The Farris Participation Index for Fantasy Football

Introduction

I play fantasy football in an extremely competitive 12 person league. This is actually our first year accommodating 12 teams and I think the change has been good. It requires a little more player knowledge because you have to dig deeper to fill out your roster than you would in a 10 person league. I would however caution you before increasing the size of your league; it is imperative to ensure that each one of your owners is competing at a very high level. The increase in required fantasy football skill can lead the inattentive owner's team to fall by the wayside rather quickly, and if this happens to a significant percentage of the teams in your league, it can ruin the whole thing.

It was precisely this concern that lead to much debate within my league when we were deciding whether or not to allow two expansion teams. While considering prospective new owners, our number one concern was ensuring that the quality of play would not diminish. In 2008, the two prospective owners we tapped did not inspire enough confidence throughout the league and their membership bid was voted down. In 2009, we finally seemed to find a good fit with our prospects and they passed muster to gain entrance into the league by the slightest of margins. By all accounts, the expansion has been a wild success.

All of this debate over the past two years has made me think about how we decide who gets into the league and who does not or rather, what exactly makes a good fantasy football team owner. Obviously, win/loss records, championships won, and total points scored are all of the utmost importance. These numbers and titles are why we play the games and accordingly are an extremely effective measure of one's fantasy football prowess.

But these numbers do not tell the whole story. Imagine a fantasy football league that saw little to no activity post-draft but was still allowed to play out to its ultimate conclusion. There would still be win/loss records accumulated, points scored, and a championship won, but there would be no trade arguments or message board trash talk or waiver wire pickup races. I would argue that it is these things that make a good fantasy football league. I would further argue that it is one's willingness to participate in all of these activities during the season that makes for a good team owner.

If we're going to be completely honest, there is an awful lot of luck that goes into one's fantasy football record and the amount of points one scores. We are merely making predictions about future performance based on past success and barring any injuries. To be sure, a certain amount of preparation and research can lead to better predictions, but it is an inexact science at best. Conversely, there is no luck involved in crafting a hilarious message board post or ironing out the details of a trade over multiple phone calls and text messages. Those things require work and time. Further, a team owner's record and points totals will fluctuate year after year; the amount of dedication he puts into the league is more likely to remain consistent and is thus a better reflection of his efficacy as an owner.

It's all about not just being a successful owner, but being a good steward for your team and league. It is in this vein that I have created a formula to measure the amount of work a given owner puts in to his team and to making the league more interesting during the fantasy football season. I call it the Farris Participation Index or FPI and I have chosen this, the final day of most fantasy football regular seasons, to unveil it. FPI is made up of two factors: the Team Management Component (TMFPI) and the Message Board Component (MBFPI), both of which I will describe in detail below.


Team Management Component

The formula:

TMFPI = (acquisitions) + (successful trades * 4) + (activations / 2)

where,

Acquisitions are the number of times a player was added to the owner's team through a free agent pickup or successful waiver wire transaction.

Successful Trades are the number of trades in which the owner was involved that resulted in the exchange of players. This number is multiplied by four to represent the greater amount of work required to execute a successful trade compared to a regular acquisition.

Activations are the number of times the owner moved a player from his bench to his starting lineup. This number is divided by two to represent the relative ease with which an activation is executed as opposed to an acquisition.

The sum of these numbers will give an accurate portrayal of how involved an owner is in fielding a competitive team on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis. It shows how much he is trying to improve his team through all the means available to him and how well he is utilizing his bench to cover bye weeks, injuries, and the like.

The TMFPI rating has many limitations. Chief among them is that it penalizes owners who had an extremely successful draft. If an owner comes out of the draft with a very competitive roster, the team can be expected to perform well from the outset and thus require less modification throughout the season. Less team modification results in a smaller TMFPI. While the stated goal of the FPI rating is to measure a given owner's level of involvement in the league throughout the regular season (as opposed to his involvement in pre-draft preparations), I do wish I were able to incorporate some measure of how well that owner performed in the draft. It would be possible to calculate such a rating with the hindsight gained after a full season, but such statistical analysis throughout so many draft rounds is beyond my mathematical ability. Also, the draft is the best part of a fantasy football season. If an owner cannot be counted upon to be completely prepared before it, then it is questionable whether or not he should be in the league at all.

In the same vein, TMFPI may penalize an owner for having a successful team during the season. If his team is doing well, not only will he be less likely to change it through trades and acquisitions, but in some leagues he may have a lower waiver order and will not be able to get his waiver pickups processed. To a certain degree, an owner's TMFPI rating must be viewed in light of his record at the end of the season. A successful owner can be given a pass for a lower TMFPI. Conversely, an unsuccessful owner with a low TMFPI will likely have to answer some serious questions about his level of commitment to the league.

