One of the things that can be the deciding factor in winning games in fantasy football is the decision of who you start each week. Now every seasoned fantasy football player knows that one of the cardinal rules in fantasy football is that you should never ever bench your studs. But sometimes deciding who to plug into your flex position or who to put in for your studs when they have a bye week is enough to give you a headache.

I ran into this situation last year. I am in a league that starts two wide receivers, two running backs and one flex player - either a wide receiver or a running back. Now I had my four starters that I would start every week - Ricky Williams, Clinton Portis, Torry Holt and Marty Booker. But I had a hard time deciding on who to plug into that flex position. I was considering Travis Taylor, Jerry Porter, Tai Streets, or Anthony Thomas. And sometimes that decision alone would cost me my game. Now I would read all of the projections, from Footballguys.com and a variety of sources. I checked out the who to bench and who to start columns. I would look at the player rankings. So many times though the opinions were widely varied and different. Invariably I would make the wrong decision and then find that I should have put in a player I left on the bench. Needless to say, I began to get tired of this after a couple of weeks of making the wrong choice. So what I did was to create a spreadsheet that I call the Who Do I Start Spreadsheet. And I have to say that it really helped to make my decision making much easier. As well as providing me with an overview look at what those experts were thinking about the players on my roster and their match-ups for the upcoming week.

So, if you are like me and have trouble deciding who you are going to start week in and week out this might be a tool that will help you out. All you need is a little time, energy, and a simple spreadsheet program to create your own Who Do I Start Spreadsheet.

Here is what it looks like:

Here's what it means:

The month number is the total fantasy score of each player for the month. I chose to use a monthly total rather than a year to date total because the monthly number takes into consideration the fact that a player may be starting to get more play, or develop more chemistry with his quarterback than he did at the beginning of the year.

The next 5 columns are all projections and rankings from a variety of sources. You can put in your favorites and the ones that you have found to be most reliable. When a projection has been given, I convert it into the score that player would receive using my scoring system. When it is a simple ranking, I give the top player at each position a 5 and then go backwards to the last player at the position receiving a 1. When match-ups are being evaluated, I give a great matchup a 5, a good matchup a 4 a neutral matchup a 3, a poor matchup a 2, and a terrible matchup a 1.

The Cathy column is you guessed it - where I put my own personal opinion into play. I have been doing this a while and value my own opinion in these matters so I have incorporated it into the spreadsheet.

The final column is the total - and this is what helps my decision week. The week that I have highlighted above I would have chosen to start Travis Taylor in the flex position. Even though Torry Holt had a lower number than some of the other wide receivers, I still left him in because of the don't bench your studs rule. I also used this to help me decide which of my tight ends to start as well and started Marcus Pollard this particular week. Now, you will notice that I have my quarterbacks in there, but that was just for own curiosity's sake. This was later in the season and I was starting Gannon on a weekly basis.

Now you are probably wondering how accurate of an indicator this was. Did it correctly predict who I should have started?

Here are the results:

Working from the Who Should I Start Spreadsheet with the don't bench my studs rule my combined fantasy score was 156. Working from strictly from the Who Should I Start Spreadsheet without taking into consideration my stud rule, my score would have been 162. If I had played my best performers for the week my combined fantasy score would have been 166. Well, it was not a 100% accurate prediction of who I should have started. Though it did help to steer me in the right direction. Looking at this statistically the one area that it did help me was to avoid players who really underperformed and I was considering starting - such as McMichael and Porter.

Keep in mind that this was a one-week snapshot. I did not keep any statistical data last year as to the overall effectiveness of the spreadsheet. But that is something that I do plan on doing this coming year. I do know and can say that overall it greatly aided in my determining who to start. Also, keep in mind that I would not take this one-week snapshot to advocate that you should bench your studs in favor of other talent on your bench.

Another benefit to developing and using a tool like this is that it can help you to pinpoint and identify your team's strengths and weaknesses from week to week. This can be extremely valuable for you as you play the waiver wire and work on making trades with others in your league.

So as I said, if you have the time, energy and a simple spreadsheet program and you are struggling with the decision of who to start, give it a shot. Pick your favorite sources of fantasy information and those prognosticators whose opinions you value. Plug them in and see how it works. Just being able to take an overall look at what others are predicting and how they are ranking the players on your roster can be a valuable tool throughout the upcoming season.