by making them play two games in one week! Brilliant!

The commissioner will set up two double-headers – bookending the bye weeks – so that Fantasy teams will have full rosters to go up against two teams each before and after the bye weeks. (In 2017, that means your double-headers might be Weeks 4 and 12.) Ideally, these double-headers will be scheduled against division rivals!

Just think about the excitement surrounding that Week 12 set of double-headers, when everyone has their players back off byes, and playoff spots are starting

2. Add Rivalry Weeks to Your Fantasy Schedule

During your Fantasy Draft Day, figure out a rivalry for each owner. So if you have 12 teams, figure out which six rivalry matchups you could create. This is one of the more fun Fantasy Football league ideas. These rivalries could consist of matchups between:

• Brother vs. Brother
• Father vs. Son
• Husband vs. Wife
• Neighbor vs. Neighbor
• Worker vs. Boss
• In-laws
• Husband vs. Wife’s Former Boyfriend!

Basically, you just want to make each game to take on a little special meaning. The winner of these rivalry weeks gets to do something to the loser. Obviously, you don’t want to make it too painful, but it could be something like the winner renaming the loser’s team, or changing their team logo for one week.

Those new Fantasy team names could change to something like:

• David is a WAAAAAY Better Fantasy Player Than Me!
• My Wife Picks Losers, Just Like Me
• Loserville — Population: Me

3. All vs. One and One vs. All Scheduling

Fantasy Football league ideas can deal with scheduling, too. Part of the problem with Fantasy Football is that scheduling can sometimes lead to bad teams finding their way into the playoffs, and good teams get bounced because they had a terribly difficult schedule. What if you set up your 12-team league so that every single week, each team plays against each of the 11 other teams. Then schedule the same thing for the next week, and so on. This means the best teams would win more than they lose, and the other way around. Obviously, once the playoffs start, it has to go back to one-on-one Head-to-Head play.

4. Remove Chance By Awarding Extra Wins

Similar to the All-vs.-One scheduling model, each team ends up being judged each week against the other 11 teams in the league. In this way, though, there’s regular Head-to-Head play, like we’re all used to, but the top six scoring teams get an extra win added to their standings, and the bottom six scoring teams get a loss added. This is one of those Fantasy Football league ideas that helps good teams facing great teams still get out of the week with a 1-1 schedule, and it prevents bad teams from getting undue higher rankings in the standings.

5. Schedule Double-Headers Every Week

Once again, in an effort to remove the chance from bad teams and good teams, scheduling double-headers every single week will make the cream rise to the top.

6. Schedule Fantasy Double-Headers Twice Per Season

Rather than make a huge change in the scheduling with some of the aforementioned new Fantasy Football league ideas, maybe tweak the schedule just a little by adding a couple double-headers. Think ahead, though, and add them during the weeks when no NFL teams have bye weeks. Wouldn’t that suck if you had a double-header to play and your first-round pick was resting on a bye?

7. Turn Week 18 Into an Awesome Daily Fantasy Pro Bowl Week!

We have been taught to avoid the last week of the NFL regular season in our Fantasy Playoffs because stars sometimes get benched for rest and there are too many uncertainties to make that week the Fantasy Football Championship week. One of my favorite new Fantasy Football league ideas is to make Week 18 a week where every owner picks a team on a DFS site, and they all play against each other in a DFS Pro Bowl! Now, those backups that are seeing more snaps become cheap superstars! You could even make it so that each Fantasy owner is allowed to “lock in” one player from their real Fantasy team that no one else is allowed to use.

Fantasy Football League Ideas: Commissioner Moves

Commissioners are usually the linchpins to the entire league, so it stands to reason that if they get some Fantasy Football league ideas, they can be the stimulus to get the rest of the league to join.

8. Give Your Fantasy Football League a Theme

I wrote a piece on 15 Great Fantasy Football Themes you should check out. Whether you use Star Wars, Game of Thrones, The Simpsons or a dozen other solid options, your fellow leaguemates will have a lot of fun coming up with creative Fantasy Football team names related to that theme. Great Fantasy Football league ideas should help your league stand out from the others! Have your league vote on what theme you should use!

For instance, I used to be in a Seinfeld league, where all the divisions, teams and even the championship game (The Festivus Bowl!) had names related to Seinfeld! My team used to be “Scandals and Animals,” named after my favorite episode with The Merv Griffin Show set, but then I eventually changed my team name to “These Pretzels are Making Me Thirsty!” It’s dumb. And awesome, all at once!

