Thanksgiving!

Harvest Skin

The holiday season is here, and you’re probably already seeing Christmas decorations everywhere you look.  Time flies when you’re having a good fantasy football season!  We have various skins for all of the holidays and seasons throughout the year, and Thanksgiving is no different.  Be sure to check out our Harvest Skin and our Turkey Skin if you want to spruce up your league’s appearance this week.  You can use the “For Commissioners > Setup > Appearance Setup > Select a Skin” screen to change the skin for your league as needed.

Turkey Skin

Keep in mind that if your league is using a Template then you cannot select a skin. You would have to use the “Setup > Select a Template” screen to turn off your template first (by selecting “None” as your template).  Then after that you can select a skin as needed.

Also remember that we’re still looking for ideas and suggestions for new skins to add to our selection.  Add a comment to this post to contribute an idea, or use the “Help > Help Center” screen in your league to submit a suggestion that way.  We’ll tally all of the suggestions for the rest of November and then put it to a vote in December to see what new skin(s) we should add to the site!

Fantasy Playoffs

It’s that time of year again.  The regular season is winding down for most fantasy football leagues, and the playoff picture is starting to come into view, with probably half of the teams in the league still “on the bubble” and needing a crucial victory here in the next week or two.

Sample Playoff Bracket

You can start preparing for your playoffs now by setting up your playoff bracket(s) for your league.  Use the “For Commissioners > Setup > Playoff Setup” section to create a bracket for your league.  Start with the “Packaged Playoff Bracket” or the “General Playoff Setup” section depending on your needs.  As long as you know how many fantasy teams will make it to your playoffs, and how many weeks you want the playoffs to last, the system can create a bracket for you in no time, such as the example pictured here.  There are a lot of options and you can set up multiple brackets if you want, but most leagues will only need one championship bracket (even with multiple divisions/conferences) and some will also include a loser bracket and/or a third place bracket.

Then after the bracket(s) are created, you can use the “Seed Playoff Teams” screen to place the appropriate teams into the bracket(s) based on your league’s rules.  After that, you’ll be good to go. You can even add the bracket to your league home page as a home page module for quick and easy reference.  As always, if you have any questions or problems setting up the playoffs or any part of your league, you can use the “Help > Help Center” to get quick answers to common questions about the topic, or to submit a question to our support team.

On a related note, we also offer free NFL Playoff Leagues.  These are separate from your League’s Fantasy Playoffs, and allow you to run a completely separate league after the NFL regular season is over.  You can also continue your fantasy league into the NFL postseason if you want for that matter.  Watch for more news and an announcement about our NFL Playoff leagues early in December.

More New Skins

Hunting Skin

It’s been a while since we added some new “skins” to our growing list, so we’re happy to announce a few new ones.  First, we have a seasonal entry with the Hunting Skin.  A lot of you will surely be heading out to the woods this month to enjoy some hunting.  Your commissioner can use the “For Commissioners > Setup > Appearance Setup > Select a Skin” menu item to select this new skin for your league if you and your leaguemates want to get psyched up for your hunting trip.

Fishing Skin

On a similar theme, we’ve also added a Fishing Skin for those of you that are into angling.  Note that if your commissioners has allowed it, each individual owner can also choose their own skin by using the “For Owners > Franchise Setup” menu item.   From that screen, you can click on the “Skin” link at the top of that screen.

We also added a new Archery Skin and a Racing Skin to round out our sport-themed additions to our skin library this month.  Next month we plan to add more skins, so we are looking for suggestions and ideas from our customers to help guide us on what themes we should add.  Please add a comment to this blog post, or use the “Help > Help Center” screen in your league to submit a suggestion for a skin that you would like to see added to MyFantasyLeague.com in December.  We’ll take suggestions for the rest of November and then put it to a vote to pick the best suggestions!

Like Kissing Your Sister

The NFL had a few unusual games this week.  First and foremost, the first NFL tie game in 6 years occurred when neither the Eagles nor Bengals could muster field position that was good enough to score a field goal, much less a TD, during their 15 minute overtime period.  Now we know why there is that third column in the NFL standings that always seemed to contain zeros.  It’s there to indicate tie games, even if they only happen about once a decade!  From a fantasy perspective, there isn’t a whole lot of impact, except that if you award points to your head coach or your Team Defense for winning their NFL game, then neither team will get those points, because neither team won.

