May the Best Team Win? Possibly not if you’re playing in a Head-to-Head fantasy football league.
If
you partake in fantasy sports long enough, you’ll discover the more
times than not, that the best team doesn’t always come out the victor.
That realization is a helluva lot more noticeable when you happen to be
the best team and a helluva lot less noticeable when you’re the
beneficiary of fortunate scheduling. I’m not talking about the best
team “on paper”. I’m talking about the indisputable evidence of the best
team as measured by the Total Points accrued from week to week by a
fantasy team. A traditional Head-to-Head scoring method has its
advantages, but the biggest disadvantage might be the most important
part of American sports; answering the annual adage – may the best team
win.
I will concede that one major disadvantage to a Total
Points league is the foregoing of smack talk that comes with
Head-to-Head match-ups. The other is that not squaring off against a
weekly opponent doesn’t resemble the real NFL. But, there will still be
plenty of opportunities for bulletin board smack talk and maintaining
realism is a suspect argument when successful fantasy teams are the
beneficiary of garbage time stats that escalate your point total, but
may not always paint a true picture of a player’s actual on-field
performance.
Convincing your league’s purists that Head-to-Head
is an inferior scoring methodology might be a tall order, but it
usually only takes a couple of untimely losses to help sway an opinion.
Anyone that has the second highest point total for the week but lost to
the team that had the highest point total has undoubtedly shouted cries
of “why me?” to the heavens. The volume is much louder when the team
that won has a much worse record than the team that lost. When it
happens down the stretch, or in the playoffs, suddenly the argument for a
Total Points system becomes a lot more credible.
At the very least, I recommend that in addition to your standard league(s), everyone should play in at least one Total Points league
each year. This diversifies your fantasy portfolio and provides you
with a great comparison between the two types of leagues. If you’re
truly looking to identify the year’s best team, consider a Total Points
league and watch the cream rise to the top.
