This is the second in a series of articles on the basics of dynasty fantasy football, article 1 can be found here.

Dynasty leagues are more complicated than redraft leagues, so it's important to make sure you have rules that will create parity in the league so people feel like they can win and have a site that can manage the complexities of the dynasty format.

In the league that I've commissioned for eight seasons, the rules have changed almost every year as we continued to tweak them to make them more equitable.  Our league started with some simple rules that ended up being pretty unfair.  Let's go through a few here to understand why, while also touching on system requirements so that you can evaluate what systems can handle these rules:

• Free agency - Free agency started as a free for all.  Anyone could pick up a player at any time.  This is a problem for 2 reasons.  First, not everyone is available to make picks at any time.  Basically, the people who were up early or watching a game on Sunday to see an injury or a break out player have a distinct advantage.  In a dynasty league, where you keep all of your players, that advantage can build dynasties that are impossible to compete with.  In a dynasty format you want as much parity as possible or you will have a ton of turnover in the league.  Second, teams that are good were only getting better while teams that were bad had less chance to improve.  The solution came in two parts.  First, we instituted a black-out period from Sunday to Tuesday so no pick-ups can occur during games.  Second, we instituted a waiver wire system that created a pecking order to waiver pickups each week, the reverse order of team rankings, and waivers occur on Wednesday with an open free agency from Thursday to Sunday.  These two rules are critical to the distribution of quality players in your dynasty league.  Make sure your system has a waiver wire capability and that you have commissioner rights to make roster moves.

• Draft - As you know one of the most interesting parts of a dynasty league is that each year's draft is a rookie-only draft rather than veterans.  One thing that can happen at the end of the season when some teams are doing poorly is to take a dive to improve their draft status.  The way I have avoided this is by instituting a formula for each year's draft order that weighs several factors to come up with a fair order of the draft.  Two of the foundations of this formula are record and total points scored during the season.  Basing the formula on these two assure that the poor teams are at the top.  Now the trick is that I add a couple of other factors that include how you perform in the playoffs.  If you win more games than you lose in the playoffs (we have a 3-week playoff where all teams play every week) you're draft status will improve.  This part of the formula helps prevent people taking a dive.  I've yet to find a system that does rookie only drafts so it's likely your draft will happen off line and then input it as the commissioner.  That being said if you find one that would be a plus for that system.

• Position Limits - In a dynasty league format position limits are critical.  You want people to have the latitude to stash a few players but not enough to leave nothing out there on market.  In our league, we have IDP and offensive players so our roster total is large (40) but we have defined limits on all positions so you can't have 20 RBs and only 2 DEs since they are not as valuable.  My rule of thumb for our league is double the number of starters for each position plus 2.  For example, if you have 1 QB starter you have a 4 QB limit in your league (1 starter, 1 backup plus 2 extra), If you have 2 RB starters you have a 6 RB limit in your league and so forth.  Many dynasty leagues have a farm squad and an active squad, this is another valid way of providing room for developing players on your roster.  From a system perspective keep in mind you want to be able to control both starters and limit for every position you have.  It also helps if the system has the designation of a farm squad or developmental squad.

• Individual Defensive Players - One of the things I've loved about our dynasty league is it's focus on both sides of the ball.  While defensive players typically are slightly less valuable than offensive in terms of scoring potential they are no less important to winning a championship.  Our format is to start 2 defensive linemen, 3 linebackers and 2 defensive backs.  This is a pretty simple and common format although you can get as complicated as having starting slots for end and tackles, cornerbacks and safeties.  Any way you slice it, having IDPs adds a whole other dimension to a dynasty league vs redraft and I strongly suggest you give it a try if you're setting up a league.  Systematically, you want to make sure your system has IDPs many don't (Yahoo for example).

• Salaries and Contracts - If you really want to get complicated many systems provide the ability for you to have contracts and salary caps.  While I have thought about this in the past I've never instituted it in our league because of the complexity in keeping track of contracts and salaries from year to year.  If you have a system that automatically resets salaries every year and contracts then that is awesome and should be used, otherwise don't bother because it will just be a headache.

When our league first started I used a homemade Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and free downloaded stats to run the league because in the early 2000's there was NO system that could run the league I've described above.  Three seasons later I found a small site that had the flexibility but it was not technologically advanced.  Finally, last year we moved to CBS Sportsline as it is one of the biggest sites that can handle a dynasty format.  Whichever system you choose, it would be wise to keep in mind the notes above and test out the site if you can before you join.

Prevent some of the pitfalls that my friends and I went through by keeping these rules in mind and creating a league in which everyone has a chance to win each year and the distribution of players is equitable.

Article 3 in The Basics of Dynasty Fantasy Football will cover league scoring, see you then!