So you have watched others having all the fun and you have decided to set up your own fantasy football league this year? Good for you! You are about to find out that watching football games has never been so much fun.

But now comes the hard part; you must set up rules and structure for your league. One of the first tasks is to determine your scoring system and line up requirements. That seems easy. You will start with the same basic scoring as real football uses …… six points for a touchdown, three points for a field goal, one point for a point after touchdown. Then you will make some modifications. Someone has surely noticed that quarterbacks throw for more touchdowns than running backs or receivers score. So you will cut the value of those down to three or four points. Then you will probably add bonuses for long field goals and add some value to defensive team performance by crediting them with a bonus for limiting the opponent's scoring or yardage.

Now you are ready for your line up. Well you will probably want to use a standard NFL line up with 1 quarterback, 2 running backs, 2 wide receivers, 1 tight end, 1 kicker, and 1 defense. STOP RIGHT THERE! You are about to follow the sheep. Let me explain. NFL teams do not really use 2 running backs. That practice went out with Lenny Moore and Alan Ameche. The formation that NFL teams employ is 1 running back and 1 fullback. The latter is a pass catching guard with a lower uniform number. You will never bother to draft Lorenzo Neal or William Henderson.

Why should you care about this? Because the simple act of establishing a line up requirement which does not mirror the actual player use by NFL teams is about to dictate what is going to be required to succeed in your league for as long as you continue to play. The critical success factor is going to be obtaining TWO highly productive running backs and having a THIRD modestly productive one to back them up. You may ask why?

The most typical number of teams in a league will be twelve. There are 32 NFL teams so a line up which requires 1 quarterback, 1 tight end, 1 kicker and 1 defense is going to use 12 out of 32 of the NFL starting players at each of those positions. That is 37.5% of the available NFL starters. Using 2 wide receivers will require 24 players, but there are 64 NFL starters to choose from and so you will still be using only 37.5 % of the NFL starters. Now when you get to the requirement for using 2 running backs you will need also need 24 players, but you will find only 32 NFL starters to choose from. You will therefore have to use 75% of the NFL starters. So a relative shortage of running backs exists by the very nature of your line up requirement.

The problem is actually worse than the simple math makes it appear. Every team in your league will want a substitute at each position in order to cover bye weeks, injuries, and perhaps even poor performance by the starters. If you all draft one extra quarterback, tight end, kicker, and defense you will need an added 37.5% of the available NFL starters. That will mean that 75% of the NFL starters find there way onto the rosters of teams in your league. You will still have eight NFL starters at each of those positions who are not drafted and will presumably be available later on in a free agent pool. At wide receiver the need for at least one substitute on each team will require teams in your league to actually draft at least 36 players. That is only 56% of the NFL starters so there will be some fine choices available for your benches. So far, so good.

Now here comes the squeeze! You will need 12 substitute running backs. You have already taken the top 24 NFL players and there are only eight NFL starters left. Four of your teams will not have a starter. Actually you will find that some of the eight who think they took starters really didn't. What they got was a part of the most dreaded situation in fantasy football - the RBBC or running back by committee. In this situation none of the players on an NFL team are worth very much because they all split time and carries. Think of Pittman and Alstott or Bettis and Zereoue last year.

So now you have seen the inevitable result of your line up decision - there is going to be a scarcity of running backs in your league. This makes running backs the most valuable commodities in your draft. Every fantasy expert has recognized this and you will find that they will advise you to "get two stud RBs" or "use the Faulk Strategy (which dictates drafting RBs with each of your first three picks)". Most of your owners will follow this advice and there will be a tremendous run on running backs at the top of the draft. It is not unusual for the first eight or ten picks to be running backs before someone jumps in to select Harrison or Vick. They will say that the value was just too great to pass up. My advice is to humor them with some comment like "Nice choice Harry" and use your own choice to take another running back. You must get TWO highly productive running backs and a decent back up to have a chance to win. You can get productive quarterbacks and wide receivers later on in the draft.

Is there an alternative? YES. Start with the decision on the line up requirement. If it mirrored more closely the way players are used by NFL teams, the scarcity of running backs would not exist. Suppose that you have only 1 running back in your starting line up? Then you would only need 37.5% of the NFL starters as starters in your league. You would only need 75% of the NFL starters to give every one of your teams a starter and substitute. There would be no more scarcity of running backs than there is of quarterbacks!

Now how do you fill that eighth position in your line up? With a third wide receiver, much the way NFL teams do on a large portion of their plays. You might be tempted to think that I have just shifted the scarcity from one position to another. That is not the case. You will need 36 starters in your league, which will use up 56% of the NFL starters. When each of your teams adds a quality substitute to their roster you will still only have tapped 75% of the NFL starters. And the math is not really even that bad. Because NFL teams use three wide receivers on so many plays, the pool of quality options is deeper than just two per NFL team. And many of those third wide receivers will be very productive choices. People like Porter, Freeman, Jurevicius, Lelie, Proehl, and Randle El come easily to mind.

So the choice is yours. You can be different and set your line up requirement to require one running back and three wide receivers. If you do you had better give serious thought to the relative value of players at different positions. If you choose to follow the sheep and use two running backs and two wide receivers you had better also follow the sheep on draft day and draft scarcity.