Back when I was in college, trapped in our dorm suite on a savagely snowy Sunday in Syracuse, my roommates and I decided to while away the hours by playing some Monopoly. We very quickly learned what a horrible mistake this was -- no shade on the board game itself, but the arguments began almost immediately.
I went first, rolled the dice, moved my piece and passed the dice. Almost immediately, one roommate shouted incredulously, "Aren't you going to buy it?" My other roommate laughed at him, "What are you talking about? You can't buy any properties until you've gone around the board once."
That was just the first of many arguments before the board got thrown across the room in frustration. Sure, there are official rules to the game, but we had all grown up with different house rules that clashed hard, especially when someone landed on Free Parking or tried to collect rent while "in jail."
Which brings us to the dirty little secret about fantasy football. There might be some rules, but there's no "right way" to play -- and there's nothing wrong with that. It wasn't so long ago that PPR was considered the "different" way to play the game. There also used to be a contingent of purists who decried the use of fractional points. After all, "in real football, you either get a first down or you don't, so in fantasy football, you should get credit for multiples of 10 yards only," they would say.
In fact, there probably still are fantasy football participants who hold these views and who consider it blasphemy to play with any other scoring system, just as there are advocates of being allowed to start two quarterbacks, punters or even head coaches. It may not be your particular cup of tea, but nobody is forcing you to play under those rules, so there's no need to get upset if somebody else enjoys doing so.
Sure, it may cause some consternation when you start up a new league with people coming to the proverbial party with different prior experiences, but that's what league constitutions are for. That's the real veteran move this week: discuss what rules you're going to play by, and write them all down so there's no confusion.
Now, it's certainly bad form to change rules in the middle of a season, but that doesn't mean you can't flag certain areas of debate as they come up so that you can indeed have these important conversations once the season does come to an end.
For example, here's one point of contention that tends to rear its ugly head nearly every year. Say you're currently winning this week's game by a single point headed into Monday night's action. Your opponent's starting lineup has already finished play, but you still have your kicker and D/ST to go. That brings us to the age-old question: Is it just "smart strategy" for you to bench both these spots, take the goose eggs, thus avoiding the potential for any negative scoring to change the outcome of your game, or is doing something like that "shady business?" After all, if a legal lineup includes starting a kicker and a D/ST, then intentionally not starting those positions means you have an illegal lineup, doesn't it?
Here's the thing. Whichever side of this question you fall on, you probably think that you're 100 percent right and that the other side is 100 percent wrong. But the truth is, there is no absolute right or wrong here. If you play in a league where there's no rule against such a move, then doing so is indeed both legal and smart. If you participate in a league where fantasy managers have deemed such a move to be against the spirit of fair play, then it's both illegal and shady.
Then there's the other scenario: You play in a league where there is no written set of rules at all and there are multiple fantasy managers on each side of this issue. For you, my hope is that this particular scenario doesn't come up to potentially tear your league apart, and that you take note of this philosophical divide and begin the debate now before it does.