There are also implications for NFL Survivor Pool or NFL Confidence Pool picks in your league this week.   Again, since neither team won the game, you will not advance in your Survivor Pool if you selected the Eagles or Bengals, and since neither team won the game, you will not get your points in a Confidence Pool for selecting the Eagles or Bengals to win.

The other game with extra interest from both the fantasy and NFL perspective involved the Chargers and Steelers.  From the NFL side of things, there has never been an NFL game that ended with a score of 11-10.  And there have been nearly 13,000 NFL games played!  From a fantasy perspective, it was really bizarre because the last play of the game resulted in a defensive TD for the Steelers, but it was overruled because of an “illegal forward pass” penalty that admittedly was not a forward pass.  According to NFL.com, “After the game, referee Scott Green said the officials realized afterward the touchdown should have counted, though it wouldn’t have affected the result.”  So if you have the Steelers Team Defense, and you needed that defensive TD for your fantasy team, you might be less than pleased today…  But the score will stand, so don’t expect any stat changes later in the week to award the defensive TD and change the NFL score.

Letting Owners Declare Keepers

One of the features that we’re hoping to add to the site sometime this off-season is to allow owners to declare their keepers on their own, without intervention by their commissioner. To that end, we need a better understanding of exactly how our customers handle their keepers. So, if your league has keepers, and would benefit from having us let owners declare their keepers on their own on your league pages, please submit a support ticket to us (via the “Help > Help Center” page available from all league pages), and let us know the following.

1. How many keepers does each owner have? Do all owners have the same number, or can it vary by owner?
2. When is the deadline for declaring your keepers?
3. What do owners have to give up for their keepers? Just their first x rounds of draft picks in the following year? Or is there some formula applied to know what they should give up?
4. Any/all other rules related to keepers that you think are relevant here.

And with any luck, we’ll be able to add some additional functionality to the site here shortly to allow owners to declare keepers on their own, allowing you to automate your league that much more!

Thursday Games

This is the first week of 6 in a row that will feature a Thursday night game in the NFL.  From a fantasy football perspective, you need to be aware of your league’s lineup and waiver rules to make sure you submit a valid starting lineup before your league’s weekly deadline.  So if you are the commissioner, be sure to remind your team owners to get their lineups in before kickoff if needed!

For more information on the commissioner settings that may affect your league with Thursday games, be sure to check the “Help > What’s New” screen in your league under the Commissioner News section.

One specific setting you may want to double check is on the “For Commissioners > Setup > Transactions Setup > Weekly Lineup Setup” screen.  The option called “Are Partial Lineups Allowed?” should be set to “No” if you want to make sure that owners always submit a full lineup before kickoff on Thursday, just in case they forget to come back before Sunday to make adjustments.

Vote Today!

Just in case you missed it while drowning your sorrows in a tough fantasy football league loss this week…  Today is election day!  If you’re old enough to vote, be sure to exercise your right no matter who you plan to vote for.

Monday Report

We’ve added a new home page module called the “Monday Report” that gives you a quick overview of the fantasy games in your league that are still to be decided.  It will list each matchup on the left, with a list of players that still have to play in the Monday night game for each fantasy team.  In addition, it will show the projected points for each of the players in the Monday night game.  So if your team is losing after the Sunday night game, you can use this report to get a quick feel for your chances!  If you are ahead going into the Monday night game, you can use it to figure out how much you have to sweat it out.  And since some leagues award negative points for things like fumbles and interceptions, you may have to worry about negative scoring events even if you are in the lead and your opponent doesn’t have any players remaining.

To add this home page module to your league, you can use the “For Commissioners > Setup > Appearance Setup > Home Page Modules and Tabs Setup” screen.  Note that this module won’t show anything from Tuesday through Sunday since it is only useful on Mondays.  Many thanks to “habman” and the rest of our active community of commissioners that have helped develop and inspire ideas like this one over the years in our community support forum.