| 16 October 2009
There's nothing worse in a fantasy football league then having a poor commissioner. You know, the guy who never sets the rules correctly at the beginning of the season, has to change scoring midway through the season, or never keeps anyone updated on what's going on. If you're commish does that then you're satisfied, but there's always more he can do. I've been participating in fantasy football leagues for about 8 years, but have only been a commissioner for the past two years. I enjoy it, I want to do it, and I want to be the best at it. I care about the league and that's what is most important. I've learned that the other owners in the league appreciate it greatly and after the first year they truly do appreciate it, especially if they've been in a poor run league before. So I want to help other commish's with some suggestions how to liven up your league or if you're not the commish then you can give the suggestions to your league commish to use.
I enjoy shit talking; the problem is that you can't force your league to do it. I try to emphasize players ripping on other teams and talking shit about how they'll beat so and so team this week. In my league people don't usually respond often so I take things into my own hands. Every Tuesday I do a recap of all the previous weekend's games and get to rip on all the teams' bad moves, including myself. People enjoy hearing about their matchups and getting someone else's thoughts on it. The main thing that every commish should do is have power rankings. This causes so much animosity and it's the easiest thing to do. Basically it's just every power ranking in that it doesn't really matter and it's not based on points or record. If you win for the week you usually move up and if you lose you go down. It's an easy way to provide an outlook on how you see the teams performing. The last thing every commish should do is provide interesting polls for people to use. You want players to be on the site frequently and these ideas are positive ways to do so.
If you really want to go the extra mile then this is what you do. Have a seasonal history section and a league history section. I like to provide season history of the highest score, lowest score, biggest defeat margin, and highest single player score for the year. For league history you have highest score, lowest score, biggest defeat margin, longest winning streak, longest losing streak, and past champions. This gives some interesting stats for people to try to achieve and some stats that people don't want to be a part of. The history provides some good commentary to talk about during the recaps and helps you formulate polls. The other thing I really enjoy doing is providing short predictions for each matchup each week and compare my record to ESPN's. This gives some insight to each team in who I think they should be starting and how who I think will prevail in the matchup. By doing all these things you will be a great commissioner that everyone appreciates and people will want to come back year after year.
