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| Saturday,
July 14th FWL Vacancies By Paul Johns FWL.com |
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FANTASY WORLD LEAGUE (FWL) RULES 13/2/99 INTRODUCTION There are many american football simulation leagues currently running on the internet, as soon as I received my copy of Front Page Sports 97 I just had to start a World League of American Football league. The main aim of the game is of course to win the World Bowl by a variety of methods as General Manager, trades, free agents, luck with injuries, drafts and a good combination of players. Games are played every fortnight. LEAGUE FACTS The FWL is made up of 18 teams, 14 of the teams are either current of former WLAF teams. Added to this are four expansion teams, Austria, Ireland, Paris and Mexico. All games are simulated by the computer. Full statistics and game reports will be available to owners. Each team plays 14 games a season. There will be no trades after Week 7 but free agents can be signed all year round, even in the playoffs. At the end of the regular season eight teams make the playoffs. Each divisional winner (4) will host a home playoff game and 2 teams from each division with the best records will be the wildcard teams. Unfortunately there will be NO NATIONAL RULE. This will be too hard to enforce as 1) The Expansion teams have no National Players 2) The computer simulates all the games so eg Scott Couper is injured in the 1Q, no national player will take over in the starting lineup. LEAGUE SCHEDULE The FWL will run as follows from now on: Monday - List of free agents is issued with up to 20 new players every fortnight. 1st Friday - Teams are told which FA's they have successfully signed. 2nd Friday - Teams are told which FA's they have successfully signed that week. Saturday and Sunday- Games will be played (*** NEW RULE ***). Throughout the two weeks, GM's can trade how many players they want (has to be a 1 for 1 trade), cut players and have any roster changes they may require, eg move HB4 to HB1 etc. WAYS OF IMPROVING YOUR TEAM PLAYER POSITION CHANGES You can change various players and their positions throughout the season. Player changes are: HB to FB and vica versa C to G or T and vica versa DE to DT and vica versa CB to S and vica versa. Since the beginning of Season 3 there are to be no WR-TE conversions and vica versa, this basically takes away the important role of the TE as GM's can simply convert an existing receiver. FREE AGENTS The FWL is slightly different from the NFL, during the season a lot of 'fringe' NFL players and veterans cut from the NFL will try and make it into the FWL to show they can still play, eg QB Jay Schroeder, old pro's giving it one last go, eg RB Neal Anderson and past WLAF stars, eg WR Jon Horton, QB Tony Rice, QB Mike Perez. Of course you will also get retirements on your team. During the two week period until the next set of games Team GM's will be sent an email with a list of the current Free Agents. *** CHANGES TO THE FREE AGENT RULE AFTER WEEK 1 *** After Week 1 the Free Agent signing rules will change. Currently they do not work as expansion teams, eg Austria have no former WLAF players so for example if QB Paul Justin was a free agent, under current rules he would go straight to the Galaxy if they wanted him, Austria would have no 'rights' to him. After Week 1 teams need to give me a list of free agents they want numbered 1 to 10. eg Austria Free Agent List 1 QB Dan Marino, 2 RB Walter Payton, 3 WR Jerry Rice, 4 Lawrence Taylor London Free Agent List 1 RB Walter Payton, 2 WR Jerry Rice, 4 DE Reggie White, 5 QB Mark Malone So both teams would receive their preferred number 1 choice. However Austrias 2nd choice has already gone to London who wanted the player more. So now Jerry Rice moves up to #2 in Austrias 'wish list', however London also want Jerry Rice as their number 2 pick, so in this case a toss of the coin will be fairly made by the Commish (Me). Its not the best way but I think it is the fairest way. To be sure of signing up to 5 free agents you need to send me a list of about 8-10 players, or maybe sign 3 the first week and sign another 2 later on in the week as your wishlist might change due to injuries/trades etc. DRAFT After each season there is a draft and a supplemental draft. The draft will be similar to the Free Agency scheme, most of the players will be fringe NFL players, veterans and young college stars who haven't made it in the NFL. The quality will be better than the usual free agent ratings. Owners will be sent a list of all the players available for the draft. There will be a college draft and a supplemental draft made up of free agents. Once again team owners will send a long list to the Commish, 20 players or more, so they will hopefully get the players they want. TEAM PROFILE Even though you cannot call the plays you have some control on your coach, you can set a team profile by selecting various criteria to set your team as an 'agressive passing' team or a balanced offence, same for the defense, you might rush conservatively but have an agressive pass defense. You can change this every week if you want like real NFL coaches so your opponent will never know what type of offense you will be running. On the Monday before the game all coaches will be sent out a blank email to fill in which will define your offence and defence for the game the following weekend. You can set up to 20 points on offence and defence so you can set your team to have more of a passing attack and concentrate on stopping the run on defense depending on which team you will be facing. When the initial email is sent out this will contain more instructions on this. TRADES Throughout the season you will be able to suggest trades with fellow owners. You can make numerous trades but after Week 7 there will be no further trading. Trading is on a strictly 1 for 1 player basis. However there are ways round this. If I am after all-star QB Dan Marino, I