I like playing against a full lineup every week, even in leagues for money. It’s like if a friend invited you to play basketball for money and then said “oh, I’m going to hop on one foot the whole time.” No, just play basketball, I came to play. As such, I’ll contact my opponent and even the commissioner if I suspect the owner is not going to start a full lineup. Still, absentee owners are a big issue come playoff stretch. Since many teams play the same team twice in a season, it can be thought of as extra problematic: Not only did an owner get to play a team early on that was so bad it’s owner left, they then get a free win playing them a second time when it is mismanaged.
From what I’ve seen, there are two approaches to the issue:
- Have the commissioner start the lineup every week based on best possible projections
- Stop caring. The season is almost over.
In more serious leagues, I’ve heard of an owner being replaced midseason. There s a special place in fantasy heaven (which is just like real heaven except more fantastic) for people who are willing to step in and manage a go-nowhere team.
I’ve also considered simply awarding an absent team the average points for a given week, or for the season. However, it feels like this removes some of the randomness that can make fantasy football fun.
What’s your opinion? How does your league manage it? Got an approach that wasn’t listed, here? Share with us in the comments.
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Idea: make every owner before the season starts hand over a refundable deposit of cash dollars. Then any week they fail to set a lineup, or start players on bye or IR or who were declared Out by (say) Wednesday, lose some portion of their deposit: and if they do it twice in a row, the whole deposit is gone.
You can use some source to determine an auto-lineup to set, but then what do you do about a team that has to make a waiver transaction… they lost players to IR, or have multiple players on bye this week, etc?