Mark Rypien... not the name you usually associate with fantasy football stardom. But Mark Rypien was the first pick in my first ever fantasy football league, way back in the fall of '92. He finished that season with 13 TDs and 17 picks, and yet somehow I think the guy who picked him (who in his early adult years picked up the nickname Stupid Mother Fucker) won the league. This proves 2 things: a) Mark Rypien was actually good at one time (with 28 TD's and a super bowl ring the year before), and b) Fantasy drafts are a surefire way to ensure that some jackass wins your league.
Granted, the fact that the rest of us lost to a guy who picked Mark Rypien number 1 overall means we probably have no one but ourselves to blame. But because he was lucky enough to have the #1 pick, and we were stupid enough to not do a serpentine draft order (reversing each round) he got enough good players to fill out a decent team.
Well, that league has been running strong for 15 years (except for 3 seasons in the mid-90's when it folded due to the laziness of our dear comissioner... remember, you actually had to read boxscores to run a fantasy league back then). And in quite a few of those years, the #1 pick has been a sure path to victory. In one of my 3 championships, I had picked Marshall Faulk, in his prime, at #1, giving me a decisive and unfair edge over the competition. Similar results were seen in other years with Priest Holmes, and now LT. And it's not just #1... #2 is also a huge advantage over the lower picks. After I traded away Jerry Rice for Barry Foster and Art Monk, I learned to my dismay that marquis players are irreplaceable. Thus, even a serpentine draft order doesn't help, because the order of the first round has by far the biggest impact on the ensuing fantasy season.
The only solution? Abolish the draft! To celebrate the 16th year of our fantasy league, we're turning the corner and moving to an auction to figure out who goes where. Each team starts out with $200 fantasy dollars, and players go on the block in any order you want. The upside is enormous:
1) It's a level playing field. If you don't get LT, and he erupts for 40 TD's this year, whose fault is that? You should have paid more.
2) Bidding creates a sort of benevolent animosity between rival fantasy owners. If I can't kick dirt on your grave, at least I'll outbid you for Joseph Addai.
3) Uneducated owners can't get too lucky. Players can't just fall into their laps based upon the randomness of the draft and who picks ahead of them. Plus, they'll probably overbid on bad over-the-hill players and underbid on good up-and-comers, and their roster will look like the all-pro team I made in NFL2K (just 2K, as in 2000). You could even mess with the token dumb guy, and get into a bidding war with him for Michael Vick. Just make sure you back off before you end up with him.
4) All trades are possible. In the NBA, the salary cap seems like the obstacle to every dream trade. But in fantasy football with an auction and a salary cap, any trade is possible because one side just needs to agree to pay a little bit of "contract" to make the deal go through. No one wants to do the one superstar for two or three good starters trade in real fantasy football, but with contract money flying around you can always make a deal fair.
5) Tear up your mock drafts. A mock draft cheat sheet won't work anymore, because while Larry Johnson might be more valuable than Peyton Manning straight up, how much more valuable is he? Is he worth $20 more in fantasy money? That's up to you to decide. Even mock auctions aren't good enough, because they don't take into account who your bidding against, how much money they have left. Plus, players will likely go in a different order in every auction, changing the dynamics completely. To make it even crazier, we redo the points for TD's and yards by position every year, so most of the cookie-cutter online analyses you see don't apply.
6) Screw the other guy. It's midway though the draft, and I'm high on Santonio Holmes, but I can get him even cheaper later in the draft when the other teams have less money to throw around. I'm going to put Matt Cassel on the block, and I don't even have Tom Brady. But somebody does, and now that guy pretty much has to outbid me if he wants insurance in case of a Brady injury. Late in the draft, he probably could have got Cassel for $1, but now he has to spend at least $2. See how awesome this is?
7) Side bets. When I show up at the auction, I'm going to make a bet (real money this time) with someone on the over-under for Matt Leinart. I have no idea where Leinart will go, or how much he will go for, but it'll be a good chance to test my instincts. If the bet is small, no one is going to sabotage their fantasy team to try to win the bet by bidding him up.
I am psyched up about this auction, and I have no doubt we'll be ditching the draft for good.
