Truth be told, I had never heard of CDM sports prior to getting this assignment, but boy was I blown away when I was given the opportunity to browse their website and join in one of their contests.

The “Football Challenge: Point Scoring” contest is easily one of the most intricate, in-depth, and unique fantasy games I have ever come across, but I’ll get to that later.

To keep it in simple terms for now, the point scoring football challenge is a season long commitment with a grand prize of $15,000 to the best team after Week 17. In a sense though it plays like a daily fantasy contest in that you start by drafting a team based off of a budget and also because the team with the most points after each week is awarded $50 (real money). In this instance you are given $60,000,000 (fake money) to select any players that fit within the parameters of the financial structure. Also like daily fantasy contests, players are ranked in terms of talent and potential with the best ones carrying the highest price tags.

The contest begins to take it’s own shape when I get to the specifics.

First of all, the rosters are huge. Each team consists of 22 starters (3 QB’s, 6 RB’s, 6 WR’s, 2 TE’s, 3 K’s, 2 D/ST). After the starters, you are allowed to draft a bench or what they call “Taxi Players” at no cost against your budget. You may be thinking that this sounds really easy because you can just take all of the highest priced players to be on your bench, however it doesn’t make sense to do that because your starting lineup always has to remain under the $60,000,000 budget. The bench options that make the most sense are handcuffs to your starting running backs and quarterbacks, and backup players who have good matchups when your starters are on bye weeks.

Okay, so I just spit out a lot there… Are you still following me? Good. Now the catch here is that with this roster of 34 players, your goal is to make as few moves as possible. With the standard entry fee of $39.95, you get to join the league; however each transaction you make costs real money.

Every time you want to move a taxi player (bench) to your staring lineup: $2.50.

Every time you need to replace a starter on a bye week: $1.00.

Want to pick up a new player? $6.00 please.

You can see the strategy built into this contest because it really makes you think not only about the quality of player prior to selecting your team, but also their injury history, their bye week, their backup, etc. Essentially you have to be about 20 moves ahead of what’s actually reality or else the nature of football injuries and season-by-season regression can butterfly effect and cripple your squad financially.

In order to avoid this from happening, the name of the game is planning. Go into your roster selection with a strategy and execute it. That sounds easy enough, but it can get tough attempting to do so when trying to remain under that $60,000,000 cap. I found that the best way to do it was to select your ideal team – regardless of price – and then look at the cap when you are finished. Depending upon how over budget you are, begin to make exceptions on the players you selected. Eventually you will dwindle down the stars on your roster to the select ones that you really feel will be great this season. For reference, here is the scoring system for the contest…

The next step is finding undervalued players to replace your overpriced stars. Quarterbacks who won their jobs out of camp will certainly carry a lower price point than top-20 preseason ranked ones, so maybe keeping one star quarterback is the way to go, while taking a chance on the other two. The most obvious current value play entering the season is Dak Prescott considering his minimal price tag yet terrific opportunity to start, however guys like Derek Carr, Brock Osweiler, Kirk Cousins, and Marcus Mariota are also holding reasonable price tags that should be affordable for all owners.

When looking at replacement running backs, high touchdown potential guys will likely be the best value selections considering the lack of PPR or yardage bonuses in this scoring structure. Chris Ivory and Jeremy Hill come to mind.

As for the wide receiver position, considering the aforementioned lack of PPR, I found that high reception guys, who are considered stars in most leagues like Julian Edelman and Jarvis Landry, were holding similar price tags to zeros like Philly Brown and Riley Cooper. Rather than taking the site’s word for it, I see that as an opportunity to expose the budget. Both players – regardless of their low yards per catch numbers – certainly have the talent to break 1,000 receiving yards and 10 touchdowns, so it makes sense to me to enlist them based off of their miniscule price tags.

The tight ends list just about how you would expect. Gronk is the most expensive play by a pretty wide margin, while there is some value muddled in the middle. With no tight ends really poised to separate themselves from the pack, spending heavily on one outside of Gronk may be irresponsible. Consider cheaper options who either have posted consistent production over the years such as Jason Witten, or select an undervalued guy who you think may breakout in 2016 and become a consistent option such as Zach Miller.

As for the defense and kickers… I found it hard enough to keep myself under the budget without those positions, so playing it like a top heavy DFS roster, I went bargain hunting for those final five spots.

To be completely honest, I was slightly overwhelmed when trying to wrap my head around the whole thing initially, but I would be lying to you if I said that I wasn’t glued to my computer for the next three hours tinkering away at the perfect $60,000,000 roster. If you love strategy, you will love CDM Sports. It is to the fantasy sports world what SimCity is to the video game community. You truly have to make tough decisions that will have not only week-to-week implications but also real financial repercussions.

Now as I said, my roster reveal is next week because the leagues don’t lock until Sunday, September 11th prior to the 1:00 PM EST kickoffs. There is still another full week of preseason before that, which may change the current roster I have based off of jobs being won or players getting injured. Ultimately I hope that this got you as pumped for the season as it did for me, but most importantly I hope that it informed you about CDM Sports. This game is not for the faint of heart, but rather made only for those who believe that they can actually handle being an NFL GM. Happy drafting everyone!