9. Reward the Regular Season Scoring Champion, Too!

Everyone understands that the Fantasy playoffs have an awful lot of chance involved, and the team that scores the most Fantasy points during the regular season is the best team of the year. You should still reward the winner of the playoffs with the biggest payout, but don’t forget to reward the team with the most Fantasy points (not the best record!) in the regular season, too.

10. Get the League to Vote on End-of-Season Awards

The end of the Fantasy Football season is usually sluggish and slow, as most of the league is already eliminated and everyone’s dealing with the holidays and visiting family, while getting ready for the new year ahead. But when January rolls around, get the league involved again by asking everyone to vote on some Fantasy league awards (they’re not allowed to vote for their own teams!):

• Fantasy MVP
• Fantasy Bust of the Year
• Fantasy Sleeper Pick of the Year
• Owner of the Year
• Free-Agent Pickup of the Year
• Fantasy Rookie of the Year
• Fantasy Team Name of the Year
• Best Keeper Pick of the Year

You can also have some fun and vote on:

• Worst Fantasy Owner of the Year
• Worst Fantasy Trade of the Year
• Worst Drop of the Year
• Worst Fantasy Team Name of the Year
• Worst Keeper Decision of the Year

In many of these cases, the commish should go back and list off some nominations for each of the awards, so people don’t have to do a ton of research. It’s nice to get everyone involved again, and reward some Fantasy owners that didn’t make the playoffs.

11. Use a Three-Headed Commissioner

Some Fantasy Football league ideas are meant to make the league more fair to compete in. If one person doesn’t want to step up to be the commissioner, separate the duties among three different people for a Commissioner Committee! Try to choose owners that are already really involved and excited about making the league better.

Plus, with three commissioners, they can vote on trades and rules, and do what they can to make the league better. If one or two of the commissioners are involved in a trade, then bring in alternates for the voting.)

My suggestion for separation of duties:

• Logistics: Let this person handle the website duties, from league setup to roster cleanup to rules and scoring settings. He’s the numbers guy!
• Treasurer: This person collects the league fees and harasses people until they pay – then he also pays out at the end of the season. He’s the accountant you all better trust!
• Media: This guy is the one that sends out the fun emails to the league to get them pumped about the draft, and maybe he announces the Fantasy MVP each week, etc. He’s the fun uncle!

12. Last Year’s Champion Gets Penalized For This Year

This could be for a keeper league or a redraft league, and it really just punctuates how much everyone hates a winner! In order to keep a Fantasy dynasty from forming, make last year’s champion draft at the end of Round 1. If it’s a keeper league, make them lose one of their keeper slots! So while everyone else is holding over three players, they only get to hold over two.

13. Use Relegation To Move Owners In & Out of Your League

This is one of the wilder Fantasy Football league ideas on this list. Are you running a really successful Fantasy league already? Do you have a waiting list of six or seven owners hoping to get in, waiting for a spot to open up? Make your league elite! Start a second league for the “waiting list” guys, and have the top two teams in that six- or eight-team league (the league champ and the league’s scoring champ) join the big league the next season. They would replace the two bottom teams from the main league.

This is called, “Relegation,” and it happens in European soccer leagues all the time. The best clubs move up and the worst clubs move down. Then the next year, it starts all over again, and the “minor” league will battle to get back into the majors!

Make the smaller league’s entry fees about one-quarter of what the fees are for the big league, helping keep that league stocked with potential.

Ideally, you’d have both of these Fantasy drafts happen at the same time, with all of the owners together at the same location. The big league would get the big table, and the smaller, minor league would have to do their draft at the “kiddie table.” Humiliation can be a great motivator! YAY!!!

14. Every 4 Years – It’s the Fantasy Football World Cup!

These Fantasy Football league ideas are for leagues that have been around for a decade or so, preferably keeper or dynasty leagues. Have teams pay an extra 25-percent of the league fees every season, while keeping the payouts at the same amount. Then every fourth year, have a Fantasy Football World Cup season, where the winner of that year gets TWICE the payout amount! So if you have a $100 league entry fee each season, that number goes up to $125, and the payout goes from $1,200 in that fourth year to $2,400! This is also great for owner retention.

15. Commissioners Should Start Keeping Owner Records

Some league services, like CBSSports.com, has league histories, which includes stuff like the standings every year, the draft results, the owner records versus other owners, and assorted other records, like highest points scored in a season, etc. I wish it would also have records like average first-round draft position, best average finish, most Fantasy League MVPs on your team, most Busts, etc. These Fantasy Football league ideas are great to refer to during the season – and especially just before the season to build excitement.

