How to make it the most fun

[j_d_mcnugent]

i am not sure if making it a money league will get people more interested in it. if i wasnt terribly interested in fantasy baseball and it cost me $25+ to play it then i would just quit the league.

the other ideas seem good - newsletters, parties, and whatnot. try to make an award for everyone even if it just printing out a certificate that says WORST TEAM ERA - 2004 or best team name. is it a head to head league? that might be better for people that arent terribly interested because in any given week the worst team might beat the best team. the fact that anyting can happen in the playoffs might also keep people interested.

[princethomas]

Hey guys. Thanks for the help. I should have mentioned that all of us are sort of scattered to the winds. We all went to college in South Carolina. Two of us are in California. One in Detroit and one in Indiana. The rest in different parts of SC.

So drafting parties and such wont work right now.
So I know that my work is cut out for me. But thats the way it is.
But I really love this and I want to be a great commissioner.
I dont mind time consuming. I ll do whatever. Just want tomake it fun.

So let me know if you can think of anything else.

Awards and team photos I like a lot. Definitly doing a newsletter of some sort too.
-T

[Big Blue]

re naming of last place team by 1st place team, this can be brutal

[Fumbler]

I think one of the best ways to keep it interesting is to have alot of people qualify for the playoffs if it's H2H.

In our latest football season we decided on having 8 out of the 10 teams make the playoffs.

Now, obviously, this was a bit extreme but i do think it greatly increased participation throughout the entire season as several of the owners were still duking it out by the last week of the regular season (trying to make the playoffs).

We're gonna try 6 out of 10 for our baseball and see how that works out.

I really like all the other ideas here too. Some really nice suggestions that i'm gonna steal...umm, i mean borrow.

[Arlo]

Great ideas!

keeping track of league history is always fun. Makes things interesting when teams are not just vying for the lead in the RBI category, but are going for the all-time record...

[BigLebowski]

Great ideas!

keeping track of league history is always fun. Makes things interesting when teams are not just vying for the lead in the RBI category, but are going for the all-time record...

I agree..we have a plaque that is passed from winner to winner and engraved each year with the winning team and owner name. It has been around since 1987 and I can say it's proudly sitting on my office wall and will be there for many more years if I have anything to say about it.

[TheRock]

Sounds alot like the league I'm involved in at work. A mixed bag of casual/skilled players. The one thing everyone can agree on is having fun and talking smack, so we play H2H points. Plus the extra element of luck that goes along with that helps 'level the playing field' so the speak.

Draft day is the best day of the season. Since it's a work league, we grab a big conference room after hours, order in pizza and bring along plenty of beer. The room's got an overhead projector we can control off a laptop so we both input picks in a spreadsheet and display it for all to see all at once! Live draft in person is definitely the way to go.

$20 up front seems to keep everyone interested all year, plus we add in $2/loss. The added shame keeps even the last place team interested in winning every week.

[princethomas]

Ok. One thing Im doing is trophies. I found a very cool trophy. Its cheap too. Its a bobblehead baseball trophy. We are looking at some sort of plaque to be the traveling trophy.

I think if everything goes well this year, I will try toget money next year.
We have assigned teams to race car drivers for this weekends Daytona 500. The order they finish will be the order of our draft.

I dont want to do h2h because I think its too big a change for our second season. Some people just getting hang of game.

Im just trying to think of a way to encourage interaction. I ll probably switch to H2H next year. Need to encourage trading and that kind of stuff.

Thanks for the advice. Keep em comin please.
-Tom

[GotowarMissAgnes]

We never really organized things, but they just sort of became institutional. I do a monthly update that highlights who won (or lost) certain categories, with a brief recap on the month's events.

Several guys in our league will post "press conferences", interviews with players/managers, etc.

We encourage teams to do wacky stuff (identify a team mascot, etc.) During this off-season, I reported to other teams that I had hired Don Zimmer as my new bench coach. You can bet that whoever has Pedro on his team, I'll write a funny little thing wihh Zimmer and Pedro, when (not if) Pedro gets injured this season.