Adjustments to our Fantasy Football League

In the implementation in my class, I made a couple of adjustments:

• The Teacher’s Resource Guide suggests allowing four receivers to be drafted and then require three receivers to play each week. While the Teacher's Resource Guide allows any of these wide receivers to be a tight end, I modified these guidelines slightly by requiring that each fantasy team draft five receivers: three wide receivers and two tight ends. I then require two wide receivers and one tight end play each week. I mostly did this because the web site that I use to download statistics doesn't combine wide receivers and tight ends in one list. As a result of the extra player, I also gave each owner an extra two million dollars for their draft.
• As described in the Teacher’s Resource Guide, the game encourages trading players amongst teams. However, trading is difficult in my class because the teams are spread amongst several different classes. To allow teams to change players, I implement a modified waiver system that allows each fantasy team to exchange players from their team for players of lesser value (based upon the values in the NFL 2006-2007 Player Values Sheet at the beginning of the season). However, I only let a team do this with three players over the course of the entire season. Be sure to advise your students that they save one waiver option for the end of the season, especially if they own fragile quarterbacks like Donovan McNabb!
• The Teacher’s Resource Guide offers 111 different scoring systems that can be used for any given week. However, my class has a significant fear of fractions so I prepared a few fraction-based scoring systems that were simpler than the systems suggested in the Teacher’s Resource Guide.