Betting! Fantasy Football! The Ultimate NFL Contest to Try With Your Buddies
Aug 28, 2016; Jacksonville, FL, USA; NFL footballs lay on the ground during pregame warmups of a football game between the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Cincinnati Bengals at EverBank Field. Mandatory Credit: Reinhold Matay-USA TODAY Sports
- This NFL season, we're creating a new football league that combines season-long fantasy, DFS, betting, and a survivor pool.
- We're putting together a league with industry pros, but you should absolutely create the league and play with your friends.
The number of fun avenues in which to speculate on sports is bigger than it's ever been: The 2018 SCOTUS ruling made it legal for states to accept wagers, DraftKings and FanDuel are offering millions of dollars in prizes each week for fantasy football contests and season-long fantasy doesn't seem to be slowing down anytime soon.
Many people enjoy betting on football in all of those ways, but never has there been a league combining all of those things. Until now.
Imagine a league combining four factors:
- Season-long fantasy football
- DFS
- Betting
- Survivor pool
We'll be announcing an industry-wide league with 16 of the sharpest football minds competing in this very contest — but you can also do this with your friends and family.
Here's how it works. (Also, listen to the podcast below for more details.)
The Scoring System
Each component is weighted equally. Here's how we're doing ours, but you can weight it as you'd like — top-heavy or flat.
- 1st place in each category: 100 points
- 2nd place: 60 points
- 3rd place: 40 points
- 4th place: 25 points
- 5th place: 15 points
- 6th place: 10 points
The Details
Season-long fantasy football
This can be a regular season-long fantasy league, or you can do something like a best ball league to keep the weekly burden low.
Best ball leagues are unique season-long leagues that require no management during the season. A draft is conducted before the season, and then lineups are optimized each week automatically.
The industry league is doing a head-to-head league with playoffs during Weeks 15 and 16, so it's much your standard season-long league except no setting lineups, trading or managing the waiver wire. So pretty much the optimal league.
DFS
There will be a weekly tournament, with the top six collecting "fantasy money."
- 1st place in weekly tournament: 20 fantasy dollars
- 2nd place: 10 fantasy dollars
- 3rd place: 7 fantasy dollars
- 4th place: 5 fantasy dollars
- 5th place: 3 fantasy dollars
- 6th place: 1 fantasy dollar
At the end of Week 16, whoever has the most fantasy money wins. This way still encourages GPP-style lineups but also gives this category equal weight with the season-long components.
Betting
This is like the SuperContest, so contestants make five picks against-the-spread by Wednesday night. Whoever has the best record after Week 16 wins. We encourage using our awesome app to track your picks.
Survivor pool
Like a regular survivor pool, contestants make one straight-up pick each week. If correct, the contestant moves on to the next week.
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It may seem like a busy league, but if you do the season-long fantasy component as a best ball league, the weekly burden is just one DFS lineup, five ATS picks and one survivor pick. Not bad at all.
After Week 16, the player with the most combined points across all categories wins. You can set the prize pool to whatever you deem appropriate.
And there it is, the perfect football speculation league. Enjoy!
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