Top Ten Ways To Improve Fantasy Football

Despite being the most popular nerdling pursuit, fantasy football has a ton of flaws. As we are all about Making It Better, here are ten points that will be improved at some point. So why not now?

10) Special disdain. Special teams make up about 1/7th of all value to a football team, and yet the only time they impact fantasy is when a placekicker trots on the field. Let's reward the truly obsessed with punter drafts (finally, Oakland has a star), tackles by the gunners, and return yards above an average (since pure cumulative totals would make for a simple draft of returners for terrible teams).

9) Head to head slap. There are two ways to play fantasy; head to head, which is fun for trash talk but utterly random, and roto, which has more skill but can be a bit of a snooze if a team runs out to a big lead before the end of the season. Why not go farther, with home and away division games (i.e., head to head games that have a small point bonus pre-set to the "home" team), wildcards, and seeds/tiebreakers based on overall points? Geek with your whole heart.

8) Embrace the committee. So long as every NFL team is going to go for Managed Care Carries, we all need to get with the program and stop puling over the Three Headed Monster Movement. Everybody just start six RBs in every league. That'll teach 'em. (And hey, NFL coaches? We can just treat this like defense and draft stuff like Ravens Running, which will send your jersey sales straight down the Inner Harbour, if you catch my flush. Don't push us any farther.)

7) Penalty yards. It's time to reward the #1 skill in terms of practice and concentration that your average NFL WR has to offer: effectively puling for pass interference calls. At a minimum, this should be added to overall receiving yardage, and if you want to make it its own category with bonuses, I won't stop you. Imagine the drama when the refs argue out who pushed who, knowing that your week could hang in the balance. Manly!

6) Punitive powers. Give your league's commissioner the hammer he needs to punish the wicked with penalty points taken offf players who fail to get out of bounds in a two-minute drill, get flagged for taunting or late hits, or cause their teams to suspend them for conduct from the Terrible Owens playbook. Convicted criminals aren't allowed to profit from their crimes with stuff like books and movies, and neither should people who draft Chad Ohno Polio.

5) Pancake blocks. Let's face it, we're never going to get kids to think that playing guard and tackle is cool until we give them some numbers. Count the pancake blocks and we'll get closer to that better place.

4) Kill shots. Kind of the evil corollary to the pancake block, in that it's usually terrible form and leaves the defender grabbing air much more often than not, but hey, you have to reward aggression sometimes. Besides, it's the perfect category for the dumb money boys to chase.

3) Wackiness. Your QB catches a bomb TD out of the Wildcat? Double points. Your RB throws one from the option? Double points. Your defense causes the opposing QB to meander out of the end zone from forgetting where he is on the field? Triple points. If your team has the water-cooler play of the week, that's got to count for something.

2) Yahtzee moments. If your guy has the most rushing yards, passing yards, recieving yards or touchdowns in the entire league for a week, I think you should get a little sometthing something for that. After all, in the real world, your team would be basking in the glow of the Player of the Week award. Besides, why should the Patriots be the only team running up the score?

1) Defensive indifference. My single biggest for real peeve in fantasy; that you have to draft defenses independent of whether they, well, win the freaking game. If your defense fails to protect the lead late, you should be bent for more than a marginal point of difference; similarly, if they give up points in garbage time, that should not negate a winning effort. In my keeper league, we throw a five-point bone to a winning defense, and while it probably washes out over the course of a year, maybe it doesn't.

Best of all, it actually makes you notice who wins and loses the games. That should matter, yes?