16. Allow For Public Trade Counteroffers During a Veto Window

I used to work with numberFire’s Matt Musico at FanDuel, and I completely stole this idea from him – props! It’s definitely one of the best new Fantasy Football league ideas I’ve seen in a while.

One of the most annoying things that happens with Fantasy Football trades is that people always say, “What a horrible trade – I would’ve given you a much better deal for that player! You got robbed!” This idea solves that.

Basically, once a trade is agreed upon between two teams, the commissioner then opens up a 24-hour window where other teams can now try to beat the trade offer for either side. Once a counteroffer is accepted, THAT trade goes up for more counteroffers! You’ll never ever have a trade get vetoed again!

17. Discounts & Penalties Fantasy Football League Ideas

Collecting league fees is always a pain every season. Maybe make it so that the first six teams to pay their fees get a 10-percent discount and the last three teams have to pay a 20-percent penalty? That would make it a race for owners to pay you!

Fantasy Football League Ideas Involving New Scoring Rules

When people are considering new Fantasy Football league ideas, new scoring rules ranks among the most popular changes they’re willing to make.

18. Award Fantasy Points For First Downs Gained

I stole borrowed this idea from DynastyLeagueFootball.com, where Dan Meylor mentioned it in his column. By adding single points for any first downs made by a running back, wide receiver or a tight end, you even out the scoring between RBs and WRs a little bit more. Use this rule instead of points per reception or else you’ll over-reward WRs again. This new Fantasy scoring rule also eliminates a running back or wide receiver getting a point for catching a screen pass and losing two yards. It does, however, award a running back that can plunge forward with some extra effort for that third-and-short conversion.

19. Award a Bonus Touchdown For Fantasy Team With Best Backups

Doesn’t it suck if a backup player has a huge game and you’re unable to benefit from it? Make it so that whichever team in a Head-to-Head matchup has the set of reserves that scores more points gets six more points added to their Fantasy score. A bonus TD! NFL teams use their backup players, right? So why can’t you? This should also initiate some interesting lineup strategies as people forego sleepers at running back and wide receiver in favor of a backup quarterback or two.

20. Award Half-Points to Backup Quarterbacks

The quarterbacks position is one of the most important in the NFL, as he’s often the leader on the field and in the clubhouse, and he makes the offense go. But in Fantasy Football, quarterbacks have been neutralized because you only start one, and the top 12 are generally all very good, with little separation.

By awarding half-points for every point a Fantasy backup quarterback scores, you make the position more important, and you keep from having to go to a full Two-QB league, which changes everything.

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HALFTIME!

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21. Choose Team Captains For a Turbo Boost to Their Scoring

Let’s face it, Fantasy Football and video games go together pretty easily, so why not combine the two? Each Fantasy owner names a “team captain” and that player gets a 50-percent boost in their Fantasy points that week. The team captain can be changed throughout the season, as owners try to take advantage of some great matchups! You can also make it so that a team can’t name a captain more than twice in a season.

For example, if Justin Jefferson is your team captain, and he scores 32 points against the Lions this week, you’ll get an additional 16 points added to your final Fantasy score! But you have to yell, “Turrrbo BOOST!”

Fantasy Football League Ideas Involving Lineup & Waiver Ideas

Through the years, the major changes to Fantasy Football leagues come to the lineups (flex positions, WR3s, QB2, super-flex, etc.).

22. Make Offensive Lines a Fantasy Position In Your League

Pretty much every NFL position can score you points in Fantasy Football, outside of offensive lines and punters. While we don’t have plans to change anything for the punters, we can make the offensive line position more interesting from a Fantasy perspective. Let owners draft “Team Offensive Lines,” sort of like how people draft “Team Defenses.” Then award five Fantasy points if that offensive line’s NFL team rushes for over 150 yards, passes for over 300 yards or doesn’t allow any sacks! This could be a great way to stack if you own Ezekiel Elliott and are smart enough to also draft the Cowboys offensive line! Or it’s a way to negate another team, but starting their star running back’s offensive line.

23. No Free Agent Pickups Until the Week 3 Supplemental Draft!

When I first started in Fantasy Football, back in 1989, we drafted large teams, so we had plenty of backups, but we wouldn’t allow for waiver pickups in the traditional sense. We had in-season supplemental drafts at different points. By not allowing owners to make free-agent pickups after the draft, forcing them to wait until after the first two weeks of the season are over, then the worst teams in the league suddenly get a chance to add a superstar to their teams.