could offer the team one of my all-star players and also offer them another trade, my talented WR for CB Fred Bloggs. I receive QB Marino and a player who will probably be cut and the other team receive 2 quality players in return. TRAINING CAMP After the season has finished you can assign percentages to different player ratings to improve their skill. Once again, when the season ends, detailed instructions will be sent out on this. INJURIES Of course throughout the season your team might receive some injuries, remember to have good backups or the season could collaspe right in front of you. BE WARNED ! Players throughout the season can also have CAREER-ENDING INJURIES !!! These players of course will never play again in the league. In previous leagues I have seen up to 8 players a season have retired due to injuries. RETIREMENTS At the end of the season you will be told of any retirements. A lot of players in FBPro 97 leagues retire if they have played 10 or more seasons, you also get quite a few who retire after maybe 7 or 5 seasons, even sometimes 1 or 2 seasons. This appears to be quite random, so once again be warned, make sure you have a good complete squad or you might find your team is struggling the following season due to shock retirements or injuries. TEAM ROSTER A team consists of 53 player slots. You must have between 42 and 46 of these players ACTIVE for each game. Before each game you can change which players are active for the game. There are 3 types of slots: Assigned Slots (A) Assigned slots are reserved for specific positions. For example, each team has two assigned slots for QB's, NOTE All assigned slots MUST be filled before any game can begin. This ensures that teams will be able to field enough players on offense and defense and special teams at the beginning of the game. If you wish to trade or release a player in an assigned slot you MUST replace him with a player of the same position. There are 34 assigned slots on each team. Distribution of assigned slots Pos Number of (A)ssigned Slots QB 2 RB 3 WR/TE 5 OL 6 DL/DT 4 LB 5 DB 7 K 1 P 1 Open-Active (O) and Open-Inactive Slots (I) Open slots may be filled by players of any position. This allows you to fill your team as you see fit. Players in open slots may be traded or released. So for example if you only have 5 LB's, these will all be (A)ssigned, making trades will be very difficult as I need an open slot (O) to allow the trade to happen, so if you have 5 LB's and the 6th LB is in an (O)pen slot, if you want LB1 to be traded, i then move LB1 down to LB6 to the open slot who can then be traded. If you have an extra player on each position on the above table they will be in an (O)pen slot and will make trading and sorting out the game much easier for me !!! Players in an Open-Inactive Slot (I) are on the team but are not eligible to play in games. Injured Reserve Slots (IR) IR Slots may be filled by any players. Each team has 10 IR slots, once a player has gone on IR he cannot come off until the end of the season. The IR slots allow a team to replace injured players who will not be able to play, without releasing them. ROSTER REQUIREMENTS A = Minimum 34 A + O = Minumum 42; Maximum 46 A + O + I = 53 IR= Maximum 10 Some teams for example only have 6 OL's so they are all active and it makes sorting the trade out difficult for me. This is my fault as I should have sorted out all the rosters at the beginning of the season, so far this hasnt caused many problems though. I hope everyone understands how the rosters work, basically make sure you have 34 ACTIVE players and also if you have Open-Active players for each position it will be easy to sort out trades. LEAGUE STATISTICS Games will be simulated on the Sunday night once every two weeks to give you a chance to trade players and to make adjustments etc. On Monday you will be emailed the weeks results, statistics of top players and box scores and rosters for every team to view. On Tuesday there will be a 'Sports Magazine' showing all the latest news and 'pictures'. Also on the Tuesday the web-site will be updated with all the latest stats and game reports. If you are a stats freak you'll love it ! From Monday until the following weeks games (2 weeks) you can send me emails telling me to move your improving 2nd string QB to become the starter or any other roster changes. Also you can email other owners about possible trades. On the Friday if I have an email from both owners agreeing to the trade, the trade will be completed in time for the Sunday game. There will be no trades after Week 8. To really make this fun league work, owner participation must be good to really simulate the league to make it look like a real league. Throughout the season I will be clocking up the stats and at the end of the season there will be a Pro Bowl and the season records will be sent out to you all. QUICK LOOK AT THE RULES Remember !!! To send a free agent list of up to 8-10 players before the first friday. This will then give you a good chance of landing some of the big names who will be on the free agent list. Send the Commish any roster moves you may want, simply send an email and send information like: QB2 to QB1, HB4 to HB2 etc. Near the end of the season either cut or trade some of your older players in case they retire and then you will receive nothing for them. Look at the statistics and try and work out a good gameplan for the team you are facing that weekend. Some players dont have great skills but can be big suprises in this league. If things are going bad, start a few new faces or if that doesnt work start preparing your roster for following seasons, eg young players who after training camp could blossom into potential stars. Remember it all starts in the trenches ! Offensive line and the defensive line are VERY important The quality of FA's will decrease further into the season as the main strategy in the FWL will be trades, not signing lucky FA stars.
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