I'm continuing my review of some of the advanced features we've introduced in my "money" fantasy football league. Today's topic is:
Decimal Scoring - I have to admit, when our league started with decimal scoring, I was sure I was going to hate it. But after three years, I think it's one of the best features of the fantasy football season.
Standard fantasy football scoring provides points based on meeting certain milestones: one point for every ten rushing yards, one point for every 25 passing yards, etc. Every fantasy football player has probably suffered the heartbreak of having a running back finish with 79 or 109 yards and just miss out on scoring that next point. And under traditional scoring, it doesn't matter whether or not your wide receiver finishes with 91 receiving yards or 99 receiving yards, you score nine points either way. As a football fan and a fantasy football player, you take every play seriously. Your scoring should do the same.
Decimal scoring eliminates those problems by providing smaller point values for smaller milestones. For example, converting your league scoring of one point for every ten rushing yards to decimal scoring means you would now receive 0.1 pt for every rushing yard. Instead of receiving one point for every 25 passing yards, now you receive .04 points for every passing yard. Every player still has the same value, but now every football play also has a value.
You'll immediately see the impact in your fantasy league once you switch to decimal scoring. Your games will finish with scores like 132.64 - 131.50. You'll experience the horror of watching your QB take a knee to end the game --- and realize that the -0.3 pts that play scored may cost your team the game. And you'll soon realize that you may actually win or lose a game by less than a point. Last season I lost the last game of the season - and a playoff spot - by 0.45 points. I don't know how long it will take before that pain wears off.
Both Sportsline and Yahoo allow you to use decimal scoring. ESPN partially allows it, but they won't allow any point values into two decimal places. So while you can't set your passing scoring to .04 pts per passing yard, you can set it to .2 pts per five passing yards. That's just lazy half-ass programming.
Decimal scoring is one of my favorite parts of my fantasy football league. It doesn't complicate things, it doesn't require any extra work and it brings a new level of detail to fantasy football. Give it a shot this year and see if you agree.