The concept of simulated fantasy games is new, but Yesteryear Fantasy Sports has put a new twist on the game. To play, draft a roster of historical players and play head-to-head like regular fantasy football game. However, for your players’ game statistics, YesterYear’s Fantasy Football’s system will randomly select real statistics from a three-year window of that player’s career. The game is free to play if you want an autodrafted team, or $3.99 if you would like to select your own team. Currently, YesterYear is hosting a challenge in which the top teams will get a chance to compete NFL greats like Mike Ditka (Da Bears!), Tony Dorsett and Dwight Clark.

I am not sure what I think about this game, since you know exactly how well your players will perform. The more I think about it, while in theory you will know, it is possible that a player will have all of his big games in one season or could have all of his bad games in a season. In other words, your players could still be total studs or duds, just like regular fantasy football.

Simulated games are not a new concept. YesterYear competes with other simulated games like WhatIfSports, which has been offering siumulated games for a number of years. Heck, simulated games go way back to the card and dice game with things like APBA Baseball and Strat-O-Matic. Personally, I am a fan of simulated games.

The best thing that YesterYear Fantasy Sports has done is framed this as a continuation of fantasy football season. In fact, it seems to avoid words likes “simulated,” as they imply something much geekier and less cool.

Good news is that a part of the proceeds go to the Gridiron Greats fund, which supports retired football players from when football players did not make mountains of money.

Additional Information

http://www.newswiretoday.com/news/64861/
• YesterYear Fantasy Challenge Kicks Off New Season in Fantasy Sports (Press Release)

How is your Friday going? Mine has been quite delightful so far, to be honest. I have been catching up on reading today, and I came across a few articles that you may just enjoy:

• Things to Watch for the 2010 Fantasy Football Season, Part One (Fantasy Football) – If you thought it was too early to start thinking about the 2010 fantasy football season, you are sorely mistaken. Not only are some fantasy players contemplating who they might want to draft, there is at least one player out there is developing strategies and determining trends.
• Rating the Rankings in Fantasy Football: CBSSports.com Is the 2009 Winner (New York Times) – Determining which rankings to pay attention may be one of the hardest things that fantasy players have to decide before the season. Sara Holladay, aka the Fantasy Football Librarian, painstakingly rated 48 different sets of rankings.
• Darius Rucker is Obsessed with Football (ESPN) – This is mainly just a random reference about fantasy football, but Darius Rucker plays fantasy football. He also sports a Fantasy Football Legend T-Shirt. Too bad he’s a Dolphins fan in real life.

I hope you had a good day. Keep checking back here for some big news next week.

It’s been a long while since the last edition of the Fantasy Factoids, but that does not mean I stopped loving you. Getting you some quality fantasy sports news has always been on my mind.

Just today, I was thinking, “Wow! My readers would really want to check out these articles. I should do something about it!” Here is me doing something about it. Check these out:

• Fantasy football pays off for area men (Chronicle-Telegram) – A local new article about the team that won the 2009 World Championship of Fantasy Football . Although newspapers are having financial issues, local press can have a great impact in terms of drumming up interest.
• The rise and rise of fantasy sports (CNN) This is actually written from an international perspective and discusses that the international fantasy sports market, particularly fantasy soccer, may be the biggest fantasy market of all of them.
• ESPN Mobile Thrives Despite No Ties To Ad Networks Or Android (Just Another Mobile Phone Blog) It looks like ESPN found a mobile strategy that works for it. After famously fumbling with ESPN Mobile phones, by refocusing on distributing its sports content (content is ESPN’s core competency) in the mobile arena.
• Greene still going strong in postseason (Sporting News) – Shonn Greene may have officially obtained 2010 fantasy football sleeper pick of the year that everyone knows about. Do not be surprised if someone grabs Greene in the second round of your draft next season regardless of how his training camp goes.

I hope you enjoyed these articles. Keep checking back here regularly for additional and, I dare say, awesome fantasy sports news.

I received an email this week from a reader Dennis as to what the proper amount to give your fantasy football commissioner as a thank you for running the league. Unfortunately, in my over twenty years of playing fantasy sports, I have never heard of a commissioner getting tipped out for all the crap he puts up with all season. I say unfortunately because this is a trend that is overdue, and I would not mind seeing grow. Dennis you are a better man than 99 percent of fantasy players.

For leagues for which I have been the commissioner, I usually consider myself lucky if I finish the season with as many friends as I had at the start of the season. Countless relationships have been damaged because of a trade gone wrong or waiver wire bids. Remember, it this is just a game and is not worth losing friendships over.

Being a fantasy commissioner is on the most thankless jobs I know. The main thing that drives people to actually do it is that they want to play in a fun, familiar fantasy sports league, and that is what it takes to get it done. The upside is, if you are a good fantasy commissioner, you can ensure that people are having fun and that your league will continue for years to come.

In reference to Dennis’ original question, I would recommend around half of the league entry fee for leagues with three or four top prizes and as much as the full entry fee for a league with only one or two top prizes. Other ideas I have heard about are putting some of the winnings towards a league happy hour, or purchasing a championship trophy for the league to pass around to the winner every season.

What are your thoughts on the topic?

With the fantasy football season officially over with the conclusion of the regular season (if you are one of those weird leagues that uses the playoffs, you are truly crazy yet commendable at the same time), you may be looking for things to do to fill the void in your life that fantasy football has left. Because, I care about our readers, I thought I would jot down some things that you may want to dedicate some time to over the next few months. At least until July, when you can reasonably be allowed/expected to spend countless hours on your fantasy football team(s).

