As we wrap up another season of fantasy football the last thing on your mind may be the off-season. Right now we are getting ready to relax and enjoy some playoff football without worrying about Steve Smith getting tackled at the one yard line for the 5th time this year and celebrating or lamenting our fantasy team’s season. As a commissioner, now is the best time to thoroughly examine what transpired in your league and see what improvements or tweaks can be made to enhance the game play for next season. In this column, I’m going to walk you through what I do in the off-season to prepare for next year. As a basis for this discussion, my league is a 14-team single keeper. If you operate a dynasty league, things would be slightly different regarding the draft and keeping transactions open throughout the year. Staying on top of your league in the off-season doesn’t take much time, considering the months we are devoid of football, but keeping in touch with your league and owners year round is a good practice and will help things run more smoothly come draft time.

January

The first thing I do at the end of the season is the league accounting. I keep a simple sheet showing what was paid in, and what was paid out. I post this to our league members and ask them to review before I start writing checks. This gives owners a chance to clarify what they won or catch me if I make a mistake (rare – but hey it happens to the best of us). I also confirm mailing addresses for those getting a check. I give the owners the option of taking payment or rolling their winnings into next year’s entry fee. Once all the owners have responded with their addresses and whether or not they want their winnings rolled over, I update the accounting sheet with what is paid and what is retained so that there is a league record and I don’t have to rely on memory next season about who owes me money for next years fees.

January – February

After closing the financial books on the 2008 season I turn to the season review process. I have two steps in the season review. The first is to poll owners for their opinions on the league. This is their chance to criticize current rules, propose new rules, and just discuss the league in general. I review all their responses and file them until I’m ready to put out the new rule proposals later in the year. I’ve found this process works best just after the season when the events that transpired during the season are fresh in everyone’s mind. Waiting until later in the year usually results in fewer responses. So, despite the fact that I’m not going to uses their input until later in the off-season, I try to get as much feedback as possible just after the year is complete.

I also export all league statistics to a spreadsheet so I can do some simple analysis of the league scoring system. By reading some of the other columns on this site, there are people here who have a much more advanced understanding of statistics that I do. However you don’t have to be a stats major to do some evaluation of your league’s scoring. The goal I have for my scoring system is to differentiate the best players statistically from those in the middle of the pack, thus rewarding those who draft the best players. I also like to make every position important in the draft. I typically do two quick checks to see if I’m getting what I want. I look at the top 5 players at each position and compare those players. Ideally I’d like to see a balance across all positions (QB, RB, WR, TE, DST, and PK). Typically, as in most leagues the TE and PK position are difficult to bring up par with the other positions. I could modify the scoring for these positions to make them competitive, but I’ve accepted that with standard scoring, these positions are going to be less important. So really I’m looking to see that my top 5 QB’s, RB’s, WR’s and DST’s are scoring similar amounts of points. When you do this, you have to realize that there will be statistical outliers each year and that you don’t get too caught up in chasing these outliers. However if you see a certain position that is consistently and significantly outscoring another position, you may want to consider a scoring modification to account for this trend. A simple example is the QB position. We award 4 points per TD pass to keep the QB position in line with the RB and WR position. Also in the past, the yardage bonuses were more significant for WR’s than for RB’s, however we reversed that trend last season as the NFL is trending away from the workhorse RB and that position has become more like the WR position where multiple players contribute for their team each week.

The second analysis I perform is scoring within each position itself. Since I have 14 teams, I want to examine all the players that should be starters and see what the difference is from the top tier performers, to the mid tier performers to the bottom tier performers. For example, we have 14 teams starting 1 QB, so I’ll look at the top 15 QB’s in the league. I want to see that the top 3 or 5 are significantly better than the middle 3 or 5, and again that the middle 3 or 5 are significantly better than the bottom 3 or 5. This is far more critical than most people realize. This is really where positions are made valuable in the draft. I could take kickers and make all field goals worth 20 points. Your initial thought may be that I have to draft a kicker early because they score 100 points per game. But what doesn’t change is the fact that the top kicker won’t outscore the bottom kicker by a significant amount of points. So even though your kickers would score 1000 points per season, they are still undraftable because they all score that amount. What I try to do is adjust my scoring to make the top players statistically better. A good example of this would be with yardage bonuses. Rather than accumulate points on a linear basis for yardage (i.e. 1/10th point per yard). We give bonuses at 100- and 200-yards rushed. This makes a 200-yard game very rewarding as it’s worth nearly 3 times as much as a 100 yard game. This is more in line with the frequency of which 200-yard games occur.

