A Chick's Guide to Fantasy Football Leagues

Depending on what hour of the day you're reading this, there are 8 days, 3 hours, 50 minutes, and 45 seconds left until the 2008 NFL draft. Ladies, now is the time for us to act! If we're really going to give the men a run for their money this fantasy football season, it's time for us to start doing our homework now.

Draft date is an important day to pay attention to when you're beginning to make decisions that will affect your fantasy football team, so be prepared on April 26th and 27th to host a "girl's night" in front of the TV and see which football player is going to what team. This information will be extremely helpful to you when you begin planning your women's fantasy football team. (Plus, you get to see the football players run around in their tight pants and who doesn't love that?)

Women fantasy football owners are becoming more and more prevalent in an otherwise male-dominated realm of fantasy sports. It's scary to get out there and play with the big dogs, I know. But recently I've found the entertainment value and the excitement that can be had while playing fantasy football and I want to be a part of that regardless of the fact that I'm a chick! Chicks can play fantasy football just as well or better than men can and this season we're going to prove it.

Don't worry if you're clueless about fantasy football; I'm going to teach you all you need to know! Starthere to learn more about the first step, selecting a fantasy football league. The second step is preparing for your league's draft. There are a few ways the draft of your league can happen.

• Electronic Draft -- This is how almost every fantasy football league drafts nowadays. Everything is done in cyberspace! You can decide just how lazy you want to get with it, however, as there are websites that give you information only, all the way to websites that will completely manage your team for you. Just how e-lazy do you want to be?



• Social Draft -- Meet at a girlfriend's house and make a day of it. Invite all the women who'll be participating in the women's fantasy football revolution and plan a party! "Experts" suggest you leave out the alcohol so you'll be focused on the draft, but us chicks know that fantasy football should also be fun! Just make sure to have everyone's cheat sheet handy and you can draft from that. (More about cheat sheets and other tools you'll need later.)



• Destination Draft -- Easily my favorite type of draft, this one usually involves getting on a plane and flying to somewhere warm and breezy. Destination drafts are more like a fantasy football draft pick and vacation combo. You and your posse of girls will really turn some heads at a sports bar in Vegas, sitting around waiting to pick your perfect fantasy football team. Doesn't that sound like fun?

Then, get yourself ready to win. Watching the NFL draft is a great next step because you'll start to familiarize yourself with the powerful players you'll want to put at each position in your fantasy football team. Not only will you hear the names of some of the top NFL draft players, but you're likely to pick up a few statistics about their skills. If you really want to do this, join me in the women's fantasy football revolution! It's going to be an awesome ride and now's the time to get on.

Look back here to see what goes on in the draft in the next few days and how it'll affect your first few picks.

In the meantime, head here to read more about betting while we wait for the fantasy season to begin.

If you're just starting out in the male-dominated world of fantasy football, you have an exciting, yet possibly bumpy, road ahead. I'm here to arm you with the tools you need to create a kick-ass fantasy football team. Here's the good news: we have about five months to get you in to top form!

I'll start here with the basics about leagues, then move on to more complicated stuff in later articles. The first thing you need to figure out is which type of league you want to belong to.

Typically there are 8 to 16 teams that make up a league. The method of drafting determines which type of league it is. There are three major types of leagues: redrafts, keepers, or dynasty leagues.

Redrafts are the leagues that are the most "fair" to incoming players as they start with no players at the beginning of every season. Each owner then drafts an entire fantasy team each season. As a chick, you might want to start here since everyone's on the same playing field, with no players, each season.

The next major type of league is a dynasty league. The owners in this type of league are able to keep as many players as they'd like from the previous season, year after year. The drafting process only involves rookies and other unowned or players who weren't retained for whatever reason. If realism and looking for potential in rookies are what you're in to, dynasty leagues are definitely made for you.

Otherwise, you can always buy or "inherit" an orphaned dynasty league.. This might stack the deck in your favor, but only if the guy who orphaned the players picked well.

A keeper league is the perfect mix between a redraft and dynasty league. In a keeper league, the owner of the team is able to keep a small number of players they played with in the previous season. Most leagues allow you to keep one player at each position, year after year, until they are cut or traded. These players are effectively eliminated from the draft. This gives owners the opportunity to implement a little strategy after having seen how their players manage throughout the season. They decide if they are worth keeping for the upcoming season or not.

You'll be able to keep your best players while still enjoying an annual draft. This format creates lots of trading, as you can imagine. If you like the realism of a dynasty league, with the excitement of a draft each year, keeper leagues are the ones you should consider. This is a popular league to play fantasy football in.

There's a relatively new style of fantasy football making its way into the world as well. It's not so much creating your own team, however, as it is picking teams to win in a "knock out" type of pool. Last season I participated in this type of league and had a lot of fun with it. The deal is to choose one NFL team to win each week. Sound simple? The catch is, you can only pick that same team once all year. The strategy here is to strongly consider the opponents and decide which games weaker teams have a better chance of winning.

Similar leagues operating on this style allow owners to draft a new team of seven players each week with all players only available to an owner one week per season. This strategy downplays the negative consequences of players being injured, since you can simply choose different players the next week. It also puts a huge emphasis on weekly games and their outcomes.

Have you decided which league to be a part of? If so, you're ready to move on to the next step: the draft.