As the fantasy universe grows, I think league scoring settings will become increasingly standardized for a variety of reasons, primarily for the perception of fairness as well as ability to compare/analyze player and team performance across the broadest range of leagues/teams possible, thus reaching the highest number of end users.
Alternatively, and maybe more likely since some players have had leagues going for many years, is something akin to player/course handicaps in Golf. And I’m pondering what aspects of this crazy game we all play would need to go into a similar system applied to Fantasy Football.
While FF (well, maybe just DFS at the moment, which has is nuances without doubt) has been legally ruled (for now) a game of skill, not chance, I can’t help but scoff at such a declaration at times. There are myriad factors in season-long FF that are essentially acts of god, also known as clearcut luck/fortune (and vice versa…), even the smallest of which can singularly determine the final outcome of an entire league as the resulting impact ripples its way through every team to some, tangible extent.
But, can the aforementioned rippling impact truly be measured in a realistic and statistically sound manner in practice? Well, that would be roughly equivalent to asking whether or not history is a perfectly reliable indicator of the future. The answer to that question is ‘no.’ But, within the confines of a controlled, standardized FF environment, perhaps the answer could one day be ‘yes,’ right?
I bring this up because I think, and hell, I KNOW, FF is, on the whole, incredibly unfair. I mean, this doesn’t stop me from participating actively every single season, but I think we all at least notice it when it happens. And we all know how it feels to be the beneficiary of a lucky break, as well as the seemingly permanent feeling of despair one may experience when made to be the other side, having only received the “tough luck,” to state it absent any four letter words we might prefer at the time.
**To me, the aspect of FF most in need of standardization — or stated bluntly, the cheapest/most absurd reason for losing any given week — is the delta between a player’s expected utilization versus the actual chances he gets to touch the ball and score points when it’s all said and done and the clock hits double zeroes.
PPR tries to account for this somewhat, but obviously falls short in a higher total number of ways than even the total number of times the Patriots are mentioned on ESPN (in short: a lot). But it helps. Until it doesn’t help and teams win by a single point because someone like Theo Riddick gains only 10 yards on the game but on 20 receptions as Matthew Stafford mindlessly shotputs a pass every play to Theo with 1 inch of room to run while he contemplates his purpose on this planet for the final 30 minutes of a game, hypothetically, kind of…Or Zach Ertz gets every pass on an entire drive the length of the field on a game’s final drive until he decides not to sacrifice his body to an onslaught of Cowboys defenders after reaching the one yard line, instead choosing to lateral and instead preserve his career earnings potential just like a Stanford-prepped player is likely taught to prioritize over taking one for the team in hopes of salvaging a chance to win the game. For the record, I’d do the same thing…
One day, however, I envision myself playing in a league with an annual salary’s worth of prize money on the line as the industry expands and evolves. With those stakes, I don’t think I would want to play without a massive overhaul of the current scoring systems widely in use. I’d require some sort of “handicap” in fantasy that levels out these types of plays based on the given circumstances, player incentives, coaching decisions, field conditions, crowd noise, injury severity, team records/motives, and everything that makes a given play lucky or unlucky to a team manager.
It would be impossible to really come up with something that is mathematically proven and precise, wouldn’t it? There are just too many factors in play, right? Too many things are left to chance, agreed?
Well then why isn’t sports betting also considered a matter of skill? Is it because of the point line that Vegas agrees on for every game? Does that mean FF would also be gambling if a handicap/line became a fixture of the game? Would that make it less fun at the end of the day? If done correctly, I don’t think so. But everyone would have to agree to use the same handicapping system, which is probably unrealistic in the aggregate, but at a micro/league level, Im sure a smaller group could decide to institute such a thing.
I post this here because this is the best, most educated/“skilled” pool of players/opinions that I have ever encountered when it comes to FF topics, and certainly an above-average group of FF players when it comes to activity level and participation rate. Believe it or not, we are all still very early adopters on the curve of Fantasy’s existence, and almost everything people say on here is notable to me in some way as someone who expects to at least partially be involved in this industry going forward in a capacity beyond just playing. I actually strongly believe Fantasy sports will be a far larger and more valuable market than sports leagues/broadcasting themselves, in terms of both total market cap as well as by the portion of the world’s population that participates regularly.
I’m tired of typing and realize I haven’t written a coherently structured comment here, but if you happen to read any of it and have any thoughts to add, or any specific aspects of the game you think must be factored in to some sort of handicapping system — which would be developed in an effort to standardize the game across all leagues and make the way matchups/outcomes are scored fairer and more immune to statistical outliers in players’ performances, anomalies in game script, and deviations from normal coaching decisions, among many other items — through the analysis and application of historical statistics/performance in past NFL and fantasy seasons, as well as statistically incorporating the spectrum of decisions FF players/managers must make throughout the season and the domino effect these decisions have on everything else from that point forward for entire league’s season long prospects.
Yes, I’m clearly a crazy person. That is all for now.