Another limitation of the TMFPI is that it does not include declined trades or unprocessed waiver selections. Unfortunately, these statistics are generally not available in online fantasy football leagues or are only available to that owner whose offered trade was declined or whose waiver pick did not go through. I wish I were able to include the unprocessed waiver picks. These represent a good faith attempt to add a player to one's team and are thus indicative of a high level of attention paid to one's roster throughout the season. Also, inclusion of this statistic would slightly ameliorate the good team penalty described above. I am less worried about the exclusion of declined trades. Lopsided, unserious trades are consistently proposed every week in most leagues and usually represent either at best a jumping off point for additional trade talks or at worst a waste of everyone's time. It is a much better measure to include only those trades that were accepted as this represents actual work and commitment to the trading process.

The inclusion of activations is likely to be somewhat controversial. In my opinion, a large amount of activations is indicative of the hemming and hawing about one's lineup that goes through the mind of any conscientious owner in the days leading up to his game. The reader may disagree. Many internet fantasy football sites do not keep track of activations as a statistic. If this is the case with your league, I would recommend using a multiplier to inflate the TMFPI to a level commensurate with the MBFPI so that the total FPI is not weighted too heavily toward one component.

Message Board Component

The formula:

MBFPI = (threads created) + (replies) + (replies received)

where,

Threads Created are the number of message board threads that the owner initiated.

Replies are the number of times the owner replied to a message board thread regardless of who that thread was created by.

Replies Received are the number of total replies received to a thread that the owner created

The sum of these numbers will give an accurate portrayal of how much a given owner is contributing to the conversation in his league. It is a bit more elegant than the TMFPI because not only does it show exactly how often an owner contributes to the message boards, it also gives a measure of the quality of those contributions and how much that owner is fostering additional conversation through the replies received statistic.

Of course, the MBFPI has its limitations as well. Trash talking and league conversation extends well beyond the message boards to include phone calls, text messages, and in person communication as well. All of these are of course beyond the scope of our ability to calculate, but it is still unfortunate that an owner should be penalized if he prefers to do his trash talking verbally rather than through the written word.

Final Words

The goal of FPI is to determine how much each owner is contributing to the overall health of his league through his participation in it. Accordingly, there are many things that I wish could be included, but cannot because they would be difficult to count. For one, I would include a penalty for the cardinal sins of leaving a player in one's starting lineup during that player's bye week or not starting a player at every position. These are unforgivable oversights that damage the integrity of the league every time they are perpetrated.

In later editions of the FPI, I intend to come up with a draft component that would not only appraise the quality of an owner's draft selections as we discussed above, but would also appraise his performance and behavior during the draft itself. Things like letting the computer autopick for you or bringing a woman to a live draft always detract from the health of the league and should be factored in to an owner's FPI.

Finally, there is a somewhat legitimate concern that once an owner is aware of the FPI, he will artificially inflate his numbers in order to gain a higher rating. This would be particularly easy to do with activations and message board replies. My only counterargument would be that if someone cares enough to artificially manipulate a rating designed to judge how much he cares, then he should necessarily be precluded from being judged by that rating because the amount of care he showed in the manipulation renders the rating itself moot.

Despite all of these limitations and exclusions, I think the FPI does a pretty good job of objectively and numerically representing how involved a given owner is in his fantasy football league and how much he is doing to make that league better. It is important to remember to view an individual owner's FPI rating in light of the average FPI of that league and not as an absolute number. Each league will have different standards and demands for its owners. Additionally, it may be wise to view an individual owner's FPI rating in light of the league's median FPI rating. One or two extremely overzealous or inattentive owners can skew the average for the league, particularly in 10 or fewer team leagues.

I hope this new formula helps you and your league determine which of your owners are making your league a better place and which are not. I also think there is some value in looking at this particular data set at the end of the regular season. It will be interesting to see over the next few years if there is a correlation between FPI and league success. Finally, it can be comforting to those owners who did not have a successful year, but still had a decent FPI. At least he or she gave it a good shot. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must mentally prepare for tonight's Monday Night game. I need to win in order to make the playoffs. My opponent has Ryan Grant in tonight's game and I have the Raven's defense. I am currently down by six points, but will certainly win the bench points tiebreaker. In other words, I am mostly, but not completely, screwed. Go Ravens!