We are 28 days away from the 2017 NFL season kickoff, and one hour from the Cleveland Browns first pre-season game. This is the time of year when it is tempting to join many different fantasy leagues and eliminator pools. Every day our inboxes are full of requests to join leagues and pools and each one looks better than the last. How many leagues and/or tournaments can a person manage effectively? While it is easy to join a league, the longterm maintenance is very time consuming, not to mention the cost of joining.
This year Don is doing three redraft fantasy leagues. He is continuing his hometown 16 player league, a Fantasy Football Players Championship league, and one additional league that we will both compete in. We will also both have an entry in our annual eliminator pool, Don will have six entries in the King of the Mountain pool, and he will have weekly entries into daily fantasy sports on at least three different websites (Fanduel, Draft Kings, and Fantasy Draft are Don’s favorites).
That is a lot of fantasy!
The advantage of being in several leagues is having a better chance of winning. The more leagues you are in, and the more you participate, the more you learn. Drafting takes practice, and practice makes almost but not quite perfect. Being more invested in leagues is also good incentive to keep up on what the experts like Bob Harris (http://www.footballdiehards.com) and Mike Clay (www.espn.com) are advising us to do.
There are disadvantages of being in too many leagues. Like we said above, it can be time and money consuming. Trying to manage all of your teams injuries, transactions and bye weeks can be overwhelming if you are in a lot of different leagues. Fantasy is supposed to be fun, and at a certain level it could feel more like a job. I was only in one league last year (The Pro Football Hall of Fame Fantasy Experience League) and lost more than a few hours sleep staying up late to check my score! Another disadvantage is having too many players to root for, and playing against some of the players that you have on other teams. When you only have one team, you can go all out and only root for the guys on that team.
Like everything else in our lives, we try to seek a balance that works for us. What seems like way too much fantasy football to one person, might be a drop in the bucket compared to someone else’s idea of the perfect number of leagues. We enjoy the competition and having something in common that we both enjoy. While I am not nearly as knowledgeable as Don is, I am learning, and I listen to the experts as often as I can. I’m also lucky that I can ask him a million questions and he almost always guides me in the right direction!