In the past 20 years, players like Kurt Warner (1999), Alfred Morris (2012), Justin Forsett (2014) and Dak Prescott (2016) and Puka Nacua (2023) all ended up being great waiver-wire pickups at the beginning of their seasons. Let those players build up for a couple weeks and have a Week 3 Supplemental Draft!

24. Make Tight Ends More Important In a 2-TE Lineup

Tight ends, like quarterbacks, have plenty of talent, but just one lineup slot on Fantasy teams. Rather than having a tight end mix into your flex position (what a waste!), make each team start two tight ends, along with two running backs, three wide receivers and a flex position! Now, that second tier of tight ends really mean something, and sleeper tight ends can start being drafted. Rookie tight ends can finally see a starting Fantasy lineup!

25. It Might Be Time to Give Kickers the Boot!

Hey, I’m an old school Fantasy player, so kickers hold a special place in my old decrepit heart (I once drafted Donald Igwebuike, for goodness’ sake!). But I play in the FLEX Leagues, run by Jake Ciely, and he has eliminated the kicker position from those leagues. At first, I protested. But then, as you play, and you realize just how nice it is not to have to maneuver your lineup around to accommodate kickers on byes or kickers coming off byes or an injured kicker, etc., the idea sounds pretty awesome. Sometimes, good Fantasy Football league ideas go against your personal preference.

26. Speaking of Kicking, Let’s Punt Flex Positions, Too

One of the original goals of creating the flex position was to help make wide receivers more important, and trying to equalize the importance of running backs. So teams could choose to start a third (or fourth) wide receiver instead of a third running back. How about having four wide receivers and no flex, then you can add a third running back slot, too. To me, the flex is a copout, and this forces owners to make decisions.

27. Name Emergency Quarterbacks to Eliminate Injury Issues

Some Fantasy Football league ideas try to solve a problem you didn’t realize your league had.

Injuries in Fantasy Football happen just like they happen in the NFL, but NFL teams deal with it in a much different way. When a quarterback gets injured in the first quarter, they don’t play the rest of that game without a quarterback, they bring in a backup quarterback! The NFL is smart like that! But a Fantasy Football owner loses his NFL QB in the first quarter and he’s screwed for the entire weekend.

Make teams draft two quarterbacks, with the second quarterback being their emergency quarterback. If QB1 gets removed from the game, the Fantasy owner can choose to have his Fantasy backup quarterback enter his lineup instead, even if it’s after the games have happened.

Another option, if you don’t want to have to draft two quarterbacks, is to just have the points scored by the NFL backup to an injured quarterback count for your team.

28. Let Waivers Be a Twitter Free-For-All

Another fun Fantasy Football league idea is to have your waivers play out on Twitter! Players can be picked up and dropped at any time – even during a game! That would definitely make Sunday dinner at the in-laws (more) stressful!

The first one to pick up a player gets him – and whomever he drops is instantly available to other owners. This reminds me of a boiler room at some finance firm on Wall Street with people yelling “Buy! Buy!” and “Sell! Sell!” and “Who ate my sandwich!?!” (I honestly don’t know what goes on in those boiler rooms, but I like to think there are a lot of sandwiches being pilfered out of the breakroom fridge.)

Twitter is underutilized by many Fantasy owners. There’s a lot to be learned on there, and I’ve set up a huge list of 66 Fantasy Twitter people to follow that will help you for free.

New Fantasy Football League Ideas Involving: The Draft Lottery

Now that you have the scoring and lineup settings ready, it’s time to look at changing up the draft lottery! My buddy George is Australian and he loves Fantasy Football. Did you know their Fantasy drafts go in counter-clockwise order, and the 12th pick selects first and the first pick drafts last? OK, well, sometimes I lie.

29. Make the Draft Lottery Another Big Event

People don’t take advantage of how exciting the draft and the draft lottery can be. Too often, we’re all so excited to get the draft going, that we zoom through the lottery and rush our way through the draft. Take a step back and enjoy it!

Rather than just doing a quick lottery and sending out the results, consider getting as many owners as you can together for the lottery a few weeks before the actual draft! Go to a restaurant or get together at someone’s home for beers, and do the drawing! Maybe video it or do a Google Hangout so everyone can watch it if they were unable to attend.

By doing the draft lottery ahead of time, you really increase the chances of owners working out some pre-draft trades! (Make sure you can trade draft picks in your league settings.)

