Fantasy Football Etiquette

Ahh, August... that time when the dog days of summer are upon us, and our thought soon turn to bye weeks, touchdown vultures, and fantasy football.

All four of us ECB contributors play in a league together, and I'm relatively sure 99% of our 6 readers also play fantasy football (basic math tells me that means 5.94 of our readers play fantasy football). As we head towards draft time, we here at ECB would like to offer some basic rules of fantasy football etiquette to live by. Much like the unspoken rules of baseball (don't hit Prince Fielder when you're up by 13 runs and he outweighs you by 150 pounds), these are rules that you just store away as dogma:

1) Pay your Commish
This one should be obvious, but as somebody who has a few years of Commissioner experience under his belt, it's very rarely followed by everyone in the league. If the past is prologue, I will be hunting people down at a Thanksgiving tailgate to bug them for their entry fee. There are horror stories of some people who finish in the money in their league never getting their award because they never paid into the league. A good Commissioner will set a deadline. You should abide by it. I will give props to all the ECB guys who abide by our deadline. Even if they occasionally enjoy writing things on the entry fee check that earns the Commissioner some really creeped out glances from the bank teller.

2) Fantasy football ratings magazines are generally a waste of money
Just for the fun of it, look somewhere deep in the three-point font on the magazine's publication information. Often times these magazines are published in June, well before trades are made, injuries take place, and rookies show what they can actually do. The caveat is that these magazines may be useful if you're in a really deep league and have the 167th pick in the league and need to know who the 79th ranked RB in the league is. Just a public service announcement - if you're going to use the cheat sheets, make sure that the cheat sheet that you're using actually corresponds to the scoring method used by your league. Willie Parker may be ranked highly on some cheat sheets but if you're in a touchdown heavy league, he's pretty useless.

Every stereotype begins with a kernel of truth - here, your geeky fantasy football "experts"

3) Don't listen to Matthew Berry or Gene Wang

Matthew Berry is paid way too much money by ESPN to pontificate on his love/hate list every week. Gene Wang offers fantasy football advice in the Washington Post and in a weekly chat on WashingtonPost.com. For one, there are about 20 different ways to score fantasy, so good advice regarding a player can translate into horrible advice the way your league scores. Second, anybody who has played fantasy for more than a year knows that how much time you spend preparing each week is normally inversely proportional to how well you end up doing. In other words, you CAN overthink and overstudy in fantasy football. These guys are the kings of that. If you listen to these guys, you're likely in for a .500 fantasy season, at best.

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4) Welcome to our league! Now please be quiet.

It's always fun to welcome a new manager into a fantasy league. Often times the manager is very valued for having filled a space left by somebody or for coming in at the last minute to give the league an even number of teams so that the league can play. It's fun to get to know the new manager and to see if they can keep pace with the shit talking that's been going on amongst the other managers for years. But new managers, know your role. Most fantasy football leagues are comprised of managers who have been in the same league for a really long time and who have been friends for an even longer time. Your invite represents an invitation to not just play this season, but to be in it for the long haul. If you work out. Let's just put it this way... you wouldn't go to a party with your girlfriend and immediately head over to the other guys who are hosting (who you don't know but who all know each other from way back) and then instruct them that they should have bought a keg of Bud Light instead of Miller Lite (and if you think Bud Light is better than Miller Lite, you're possibly a moron anyway). So don't do the same thing in your fantasy football league, suggesting rules changes in year one.

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5) Don't veto a trade

This is always an issue at some point in every fantasy football league in every fantasy football season. Even if you're in first place and you're concerned that the trade will fill that deadly hole on that team in second place that's been keeping you them from catching you, don't veto it... unless, and ONLY UNLESS the trade is blatantly a result of some form of collusion by two managers, which doesn't frequently happen. The power of anonymity on online leagues leads people to veto trades because they know that realistically nobody will ever know their vote. Seriously, just don't be that person.

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6) Don't abandon ship

Look, it could be mid-October and you could be in a position where you need to reel off seven straight wins to even sniff the playoffs in your league. Stick with your team. Mind the bye weeks and don't become a bye week yourself. If Week 7 comes along and your QB, RB, and DEF all score zero points because they're on bye, you've just given your opponent a victory by default, which could end up being very costly to another person in your league. People will remember if you jump ship and you won't be invited back. Suck it up. It's only fantasy. Hey, the Nationals are still playing baseball, right? The Lions still went out every Sunday even at 0-14 last year, right?

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7) Commissioners, be nice to your league

Schedule your draft anytime before the third preseason game and you're going to have a really hard time getting people to commit to your league. Remarkably Yahoo allows for fantasy football drafts in mid-August, almost immediately after the first preseason game. This gives way too much time for torn ACLs, quarterback controversies, and Michael Vick to steal yardage away from your running back. Drafts should be scheduled as late as possible, and barring unavailability, almost always on the eve of, or just after, the final preseason game.

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Have fun this fantasy football season, and be safe, kids.