FL Cubed 2017 Rules and Regulations

Welcome to the F. Fantasy Football League of Leagues League (or FL Cubed for short) season 2017!

Many of the FL Cubed Rules are explicit on the ESPN Fantasy Football site itself.  This page is dedicated to specialized rules and regulations not covered by the site and/or clarification about certain decisions made for the season.

TL;DR: What’s changed from last year?

  • Increased number of teams from 12 to 14 and redistributed prize money accordingly.
  • Redistributed VPs to account for 14 teams – 2 VPs for win, 3 VPs for 1-3, 2 VPs for 4-6, 1 VP for 7-10, 0 VPs for 11-14
  • ESPN has made a rule change: Points that are scored as a result of an offensive turnover (e.g. a pick 6) do not count towards the tally of Points Against for your D/ST.

Buy-in and Prizes:

Buy-in for the season is $20.  With 14 teams, the prize pool is $280 that will be distributed the following way:

Player with most victory points (including the playoffs): $140

Winner of the Playoffs: $100

Runner up of Playoffs: $30

Player with the most victory points in the consolation ladder: Choice of draft pick for the 2017 season.

Determining Seed:

In an effort to reduce the amount of variance involved and to reward strong teams who get screwed by playing the strongest team and getting no credit for it, Seeding/Ranking for Playoffs will be balanced by creating Victory Points earned based on Wins/Losses combined with weekly total points:

  • Team Win – 2 Victory Points
  • Team Loss – 0 Victory Points
  • Tier 1: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in Total Points for the week – 3 Victory Points
  • Tier 2: 4th, 5th, and 6th in Total Points for the week – 2 Victory Points
  • Tier 3: 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th  in Total Points for the week – 1 Victory Point
  • Tier 4: 11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th in Total Points for the week – 0 Victory Points

Any ties in VPs will be broken by Team Record, and then by total points.

Victory Points and Standings can be found on this Google Sheet.

Regular Season Matchups and Playoff Rules:

I’m doing a single division 14-week format which means that everyone plays everyone else once through the first 13 weeks and then the last week is determined randomly.

Playoffs:

  • There are six playoff spots that are earned by being in the top 6 seed.
  • The top two ranked players will earn a bye for the playoff bracket.  Those two players will automatically earn 3 VPs for that week representing a win.  Although they are not in a traditional matchup, points earned by their players will still be Tier Ranked for potential earning of those VPs.
  • Winner Bracket Playoff rounds will be scheduled as follows:
    • #3 team plays #6 team.  Winner of that match plays the #2 ranked team.
    • #4 team plays #5 team.  Winner of that match plays the #1 ranked team.
  • Consolation Ladder Bracket Playoff rounds will be scheduled as normal.

Miscellaneous Rule Tweaks:

Rule tweaks from the standard point scoring and other rules are not obvious if you’re not looking for them, so here’s a quick rundown of rules that have been tweaked from ESPN defaults:

  • Acquisition of players from waivers and free agency is set as Free Agent Auction (continuous).
    • Everyone has a bid budget of $100 for the entire season.
    • A $0 bid is possible (so if no one else bids, then you get the player for free).
    • Whatever price you set is the price you’ll pay regardless of what the next highest bid is – so if you bid $35 on a player and the next highest bid for that player is $10, you will still pay the full $35.
    • Auction results are set to resolve on Sundays, Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays at 12:00pm Eastern.  Any auction transaction that would occur after that would cycle to the next auction resolve time. This means that even if a player would be available via waiver wire on Sunday afternoon for the late afternoon or evening game, that player is still “locked” because any auction result would not occur until the next day (monday).
    • A good video summary of how the Free Agent Auction set up works can be found here.
  • Points for Passing, Rushing, and Receiving are the same as standard, but credit for those points are earned for every yard (as decimals) instead of every 10 (This is now the ESPN default as of 2017).
  • Points for the Kicker have been changed to:
    • -1 for FG’s missed 0-39 yards.  0 points for FG’s missed otherwise.
    • 1 for every successful PAT
    • 1 for every successful FG made 0-49 yards.
    • 2 for every successful FG made 50+ yards.
  • There are 6 bench spots instead of the standard 7.

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