Fantasy Downhill League

grumner80

grumner80

Member
So long story short, a friend and I joked once about creating a fantasy downhill league and lately I’ve been thinking about it more and wanted to get some feedback on the idea. Don’t have all the details yet, but it would be something like each person gets to take turns picking out DH riders within the previous year’s top 50 or so riders in the world cup overall. We would probably pull names from a hat to figure out the order we pick and keep picking until each person had a full team (which would be based on the number of league participants and riders we allow to pick from). Then either the person with the worst team at the end, or who was last to pick would go first next year. We would also probably wait till we know what each rider is gonna be riding, (cough Aaron Gwin cough).

Once we had the teams, we would tally the points the riders gained after each WC weekend, see which person’s team is in the lead, and continue on throughout the season. We would probably count World Champs with a separate point scale; maybe double what a regular WC would equate to.

We might also include women, but I don’t know yet since we don’t get to see that many of them race; same goes for juniors.

As for prizes, again it’s up in the air with just ideas (hence why I’m asking around). Ideas right now range from a money pool for the winner or top 3, to everyone putting in a 6-pack at the end for the overall prize.

So basically I would just like to ask for other people’s take on the idea(s): does it sound good so far? Is it something you think you would join? Any additional ideas/suggestions on format/design or prizes? Or does it simple sound like a bad idea all together? Haha.
 
remember when we had an awesome fantasy football league for 2 years?
hqdefault.jpg
 
I'm definitely in if you do this. Maybe each manager gets to draft 4-5 riders and for every world cup event your starting line up would be 3 racers. That way a little decision making comes into play for each race, as well as to have some flexibility once the injuries unfortunately start to occur......
 
oobaa47 said:
I'm definitely in if you do this. Maybe each manager gets to draft 4-5 riders and for every world cup event your starting line up would be 3 racers. That way a little decision making comes into play for each race, as well as to have some flexibility once the injuries unfortunately start to occur......
Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback! That's a good idea to have some riders be starters and others as subs for the races. I didn't think of that for this because in most fantasy leagues the sport will regularly have starters and subs or healthy scratches, in downhill, you're either injured or racing.

But that idea sounds like it could make it more fun for sure!
 
Many years ago a guy I worked with did a NASCAR pool. Rather than choosing teams or such, each participant would pick the top 10 finishers each week, in order. How far away your choices finished from their positions would be your score. Lowest score wins. A perfect score would be "zero" meaning all of your racers finished as you predicted. Since there are 43 starters in a NASCAR race, if your #1 crashed out early and finished 43rd, he would add 43 points to your score (not good).

IMHO, something similar to this would be easier to deal with than drafting DH rider teams. Granted, drafting teams would allow for adding women racers to the mix since if we're just counting total points, men or women doesn't matter. Along those lines, the top 5 women would be the first chosen since their finishing positions are more predictable, injuries notwithstanding. The top 20 in the men's race is far harder to predict.

I've never paid any attention to fantasy football, despite how much I watch football.
 
Ian F said:
Many years ago a guy I worked with did a NASCAR pool. Rather than choosing teams or such, each participant would pick the top 10 finishers each week, in order. How far away your choices finished from their positions would be your score. Lowest score wins. A perfect score would be "zero" meaning all of your racers finished as you predicted. Since there are 43 starters in a NASCAR race, if your #1 crashed out early and finished 43rd, he would add 43 points to your score (not good).

IMHO, something similar to this would be easier to deal with than drafting DH rider teams. Granted, drafting teams would allow for adding women racers to the mix since if we're just counting total points, men or women doesn't matter. Along those lines, the top 5 women would be the first chosen since their finishing positions are more predictable, injuries notwithstanding. The top 20 in the men's race is far harder to predict.

I've never paid any attention to fantasy football, despite how much I watch football.
Click to expand...

I hear ya. So instead of picking people to be yours on your team and earn you points, you just predict the finishing order? That's a different idea; I'm not sure how it would work in DH with timed practice and Quali's but that seems like a good idea for world champs, or maybe for bonus points if you guess the overall finishing order correctly. Definitely gives more ideas to think about.

So what would you say/suggest as far as prizes?
 
The way he did it was essentially run like a pool. Put in a few $ and winner takes all. Or maybe it was split up for 1st, 2nd and 3rd. This was over 15 years ago, so my memory is fuzzy.

I don't think qualifying or timed practice matters. It's not based on points, just purely on finish order: How close can you predict the top 20? I'll admit it will take some thinking since there will be 80 guys qualifying for a race and far more who register - many of whom are local to a particular race rather than the traveling regulars.
 
I was thinking of doing the prizes like a pool. I was mentioning timed practice and Quali's cause they would give clues as to how the outcome is going to be if everyone hadn't already picked. With some races back to back it would put a time constraint on people picking their order for the next race, and I think that might turn people off to it; could be wrong, just my opinion. I think at the least we could just do it at the beginning of the season for the overall top 10. That sounds like something people might be into.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom