We are crowning a king of fantasy football, and everyone is welcome to compete. But it’s fantasy football with a twist.
The Fantasy Index Open isn’t a regular fantasy football league. There are no starting lineups, rosters or games. Instead, each contestant picks his top 20 players at each position, with those 120 players generating an overall score (the higher one ranks a player, the more he’s weighted in the overall point total).
The overall champion will take home an incredibly large trophy from the team at Affordable Trophies . They’ve been partnering with us on this competition for years. (Affordable Trophies also has an impressive collection of Loser Trophies, but we’re not going to stick one of those on our last-place team.
There are no waiver moves or trades in this event. You pick your 120 guys before the start of the first NFL game of the season on September 7, and we then crown the champion in January.
The top 2 finishers also win berths in the Experts Poll in next year’s magazine.
Bill Copestick (Philadelphia) and Ken Holizna (Canton, Ga.) were the big winners last year, outperforming more than 600 other entries. Copestick took home the trophy.
The 2023 version of the contest is live now. To access your entry, log onto the site and click on “YOUR STUFF”. The contest will be one of the pull-down options, under “Fantasy Index Open 2023”.
The contest is free, but to be eligible to win you must sign up on the website, providing a name and mailing address. If you were to sign up without supplying a name, you wouldn’t be eligible to win the trophy (which is huge).
Once on the website, use the drag-and-drop technology to select your 120 players in order – 20 at QB, RB, WR, TE, K and DEF. You’re stuck with those players for the duration of the 18-week regular season, so be careful about selecting players who are more likely to serve suspensions or miss games with injuries. There are no waiver moves or trades, so when a player doesn’t play, you get a zero from him that week.
Entries are due before the start of the first game of the regular season. That’s Thursday, September 7 this year. Until then, feel free to start on your picks, coming back to make adjustments for injuries and holdouts. But once that deadline hits, all entries are locked.
For scoring, we’re using PPR, with players getting 1 point for each reception. Additionally, players receive 6 points for touchdowns, 4 for TD passes, 1 for every 10 run/rec yards and 1 for every 20 passing yards. Defenses receive 2 points for takeaways, 1 for sacks and 6 for every touchdown scored on a return of a takeaway or kick. Kickers get regular NFL points – 3 for field goals and 1 for extra points.
We will score all of the picks using a complex scoring matrix that combines a player’s production against where he was ranked. Basically, the higher you rank him, the most his production counts. Suppose, for example, that Justin Tucker finishes the season with 100 points. If you ranked Tucker first, that would net you 2,500 points (25 x 100). If you ranked him second, you would receive 2,400 (24 x 100). Third would be 2,300 (23 x 100) and so on down to 20th being worth 600 points (6 x 100). We use that same approach for all 120 players ranked by each entry, with the overall high score winning the title.