Play The Only College Football Game with REAL Players!
If you are anything like me, when the news was delivered that College Football DFS was going away, you took it rather hard. It was such a great niche with plenty of options and just a fun experience overall. After writing the Playbooks back in 2015 for that, I continued to play in a slew of season-long leagues and now we have a great college fantasy football product, delivered by Head2Head sports.
This is a unique challenge that rewards forward thinking and creativity in lineup construction. As the name suggests, you play head-to-head matchups each week, but rather than a traditional season-long league with a draft, you construct your roster under a salary cap each week. As 130 camps have opened, it’s time to start looking ahead to this great game and I’m here to help you understand how it works and then aid in building winning lineups each week.
This is the introduction to the game. We’ll talk about how it works and some general ideas about the contest itself. Later on in the week, we’ll start delving into more of the players who are available and determine how you want to construct that initial roster.
ROSTER CONSTRUCTION
After signing up, you are given a bankroll of an imaginary $100 Million to work with. You are tasked with constructing a roster composed of:
1 Quarterback (QB)
3 Running Backs (RB)
3 Wide Receivers (WR) or Tight Ends (TE)
1 Kicker (K)
1 Flex (QB, RB, WR or TE)
1 Team Defense / Special Teams
This is an average of $10 Million per player for the 10-player team. Even I can do that math. The website posts salaries for each of the players within the player pool.
PLAYER POOL
Fortunately, (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) H2H has withered down the player pool to include the “Power Five” conferences and added in the American Athletic (AAC). The ACC includes Notre Dame for the purpose of this game and also includes Boise State (Mountain West) and BYU (Independent).
TRANSACTIONS
This is another area that makes H2H different (and fun). After setting your initial roster before the start of the season, you will have the opportunity to update your team each week depending on matchups and performance. To make changes to your roster, you can purchase bundles of “trades” when you sign up. When doing so, I’d recommend getting the “Starter” package that comes with a “full team trade certificate”, which allows you to trade all ten of your players once during the season (10 trades). You can purchase more trades throughout the season, and, obviously, the more trades you can make, the better off you’ll be. However, we’ll discuss in future strategy articles, that this is not the only way to win. We can look ahead and determine which players we can ride for a while before jumping off. This is the strategy needed to make the playoffs. Speaking of playoffs...
LEAGUE STRUCTURE
You are placed in a 30-team league, within a five-team “conference”. You play one team from the league each week. Simply, if your team scored more than your opponent, you post a win. Following the 14-week regular season, the fun starts all over again with the top two teams from each conference within each league, along with four wild-cards (16 total) with the best records will advance to the H2H playoffs.
The playoffs runs through Bowl season. All entries making the playoffs will have two scoring periods with trading allowed during these times. Most cumulative points at the end of the National Championship game, wins.
SCORING SYSTEM
The most important stat to note is that this is a PPR (point-per-reception) league, making wide receivers and pass-catching backs much more valuable than standard leagues or contests. Also, ALL touchdowns are worth six points. So, passing TD’s are worth the same as a rushing or receiving score. That shifts the value of those gun-slinging quarterbacks towards the top again. Other than that, it’s a fairly standard scoring system. The only position that seems to be left out is the running backs. We’ll keep this in mind when structuring our rosters as we get ready for the season.
FINANCIALS
There is a multi-layer payout system at the weekly, league and playoff (overall) level. Once the playoffs begin, you’ll compete to win your league (among the other 15 making the playoffs) but also for the overall $5,000 grand prize! You can win for weekly performance within your league and overall, keeping this game fun and exciting even if you have fallen out of competition for the playoffs.
GET SIGNED UP!
Leagues are filling up now, so be sure to get signed up, here: http://www.fantasyalarm/college
In the next article (coming by the end of the week), we’ll start to take a look at player salaries and determine the best options for that initial roster for this great H2H College Football game