ESPN has a great system for the casual fantasy football owner, as well as for the hard core fantasy football owners. For a newcomer, or someone who doesn’t want to shell out a lot of cash, ESPN is perfect as they have plenty of free options which is what makes ESPN Fantasy Football very unique from most fantasy football sites. You can either create your own league, join an existing public league, or join a league in their live draft lobby. Not many other leagues have this versatility making it a great site for the new fantasy football owner wanting to try his hand, or the hard core fan looking to dominate his other hard core owners/friends for bragging rights and prizes.
ESPN offers live scoring even for free leagues which is another plus. You always hate it when you are watching the games with a calculator handy. Live scoring is a great feature, and once you have experienced it, it will be hard to be in a league without live scoring.
It seems the only major difference between the free leagues and the money leagues is that the money leagues put you in contention for prizes based off how well your team performs against the other teams in your league. Another big plus with the ESPN leagues, besides not having to sit there with your calculator, if you tune in ESPN news on Sunday morning or many of the other fantasy football portions of ESPN shows, they literally analyze and look at the players based off of the ESPN scoring system. Its always tough when you are in 5 different leagues with 5 different scoring systems. If you want to simplify things a little this definitely helps as you look to pick up that vital free agent for the week or struggle to decide what receiver to start over another. Sure some of the advice will be a little off base and sometimes just wrong as most fantasy football experts aren’t as good as they think they are (Matthew Berry). However it never hurts to listen to the experts, crunch the numbers, and then make you own decision, that way you’ll never harbor ill will towards a fantasy analyst prone to being wrong costing you a few vital games here and there (Matthew Berry).
ESPN has many normal and standard scoring options where players get points for touchdowns and yardage. Neither is weighted too heavily making it a very balanced scoring system. ESPN also offers a custom scoring system where you can add or subtract to add some spice to your league’s scoring system. For example you can give an additional point bonus for a 400+ yard passer, or you could take away points for every time a quarterback is sacked. ESPN is pretty good at starting you out at a completely vanilla league, but offering so many different options or “flavors” that you can really make it your league literally your own league. While I won’t come out and say its the best fantasy football site, I will definitely say ESPN is one of the best and worth a look. I do have to warn and newcomers, fantasy football is very addicting. It is so much fun and can be so competitive that once you start playing, I highly doubt you’ll be able to stop. And trust me, there’s no better feeling than taking out your local rivals and hoisting that trophy in their face all year long. Your home team might not be able to win a championship every year, but if you build a solid team, with some skill and luck, you could easily be bringing home that trophy at the end of the season.