My Commish Rules

March Madness Draft

A Rule About Draft Randomization

We here at MyCommishRules.com think that the best time of the year – outside of the fantasy football season, of course – is March Madness. With the thrill of rooting for upsets and buzzer beaters, what’s not to love? But March Madness gets even better when paired with Fantasy Football! Get your leaguemates together in a Bracketology pool and see who comes out victorious. Since you all are probably filling out a bracket anyway, determining your next draft order based on March Madness standings adds another exciting layer to the mix. Who in your league will have their One Shining Moment this year?

 

How It Works

Combining the excitement of March Madness and fantasy football has never been so easy! In this draft randomization strategy, owners take their best shot at picking the correct winner of each NCAA Tournament game, just as they would in any other March Madness Bracket Pool. But instead of the typical cash prize, in this case the winner is rewarded with the first overall pick in the upcoming football season’s draft.

 

Determining the winner is extremely simple if you decide to host your Draft Pool on a typical tournament bracket challenge website. We recommend either yahoo.com or cbssports.com as great starting points.

 

In the likely event of a tie somewhere in the final result, be sure you have a solid and previous agreed upon tiebreaker scenario. A classic tiebreaker in this case is to have each owner predict the National Championship game combined score before the tournament starts. In an example scenario, a few owners are tied for 5th place. This tiebreaker determines that the owner who’s prediction was the closest to the final combined score gets the higher draft pick while the next closest prediction gets the next highest draft pick, and so on.

 

Nuts and Bolts

  • Prior to tip-off of the first NCAA tournament game, have each owner fill out and submit a March Madness Bracket. We recommend using either of these industry leaders – yahoo.com or cbssports.com
  • Discuss and vet a tiebreaker scenario with league owners prior to the beginning of the Tournament. The “Championship Game Combined Score Prediction” tiebreaker is a classic.
  • Watch the Madness ensue!
  • Award draft picks in the order of the final March Madness Bracket Pool standings, after tiebreakers have been applied.
  • The National Championship is typically in the early part of April so this will give your league a much needed energy boost during the lull of the NFL offseason.

Change Ups

This Draft Randomization Rule works best in re-draft league formats, but can be adapted for keeper leagues.

 

You may have some concerns with the draft order “randomness” of this rule format given that knowledge of college basketball could give an owner an unfair advantage. If this is a major concern, we suggest changing this rule to act similar to the Horse Race Derby rule, where the names of the participating NCAA teams are randomly drawn and assigned to each league owner. *Draft order can then be determined by the results of the March Madness Bracket without requiring your league owners to make any predictions.

 

*The finer details of this change up may involve some more thoughtful planning than we are currently capable of so we suggest sticking to the OG rule structure, or emailing us with your own spin on this rule!

 

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