How to win fantasy football leagues

Fantasy football is a fun way to keep in touch with friends and family. It is an easy game to learn and requires as few as 5 minutes per week of your time. Keep in mind that different leagues can use different scoring systems. The suggestions below are based on a typical scoring system with typical league rules.

Things You'll Need

• Internet connection, football interest

Instructions

1. Focus on running backs. Running backs get most of the touches in a football game and therefore have the best chance to accumulate yards and score touchdowns. Depending on the size of your roster you should consider having 2 backup running backs for every starting running back. This will give you valuable insurance. It will also give you valuable trade leverage if one of your backups gets hot or one of the other managers runs into a running back deficiency.

2. Don't waste high picks on kickers, defenses, or tight ends. These positions are too inconsistent. Use your high picks on top performing skill position players (running backs, quarterbacks, and wide receivers). You can even consider simply picking up a tight end, kicker, and defense on a weekly basis from the waiver wire based upon favorable matchups.

3. Be proactive in terms of playing the waiver wire and offering trades. Free agents and trades are an excellent way to add value to your team and offer rewards to the aggressive manager.

4. Know your players bye weeks. Having a bye week player in your starting line up is a clear demonstration of a lazy manager. Make sure you always place bye week players on your bench and start players who actually have a chance to produce points for you.

Tips & Warnings

• There are several online places to play fantasy football. Probably the top destination are Yahoo! Sports and CBS Sportsline.

• You don't have to pay anything to play fantasy football online. Yahoo and CBS (and others) offer free games and for-pay games. The for-pay games offer premium services like live stat tracking, but the free games are still great ways to play and keep in touch with family and friends.