Bring one of our customized Fantasy Football draft boards with you to put in the stickers across the top!

30. Change Your Draft Lottery Every Season

The Fantasy draft lottery is always a fun event, and commissioners should think about changing how the draft order is chosen every year.

There are a ton of different ways you can do your draft lottery, from as simple as drawing names out of a hat to holding a Skee-Ball competition at the local Family Fun Center. Some other ideas:

• Beer Pong: Write random numbers on the bottom of 12 red solo cups, fill them partially with beer, then have owners take turns shooting a ping-pong ball into them from across a table. When they make a shot, remove that cup, and they announce which pick they have!
• Pick a Racehorse: Find a horse race that’s coming up and do a drawing for the horse names in the race.
• NASCAR: Do a drawing with the different drivers’ names, and the person who drew the highest finishing driver picks first!
• Play miniature golf!
• Use 100YardRush.com: This website is pretty awesome! You can enter all your league’s teams, and it will run a simulation 100-yard dash on the site to determine the draft order! You can even send the recording of the run to others with a link! This is one of my favorite new Fantasy Football league ideas.
• Longest putt competition during a round of regular golf!
• Have a Hooters waitress pull names out of a hat!

31. Draft Your Draft Picks!

Scott Engel loves to poke fun at me for this one. I started a four-sport experts league back in 2001, and Engel was in charge of the CBSSports.com team (SportsLine back then). Anyway, the point is that owners get to pick where they want to pick in the first round. Of course, a lottery has to be done for the order in which the teams would pick their picks!

For the 2023 NFL season, here’s how I that draft of draft picks would go down:

1. Pick No. 1
2. Pick No. 2
3. Pick No. 3
4. Pick No. 4
5. Pick No. 5
6. Pick No. 6
7. Pick No. 12
8. Pick No. 7
9. Pick No. 8
10. Pick No. 11
11. Pick No. 9
12. Pick No. 10

32. Use NFFC’s Third-Round Reversal Order

This would be for non-keeper drafts. The NFFC figured out that those owners with the first few picks of the drafts were finishing much higher than those with later first-round picks. The reasoning was that while a late-pick owner got two of the top 15 players, as opposed to just one for the early pick owner, it was the fact that those early pick owners got three of the top 25-30 picks that made a much bigger difference.

The Third-Round Reversal rule makes it so that the third round is reversed what it normally is, and the second round order is essentially duplicated. For example, the owner with the 12th pick would now also have the 13th pick, and the 25th pick. The owner with the first overall pick would also have the 24th pick and the 36th pick, as well as the 37th pick to start off the fourth round. This is one of those inventive Fantasy Football league ideas that I’m jealous I didn’t invent!

33. Award Sandwich Picks Last Year’s Owner With the Hardest Road

Is there anything worse than losing your first-round pick to a torn ACL in Week 4? I like the idea of awarding a team that had to deal with that type of loss by giving them a sandwich pick between the first and second rounds of this coming year’s draft. You could also decide to do a lower sandwich pick, depending on the injury bust. For example, whoever took Keenan Allen in 2016, the biggest injury bust of the year, would get a sandwich pick between the second round and third round.

34. Use an Auction/Draft Hybrid Setup

Have you ever done a Fantasy Football auction before? If not, you and your leaguemates are definitely missing out. With that said, you probably already have a good thing in your yearly draft setup! So consider mixing the two, and doing a combination auction/draft for your player entry system. Auction off the top 50 players in Fantasy scoring from last season, and then do a straight draft for all the remaining teams! Start with $50 per team for the auction, and players go off the board in $1 increments.

If you’re really interested in Fantasy Football auctions, here’s an extensive list I wrote about some helpful Fantasy auction strategy tips of 26 Do’s and Dont’s.

New Fantasy Football League Ideas Involving Dynasty & Keeper League

You should be in several different leagues every year, including one dynasty league, one keeper league and one IDP league! Make your Fantasy Football life colorful!

35. Keeper Leagues: Help Have-Nots and End Serpentine Order

Part of the trouble with keeper leagues is that once a team gets some studs, they’re tough to shake from the top. So one way you can help those teams that have had some bad keeper news is to give them the higher draft picks, and stop the serpentine drafting. I am only in favor of this if there are five or more keepers, which makes it closer to a dynasty league than a keeper league.

By moving the have-nots up in the draft, they’ll have better chances at better keepers – in each round.

