MoSneaky Fantasy Football Online Magazine » Starting a Keeper League

Starting a Keeper League

14 May, 2007 League Tips

So you’re thinking of starting a keeper league…(Part I)

There are a few major factors you will want to consider before embarking on the creation of a keeper league. The most important question is “Why?” There are many pluses and minuses to a keeper league, all of which will have a major impact on the chemistry of your league. Keep reading if you want to find out if a keeper league is right for you.

Benefits
The biggest benefit of the keeper league is its enhancement of your fantasy football experience. Nothing can bring you closer to feeling like a real franchise owner than being part of a keeper league. After all, most of our leagues try their hardest to emulate the NFL, and having a yearly re-draft isn’t exactly modeling their system. Another major benefit to a keeper league is the overall strengthening of the league community. You can count on greater owner retention over the seasons, as well as prolonged dedication to their individual teams. If some owner starts off 0-7 in a redraft league you can bet his interest in the league will be abandoned quicker than that 17 year old cheerleader next door that he knocked up. If an owner starts off poorly in a keeper league, he will be motivated to continue building for the next season (spurring more trades and free agency action).

Detriments
The one downfall you will find in a keeper league is the effect it has on your draft. The keeper league that I am in was started in 1998. I was lucky enough to draft Randy Moss that year, which means that I have been able to hold him on my roster for 6 years now. For the anti-keeper sort that is a huge reason not to save players, as the fact exists that they/you may never have a chance to own their favorite players. Not only that but after that first draft nearly all of the major stars will be swallowed up and may not enter the draft for several years. This brings us to the next point of detriment; a watered down draft. No longer will you see 4 rounds of pure star drafting followed by countless rounds of sleepers. Instead, count on about a round of decent rookies and leftovers followed by rounds of drafting unknown scrubs that only you have heard of, and future groomer investments of Barry Sander’s fetus son.

Once your league has decided that this is the move for you, there are three key areas to address that will be integral to having a successful keeper league.

1. The duration of the keeper league
2. How many players are going to be kept
3. Defining rules of the keeper league

These areas will be covered in detail in Part II

So you’re thinking of starting a keeper league…(Part II)

Once your league has decided that this is the move for you, you will have to iron out every last detail in order to ensure a successful transition. We’ll divide this up into three areas of concern.

Owner commitment

This is a key element that will make or break your league. Losing owners can be a major pain in the ass. If you’ve ever tried to convince someone that a dog turd is a candy bar, then you already have some experience for the job of trying to get a new owner to take over a horrible team that has been dumped by the previous owner. So, the first thing you need to do, is make sure that your owners are in it for the long haul. If it’s just a dozen of your good buddies, then you shouldn’t have much to worry about. If they try to quit you can just punch them in the balls and threaten to show their wives/girlfriends the pictures you took on that road trip to the Nevada brothels. You know the ones. However, if it’s a league of people you can’t blackmail, you’ll want to have some sort of contingency plan. Always keep an eye out for prospective future owners. This will avoid the embarrasment of having the new guy try to draft Pele with his first pick, and then argue that the NFL isn’t “real football”. Which leads to you having to strangle him and bury him in your back yard. Not a fun job, but it has to be done. Avoid this kind of crap by making damn sure that your owners won’t bail on you before you dive into the world of keeper league fantasy football. Charging entry fees a year or two in advance helps retain owners. That way if someone decides to leave, the new guy will get a free team for a year.

Roster size

The next step is to figure out just how many players you want to keep. Do you want to keep just one or two, or do you want to keep the entire roster(dynasty league)? There are pros and cons for each. If you only keep a small number of players, it becomes much harder to build your team into a perennial powerhouse. On the flip side, if you hold over your entire roster, your draft is going to be so thin in talent that it’s almost not even worth attending. In this case, rookies are really the only players that will get drafted. And if you look at the talent pool for rookies each year, you’ll see that there are only about 10-12 rookies that can make any sort of splash in the fantasy pool. We recommend that you choose somewhere in the middle. A good method is to keep enough players to give you a starting line-up. This will ensure that there is some talent left for drafting, while also allowing you to build a solid core of players that will see you into the playoffs every year. The way you structure it is entirely up to you. You can have owners name a certain number of players in general, or you can have them keep a set amount at each position. eg. 1 Qb, 2RB, 2WR, 1TE, 1K, 1Defense. Or you can mix and match, and allow 1TE, 1K, 1Defense, and 5 of anything else.

Miscellaneous rules

Once you make the switch to a keeper league, trading is one thing you’ll want to do differently than in a re-draft league. Many re-draft leagues set a trading deadline somewhere around the middle of the season, in order to keep horrible teams from trading away their good players to teams in the playoff hunt. In a keeper league, there isn’t as much of a need to do this, since keeping players gives owners a disincentive to throw away their studs for nothing. However, if you only keep a certain number of players, the best teams may try to trade off the guys they don’t have room to hold over, for future draft picks. This may or may not be a concern for you. Allowing this will make the good teams even better, and will slightly dilute the talent left in next year’s draft. If you desire parity in your league, then you’ll want to enact a trade deadline around midseason, and force keeper selections to be named before trading resumes. Otherwise you may ant no deadline at all. Another concern with trading is limiting the number of years in advance an owner can trade his picks. This prevents someone from trading all their picks for the next 10 years for enough studs to win the championship, and then bail out on the team immediately after. In our mind, you should only be allowed to trade picks that you’ve purchased already. So if you pay league dues 2 years in advance, you can only trade picks up to 2 years in advance.

There is also the draft order to consider. In a dynasty type league, it is much more feasible to do a non-serpentine style draft. The worst teams will get better picks that way, but the limited amount of talent in the draft won’t make this as overpowering an advantage as in a redraft league, or a keeper league with just a couple hold-over players. Again, it depends on how much parity you want in your league.

Finally, you may find that you want to institute some sort of rule, that allows you to keep a rookie player that you draft in a separate “groomer” slot, that doesn’t count against the number of players you keep. This increases the value of rookies in the draft, since with precious few keeper slots, owners won’t want to wait the 2-3 years that it takes a lot of rookies to come into their own. This is yet another matter of personal preference, but we figured we’d throw it out there as an option.

That about sums it up. The important thing to keep in mind when structuring your league, is to get input from the owners. The success of a league is a direct function of the owners’ happiness. If they don’t like your system, they will leave. Or end up bitching so much that you have to pour sugar in their gas tank to get back at them. Either way, that’s not what you want.