The NFL season has concluded and most football fans are eyeing the upcoming NFL Draft and Free Agency patiently waiting until their team returns in August. The Spring Football community can only laugh - our season is just getting started.
For the Fantasy Football casuals, they have long put away their draft binders, deleted their fantasy apps, unbookmarked Fantasy Football news sites, and crowned their champions. In a sense, the NFL Fantasy Football season came and went with too much ease. NFL Fantasy Football research, waiver tips, and sleepers are all too easily available. Let me tell you, it is the exact opposite come Springtime.
As we pioneer this new terrain, we pay homage to our Fantasy forefathers by building Spring Fantasy Football from the ground-up. Spring Fantasy Football is built on the home-grown, grassroots collaborative content and spaces that all of us provide. It truly is the “DIY” feel of everything that has to do with Spring Fantasy Football that creates a sense of community and truth to how Fantasy Football was in the beginning.
If you’re brave enough to start your Spring Fantasy Football journey today, you have to be wondering where to start. In my experience playing Spring Fantasy Football since the 2019 AAF season, look no further than the pioneers of modern Spring Fantasy Football - AltFantasySports.com.
Join their discord! - https://discord.gg/Rdwgxad7
Within the walls of their space lay a vast community of people just like you - who don’t want that rush of your waiver-wire WR3 scoring a 20-yard TD to end just yet! The users within their community provide everything from recommended waiver pickups, to player transaction updates, depth charts, lively rankings debates, and everything in between.
There is always a great debate on the perfect league size for Spring Fantasy Football and it basically comes down to the right percentage of teams per the number of actual teams in the UFL, CFL, or AFL. In my experience playing AAF, XFL, USFL, and CFL Fantasy Football the ideal league size is only four. That’s right, you only need three additional people to assemble a competitive Spring Fantasy league. Within the AAF, XFL, and USFL all carrying eight teams - and the CFL with nine teams, a four-team Spring Fantasy Football league provides each team the opportunity to roster two Quarterbacks and still have an extremely deep Free Agent pool to choose from.
Next up - Player Rankings. Now I know Player Rankings can be a bit of a sensitive subject sometimes with fandom and personal biases sometimes getting in the way. With the limited number of resources available, I tend to focus on the actuals—the production numbers of a player. As a welcome to UFL Fantasy Football, please see my personal Player Rankings on X.
As you can already see, these Player Rankings are barely a week old and are already out of date, as TE Sal Cannella unexpectedly arrived for the Arlington Renegades’ training camp, and WR Josh Hammond has since retired from the DC Defenders and professional football. You can expect UFL and Spring Football player transactions as a whole to come fast and furious. Player Rankings are their own organism, changing and evolving every day alongside each new transaction.
These unexpected player transactions are only a small example of the ongoing list of unknowns in Spring Fantasy Football. We can look back to the 2019 AAF season, which was abruptly cut short after eight weeks of play due to a lack of league funds to continue. We can also examine the 2020 rendition of the XFL which was also abruptly shut down after five weeks of play due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The investment in Spring Fantasy Football has to be true for us, but we also must realize everything could be taken away in an instant. There is also the case of the lack of data and insight that is available for Spring Football players themselves. This grassroots approach gives the fantasy players ownership of their own research, analysis, and conclusions. It is almost guaranteed that a player not on anyone’s draft board will finish in a Top-5 spot, and those players with big-time NFL experience don’t always pan out. My advice is to plan for the unknowns.
In the coming weeks, you can look forward to UFL Mock Drafts and 2024 UFL Fantasy Football Draft Guide that will prepare you for all of the UFL Fantasy Football endeavors this season!
Spring Fantasy Football is not for the casuals, it takes time, commitment, and a certain sense of crazy to succeed. But from my vast experience in the Spring Fantasy Football world, there is nothing better, because here - There is No Off-Season.
Great Read!