36. Try a Limited Keeper League

Some people love the deep research that goes into dynasty leagues, but not everyone in the league wants to go that deep. Try what I like to call a “limited keeper league,” which means it’s a keeper league, but the only players that are keeper eligible are the ones drafted beyond a certain point of the draft, like after Round 9.

This keeps the first few rounds stocked with superstars, especially incoming rookie studs like Bijan Robinson and Jahmyr Gibbs, since they’ll be picked well before the cutoff point (start of Round 10). But if someone does the right amount of research and locks down a good sleeper late, then they should be rewarded by getting to keep that player going forward (I like to set three-year limits on keepers, after the year they were drafted. So they can be owned for four years, essentially.)

Also, try to make the keeper round an even-numbered round, so you don’t reward whoever wins the first overall pick with the first keeper pick, too. Sometimes, great Fantasy Football league ideas are really just all about league fairness.

37. Start a Devy League

What’s a Devy League, you ask? The name is short for a “Developmental” dynasty league. Think of it like Major League Baseball, where they have an entire minor-league organization that provides talent to them season after season. Owners draft college and high school football players for their Devy Leagues, along with regular NFL players. You can add devy players to your regular rookie draft, or set it up so they can be added throughout waivers in-season.

38. Make College Players Eligible in Keeper Leagues

In a keeper league I ran dating back to 1989, we started allowing the two worst teams in the league (after Week 12) to pick up ONE college football player that they’d be able to hold over as one of their three keepers heading into the following season. This is different from a Devy League in that it’s just a keeper league, as opposed to a Devy dynasty league.

In the mid- to late-‘90s, we had several great college players end up on bad teams, helping improve them considerably the next year. Guys like Randy Moss, Eddie George, Ricky Williams, Peyton Manning and Tiki Barber were all college player keepers back then. (Someone also drafted Curtis Enis, HA!) What’s really fun about it is people can’t change their pick, so they have to a) guess about their draft value, and b) hope their players end up with good opportunities on NFL teams. There was also the risk of picking a player that didn’t decide to enter the NFL Draft, only to go back to school for the next season.

Guys like Saquon Barkley, Trevor Lawrence and Bijan Robinson likely would have been college keeper picks, as well as people like Ja’Marr Chase and maybe even Christian McCaffrey.

Also, you should consider setting up rules that teams can only have one college player on their team at a time, and if you pick a college player one year, you can’t pick a college player the next year.

New Fantasy Football League Ideas For the Playoffs

The first 14 weeks of the NFL season is kind of like one season, and the Fantasy Football Playoffs are a one-and-done second season. Here are some Fantasy Football league ideas on how to make the Fantasy postseason even better.

39. Award Home Field Advantage For the Playoffs

I never understood why more leagues don’t award three-to-six points for home-field advantage to the higher seeds in the Fantasy Football playoffs. What’s the use of getting a higher seed, other than the bye week? This way, the fight for playoff seeds means even more. Of course, for the Super Bowl, there’s no home field advantage, as it’s played on a neutral playing field.

40. The Last Playoff Spot Goes to Highest Scoring Non-Playoff Team

Rather than do playoff seeding by record only, consider giving that final playoff spot, whether it’s sixth in a 12-team league, to the team remaining with the highest points scored. Once again, we’re trying to eliminate chance from the hobby, so a team that has a horrible Fantasy schedule (with the most points against) and the second-most points in the league, to go with a 6-7 record, gets rewarded with a playoffs spot.

41. Do a Consolation Bracket For the Non-Playoff Teams

Once teams are eliminated from the Fantasy Playoffs, they often completely lose interest and pack it in. Commissioners have to harass them to set lineups sometimes in the final weeks. So if you have a “Non-Playoff Team Playoffs,” with the winner getting half their league fee back, then they’ll have something to play for!

42. The Biggest Loser Buys Drinks For Next Year’s Draft!

I like the Toilet Bowl setup, personally, pitting the two worst teams of the regular season against each other, with the loser of that game being the Toilet Bowl Chump. That’s the worst spot ever! Whoever becomes Toilet Bowl Chump has to buy shots at the bar during next year’s draft, or they have to bring the beer if the draft is at someone’s house.

I like the ideas of handing out penalties, like many of the people did in Matthew Berry’s “Fantasy Life” book. One league forces their league loser to get a horrible tattoo! That might be a little much, after all. That’s like penalizing the guy’s wife and kids.

If you have some great Fantasy Football league ideas, we’re dying to hear them! Drop a comment below and let everyone know – especially me!