Divisional Fantasy Football: My Awesome Idea

So after winning my league Super Bowl following the 2006 season, I quit playing Fantasy Football these last two seasons. Honestly, I must say I have NOT missed it. It's nice to enjoy football for what it is, and not end up screaming at the TV and ruining a Sunday over something stupid like "Damn, why did they throw it to Marvin Harrison? I started Reggie Wayne!!!" That said, I'm still an idea man... and i've got a great idea to breathe new life into Fantasy Football for anyone getting bored or looking for a new twist: Divisional Fantasy Football.

Each of the 8 players gets one NFL Division and can field his team from any players in that division. So the guy with the NFC East could start Eli Manning at QB, Clinton Portis and Brian Westbrook at RB’s, Santana Moss and T.O. at WR’s, Jason Whitten at TE and then choose an NFC East kicker and defense depending on matchups.

It would sort of take the fun out of the draft, since there’d only be one round, but the guy with the first pick still has to strategize… does he take the AFC West so he has L.T., or take the AFC South just to get Peyton Manning? And of course you'd still have week to week strategy of who to start/play.

Besides semi-killing the draft element, another stumbling block is the bye week. Usually the NFL schedule has most or all teams from one division on a bye at the same time. If one division does NOT have several teams on bye the same week, then that team would have an advantage. BUT, what if you had an active/inactive roster, so you could keep most of your top players active, but still leave plenty of “free agents” for other divisions to use one-time only when their division is on bye? Maybe you’d have to leave X number of QB’s available…. Maybe each week you could move players to/from inactive list.

So I have the NFC east, and they're all on bye except Dallas. Maybe I start the best of the Dallas players and then fill in with the unprotected QB's and other players from the other divisions. Maybe force everyone to leave 1-2 QB's from their division on the inactive list so the talent pool was decent....

Not sure if this format would work in head-to-head style of play, or more suitable to a “rotisserie” format where you don’t play against anyone, just accumulate points each week. Maybe it could be done either way.

Not sure how this idea could make money. Unless you could have a website where people could play for $10 and just spread the word around until it’s really popular. Not sure if you could copyright the concept so you could cash in if ESPN and CBSsportsline wanted to start offering this. Probably not, who knows. But consider this date/time-stamped blog entry as my official claim on the idea; feel free to contact me with big-money offers.