1. There used to be a time when your jeans did not require a shoe horn to put-on. When you spend 10 hours a week watching football, checking live scoring, and drinking the beverage of your choice, you are bound to put on a few pounds. Time to get to the gym.
2. Remember in November when you were busy watching the waiver wire and your wife was rushed to the hospital and then came back two days later with a miniature person? That was your new baby. Go meet that little cutie.
3. Speaking of your wife. Remember her? You might want to get back into her good graces. Perhaps start by parrying down your Honey-Do list and take her out to dinner where the television in the bar is not visible from your seats. This applies to girlfriends and various other significant others.
4. Volunteer. Seriously. You have all this free time, and you may actually be able to do some good. Plus, with incentive programs like Give a Day, Get a Disney Day or Give a Day, Get a Night at a Sage Hotel, there is no real reason not to volunteer.
5. Learn to snowboard. Learn to play golf. In other words, learn a sport that requires you to use those muscles in your legs that have atrophied from all of those hours sitting at your computer.
6. Get that degree in economics. Far-fetched? With your new ability to divide by 25 and 10 in your head combined with your ability to determine undervalued and overvalued players based on each player’s ADP, you are already half-way there. You’re so money!
7. The last time you read something that did not contain the words “flex slot” or “sleeper pick” was probably in June of last year. Time for you to catch up on the news of the world. Start with the Balloon Boy Hoax. That might be a good puff piece to get you back in the flow.
8. Now that you have run the 10K of fantasy football, time for you to complete in the marathon that is fantasy baseball. Just for kicks, make sure it is a daily moves league. After watching you get involved in just one fantasy baseball season, your wife will beg you to play fantasy football only.
9. Plan an elaborate revenge against the Colts’ Jim Caldwell for benching Peyton Manning during your fantasy football championship game. Actually, after watching Wes Welker tear his ACL and MCL in a mostly meaningless game, Caldwell made the right decision.
10. You could just decide there is no-offseason and monitor every bit of fantasy football news for the next few months while the slackers focus on all of the rest of the items on this list.

If you have any other suggestions, please feel free to share them below.

Your fantasy season has been over since Michael Turner‘s sprained ankle ruined your season. You could not even persuade your friends to form a free playoff league at MyFantasyLeague. Well, there is still the NFL’s free fantasy football Playoff Challenge 2009. It’s a free game and offers some big prizes.

To play, all you have to do is select eight players for each round of the playoffs. Players accumulate fantasy points like any other fantasy football league. The team with the most points win. Win what you ask? An all-expense paid trip for two to Super Bowl XLV in 2011. Not too shabby. But, if you fall short of the top prize, you will have settle for one of ten NFL.com gift cards (5-$100 and 5-$50 for first and second place). Hey, it’s a free game, so something is always better than nothing.

By the way, if the playoffs are being played entirely in in 2009, why is this the 2009 Playoff Challenge? Just seems a bit backward thinking and a bit of poor marketing by the NFL.

Monster is the main sponsor for the game. The game is built by Sports Technologies, the guys who started FanNation a few years ago, which was subsequently purchased by Sports Illustrated a few years ago.

You think graphic design does not matter? It matters a whole lot more than you even think. What is worse, is when you spend money on graphic design, it is not even done right. You know those Snickers ads where they put some funny phrase where ‘snickers’ should be on a Snickers bar. You might have seen them on the side of a city bus or a even in a web banner.

Well, a graphic designer named Sprout came across one of these ads themed around fantasy football and could not resist the urge to clean it up. On his site Sproutworx, he says, “Hey, Snickers web ad art director, I fixed your terrible ad for you.”

There is an important lesson here: pay attention to the details. You will agree that the version of the ad on the bottom looks a whole lot better than the one on the top. The sad part about this is that someone was actually paid to do the design work in the first place, and it still looked bad.

Yep, that’s right. What I momentarily thought was a lack of proofreading by NFL.com (screenshot below) was actually a personal realization that for the last three weeks of the season, there are Saturday night football games! For those of you keeping score at home, this means you now have to check your fantasy football lineup on Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday nights.

For the micro-managing fantasy owner, this is both a blessing and a curse. You now get to judicially decide which players to start, watch the injury reports, and adjust your lineup knowing results from some of your players already. The downside is that you have to make decisions about your fantasy team four days throughout the weekend.

Why am I talking about this? It is playoff time for fantasy football, and just like real sports, how you play the game is different for the post-season than it is for the regular season. What was once a simple task to check fantasy lineups on Sunday morning is now a nearly daily ritual.

Sometimes it is amazing how much fantasy sports can resemble real sports without even trying.

We have all heard of the The League on FX by now, but there is a new fantasy football web series on the interwebs, Sundays of Our Lives. The series follows Jake Diablo as he attempts to win his fantasy football championship. Like any good soap opera, there is lying, cheating, and the occassional celebrity cameo. It’s an entertaining watch, so you should check out the first two episodes below:

Episode 1

Episode 2

MyFantasyLeague is one of the premium fantasy commissioner products out there, and it is giving players a free test drive for with free NFL Playoff Leagues. If you and your fantasy buddies cannot settle who really deserved to win your regular season fantasy football title, perhaps you give it a second try with an NFL Playoffs league.

MyFantasyLeague caters to the established fantasy league that is looking for a little something extra out of its commissioner product. Whether it be the inclusion of player contracts, league histories, or non-tradional scoring, MyFantasyLeague can make it happen for your league. Using them comes with a price ($89.95 for the 2009 fantasy football season) that many leagues would not be willing to pay.

This is a great opportunity for fantasy players to test drive a new league commissioner without putting their league at risk (by switching to a product before the season).