Fantasy sports existed before internet hosting became widely available and cheap. Some hardcore players even tallied league standings by hand, with paper and pencil! We're certainly not suggesting a return to such barbaric times. We are suggesting that, if the limited web-based options for hosting your league don't float your boat, it is possible to do it yourself. Here's how.
Difficulty: Easy
Time Required: Set up: About an hour. Maintenance: A few hours weekly, depending on the size of your league.
Here's How:
- The first step is the same no matter how you're hosting your league: get the group together and come to an understanding on your parameters. What categories will you be including? How many players on a roster? What positions? How often will you be making transactions? Remember, you're tracking all these things yourself, without the help of a super-computer in Bristol, CT. Simpler is better.
- The draft. This is the fun part. Get the league together and select your players. Usually this means an auction, in which each player has a budget to spend on players as he/she sees fit, or a straight draft, in which players simply take turns choosing players. Fried food and beer are highly recommended.
- Set up a spreadsheet for each team. You don't have a web-based tool to tally league stats, you're going to need to do yourself. Using the spreadsheet software of your choice (Microsoft Excel, Google Docs, etc.) set up a table for each team. Each team table should have a row for each player and a column for each stat category. Use the spreadsheet to figure out the total for "counting" categories (like rebounds or points) and the team's overall percentage or average for "averaging" categories (shooting percentage).
- Set up a "standings" spreadsheet. Take the totals for each team and put them on one sheet for comparison. The number of teams in your league serves as the highest possible point total in each category; in a 10-team league, the team with the best total in a given category gets 10 points, second place gets 9, and so on.
- Tally the stats. Choose a reliable source of statistics -- ESPN.com or CSTV.com, doesn't really matter which. Look up the season statistics for each player in your league and plug them in to your spreadsheets. This will be a fair amount of work, so you probably won't want to do it that often... once a week is plenty.
- Enter transactions. This is where things get tricky. Every time one of the teams drops one player and adds another, you'll need a way to track the new player's stats starting from the point that he was added. Here's how: add two new rows to the team spreadsheet for the new player. In one of the new rows, add the player's season totals, just as you would for any other player on the team. In the second, add the player's season totals as of the date he was added -- as negative numbers. Once the negative numbers are factored in, your team totals will only include his totals after the add.
- Rinse. Repeat. Make your transactions and update the standings each week. Decide your winner on Selection Sunday. Get the league together for the first round of the Tournament. Make the winner pay for snacks.
Tips:
- When setting up your league, don't forget to discuss division of labor. Tallying the stats will be a big job; it might be worthwhile to split the work between different players. Using an online spreadsheet like Google Docs might make it easier to split up the work.
- Come to an agreement on how often you'll allow transactions. When managing a league like this, making changes on a weekly basis is probably best. Set a deadline for transaction and keep to it -- for example, "any transactions must be sent via e-mail to the commissioner by midnight on Saturday to be included in the Sunday updates." E-mail is a good way to handle transactions; the time-stamp on an e-mail eliminates any confusion about who made the deadline and who didn't.
- If using a percentage as one of your stat categories, (i.e., shooting percentage) make sure to track the actual numbers that make up the percentage. To compute shooting percentage -- or any other percentage stat -- for a team, tally all attempts and all makes and then divide. Simply averaging out each player's percentage will give you an inaccurate number.
What You Need:
- A spreadsheet application -- Microsoft Excel, Google Docs or similar
- A source for statistics -- any sports website
