Fantasy Football: Head-to-Head Competition is Moronic.

This is an extended argument against head-to-head standings for fantasy football, and in favor of Cross Country standings. The concise explanation of Cross Country standings is below in bold.

In many games, head-to-head matchups are fantastic: one side competes to defeat the other, with the chance to directly confront and influence the opponent. You try to get a ball into a basket; I try to stop you. I'm trying to get a ball past a line; I have to get it past you first. You're trying to hit a ping pong ball past me, and I'm trying to hit that same ping pong ball past you.

But in some games, head-to-head matchups don't make sense, because the competitors can't directly influence each others' performance. Think about a golf tournament. Golf is best thought of as an individual sport in the purest sense: the individual competitor is competing against himself/herself to get the best score he/she possibly can. If you and I are in a golf tournament, you can have no direct impact on my score, and I can have no direct impact on your score. We can't block each other's putts: we can only each try to have the lowest score possible.

And how do golf tournaments work? Many competitors play their rounds, and at the end of the competition, the golfer with the lowest score wins the tournament, the golfer with the second-lowest score finishes second, the golfer with the third-lowest score finishes third, yada yada yada. That's the most logical and fair way to organize such a competition.

What if you structured golf tournaments differently? What if you just paired up everybody in the tournament with head-to-head matchups? In a given tournament, half the competitors would get a win, and half the competitors would get a loss (maybe there would be some ties in there). But would a bunch of single Ws and Ls really convey what happened during that golf tournament? Would we really look at that and come away with an understanding of who had the best week? And would it be fair? What happens if the second-best golfer gets paired against the best golfer? That golfer might defeat every other competitor in the tournament, but still get a loss. Think in more detail. Golfer A might shoot a -3, but be paired against a golfer shooting a -5; Golfer B might shoot a +1, but be paired against a golfer shooting a +4. At the end of the tournament, Golfer A shot a -3, Golfer B shot a +1, but Golfer A gets an L, and Golfer B gets a W.

How does that make any sense? The golfers in each matchup had no opportunity to directly influence their opponents' scores. Sure, they could have a psychological impact, and how close the matchup is might influence the golfers to play more aggressively or more safely. But that's not a direct impact. It wouldn't be fair, and in my view, it wouldn't be nearly as fun to follow.

And that's what the majority of you suckers do in your fantasy football leagues. You have no chance to impact your opponent's score, yet you get paired up in a matchup as if you can. You might score better than the majority of your league, but still get an L because of the matchup. It's moronic.

So what can be done? Total Points is probably the fairest way to determine a league champion: the goal of fantasy football is to score as many points as possible, and the total points for the season recognizes that. However, Total Points is not very fun to follow on a week-to-week basis: you don't get to follow football every week for a direct, immediate, substantial impact on your fantasy fortunes. You don't get to monitor your own team and others', fretting every extra yard, watching the fourth quarter of a Monday Night game with passion and anxiety for a late touchdown. It all adds up, but there's no immediacy and few big joyous moments. And fantasy football is supposed to be fun.

Head-to-head competition is moronic. Total points is not exciting. But there is a better way.

We call it Cross-Country Scoring.

Each week, every team competes against every other team. If there are ten teams in the league, the team with the most points that week defeated everybody else, thus going 9-0. The team with the second-most points defeated eight other teams, but lost to one team, thus going 8-1. Yada Yada Yada, the team with the least points was defeated by everybody, thus going 0-9.

Weekly Scores:
Most points: 9-0
2nd: 8-1
3rd: 7-2
4th: 6-3
5th: 5-4
6th: 4-5
7th: 3-6
8th: 2-7
9th: 1-8
10th: 0-9

These are the wins and losses for the single week. For the season standings, wins and losses from every week continue to be added up. Each week, your wins and losses for that week are added to your wins and losses for the season total. Teams scoring the same number of points in a single week have a tie, and a tie will be included in the standings for the week and the season.

The fantasy season goes all 17 weeks (no playoffs). At the end of the season, the team with the most wins is the league champion.

This is a much fairer system for standings; you get ranked where you deserve to be ranked for the week, with no matchup flukes to worry about.

It's also wildly exciting. Think about watching a Monday Night game, and how it might influence your fantasy week. If you're in head-to-head matchup, the game might be interesting to you. But if neither you nor your opponent has any players going Monday, you probably don't care. If your head-to-head matchup is a blowout that week, you probably don't care. But imagine the game differently. Imagine going into Monday night, every team in your league is competing against every other. A lot of the teams in the league will have no players going Monday, and their scores will be fixed. But a lot of teams will have players going, with opportunities to move up the weekly standings. Whether you have players going Monday Night or not, you probably have a fantasy interest in the game. You could move past somebody, or somebody could move past you. Monday Night's performances might be the difference between going 7-3 or 3-7. You could pass multiple people in the weekly standings...or multiple people could pass you in the standings. There will be several fantasy starters in the game, and what they do will matter directly to you.

Think about how wild and fun that is. And really, that isn't just happening Monday Night: you have a direct fantasy interest in virtually every NFL game you watch. And with no playoff and a league season going 17 weeks, this system keeps more league members interested in fantasy football later into the season than a head-to-head league with a playoff (where teams are eliminated from the fantasy season before the real NFL season is over).

This may sound complicated, difficult to keep track of. Admittedly, it is more complex to follow than to just look at the lineups in your head-to-head matchup (but that's exactly what makes it great). But it's not difficult to monitor. Just set your online league system to total points scoring, and then have one commissioner that tallies the scores at the end of the week to turn the scores into wins and losses, and post it on a message board, email, or blog. It usually takes me five minutes at the end of the Monday Night game (I also post the scores through Sunday night, so people know what matters Monday). That's it. If you want more details or examples about how this part works, just ask.

Look, I apologize for the abrasive attention getters. One of the great things about fantasy football is how decentralized it really is: all sorts of leagues with different traditions and different rules based on the preferences (sometimes eccentric or esoteric) of the members. I'm not interested in creating a homogenized, universal fantasy football rulebook. I'm telling you about the flaws of head-to-head and the benefits of Cross Country standings because I think you'll have more fun with Cross Country standings. Head-to-head is a major flaw at the core of most fantasy football leagues, and I think most people just haven't thought of an alternative. Well, here it is. This is your alternative.

Join the revolution. Just try it. You'll have more fun.

Questions? Objections?

Previously

Fantasy Football: if you play head to head, you are a sucker.

Fantasy Football: the flaw of head-to-head illustrated.

Fantasy Football Issues.

Fantasy: Against Head to Head.

Fantasy: The Revolution Continues.

Addendum

It's worth emphasizing that in Cross-Country standings, you still have head-to-head competitions--you just have a head-to-head competition with every other team every week. Let's say your players are done on Sunday afternoon and you have 70 points, and going into Sunday night I have 60 points but Frank Gore playing. I'm still watching that game hoping for Frank Gore to get 10+ points so I can pass you, and whether I pass you or not is still the difference between a W or an L. It's just this W might mean not 0-1 or 1-0, but 4-5 or 5-4, and that there are yet other teams that I'm hoping to get past, and other teams behind me I'm hoping don't pass me--there are more Ws and Ls in play. So the tension of watching to see if your players can score enough to put you past a particular opponent: it's still there. It's just there multiple times a week.