I didn’t mean to rehash the scoring systems discussion, but early in the off-season is a great time to examine your scoring and make sure you’re system is identifying the elite players while the memories of the year are still fresh in your head. A scoring system that balances position scoring while rewarding elite players will make your draft more challenging for the next season.

April/May

When the NFL draft rolls around, it’s a good time to send an e-mail to your league members just touching base with them. Guys tend to re-focus on the NFL at this time and just a simple reminder that your league activities will be picking up in a couple of months can give you and idea of who’s still interested in your league and who you may have to replace in the off-season. I don’t usually have any specific topic at this time, but I just think it’s a good idea to keep in touch with your owners throughout the season.

July

This is when the pace starts to pick up. I have two goals for July. The first is to establish a draft date and the second is to finalize rules changes. I consider August the start of the pre-season so I want to have these two things pinned down in July. Our league typically drafts the weekend prior to labor day, or a week and a half prior to the NFL season. We do this to avoid Labor Day conflicts but to still draft as close to the start of the season as possible. While this has become a given each year, I still like to send out the e-mail in early July to confirm the date. This gives owners plenty of time to free up their schedules for draft day or make preparations if they are unable to attend in person. Waiting until the last minute to try to get 14 people together for an event is a mistake. So is trying to accommodate 14 different schedules. Set the date early, and unless there are a ton of conflicts, don’t change it. The owners that want to be there will find a way to be there.

As mentioned above, the other thing I like to do in July is finalize rules changes. At this point, I go back to my notes from my owners from the end of the prior season and to my statistical analysis to decide what changes I want to incorporate and what I want to put to vote. I don’t always agree with the changes my owners propose, but if I see multiple owners making the same request, I’ll put it to a vote to be incorporated. Once I receive the voting feedback, I modify the rules document and send it to the owners. I also write a summarization of what changes were made so that you don’t have to re-read the entire document to discern what’s new. This way, owners have no excuse for not being aware of the new rules come draft day.

August

In August, we’re pretty much back to the full swing of regular communications, but there are a few things that need to be done prior to the draft.

1. Fees – Always collect your fees prior to the draft. As most of my owners have played for 10 seasons now, some of them get a pass and can pay on draft day but any new owner needs to pay by the deadline (typically 3 weeks prior to the draft) or I’m going to replace him. A dead team will ruin a league’s draft and having the cash in hand will deter this from happening or will at least allow you to get someone to take the team for free if need be.
   
   
2. Keeper Declaration – In order to allow owners to prepare for the draft we declare our keeper players one week prior to the draft so we know who will be draftable.
   
   
3. Draft Location – Starting in August, I’ll scout some establishment for a suitable place to hold our draft. We have a few simple requirements, WiFi, cold beer, hot wings and hotter waitresses. We’ve even found one establishment that gives us $25 worth of food credit to hold our draft there. If you are holding one in a bar or restaurant you definitely want to speak to the manager and make sure they are copasetic with you having a draft board, cords for computers (fire code violations – trust me I know) taking up space for 4 hours, and that they put you in a spot where the WiFi works. A little extra planning goes a long way for making a draft run smoothly.

As you can see, though not nearly as intense as the regular season schedule, the off-season schedule can be just as important to the success of a league. If you keep things on a schedule and don’t put it all off until a week or two before the draft, you’ll find yourself with a much more manageable task of coordinating the league in August. Thanks again for all your questions and comments throughout the year. I’ll be available throughout the off-season to take any questions you may have.