A Fantasy Idea

Last week, as a fantasy football owner of Arian Foster, I started thinking about the idea of how fantasy football really misses out on some of the reality of sports and how we might improve that. Obviously, one of the big things rolling around in my head is how injuries that occur early in a game alter fantasy football results far more than they alter real life results. Sure, in real life, if Peyton Manning gets hurt early in a game, the Broncos probably aren’t going to win, but how many times have we seen a QB, RB or WR go down, only to see their replacement step up and makes some plays? In fantasy we never get to see that unless we know someone is injured before the game starts.

So, I had an idea. How about the ability to make half-time substitutions?

The rules would look something like this:

• During any given week, before the end of the first half, you can choose to sub out any player on your roster. Whatever stats they had for the first half are part of your results for the week.
• The player you sub in, will only count based on what they do in the second half of their game. (So no subbing in someone with 3 first half touchdowns and getting credit for those)
• When you make the substitution, the only players eligible to sub in are those who have not reached the start of the second half of their game.

Here’s my thinking. Ultimately, fantasy football is about generating a rooting interest in every game. For example, how many people watched that dreadful Monday Night game between the Giants and Vikings this week just to keep tabs on a player or two who might turn the fantasy match up for the week? How many would have watched without that?

Now, there’s nothing that turns a game you would have interest in into a game you don’t watch faster than having the player you were watching get injured early and ruled out for the remainder of the game. Suddenly, your fantasy week is screwed and there’s nothing you can do about it. But what if you could replace that player with another one from a later game or a game that is currently going on? Doesn’t that change the level of your interest, and reward players who are actively keeping tabs on what’s happening on a given Sunday afternoon?

What do you think? Would you like to see the ability to swap players mid-game introduced to fantasy football? Is there something I’m missing that would give an unfair advantage? Let me know.