How to Set Up an Online Football Pool
Television has taught America that fantasy football pools can be hilarious, that they can inspire secret romances or lead to guys singing raunchy songs at children's birthday parties. Whether you're planning a fantasy football pool to copy "The League" in every aspect of your personal life or if it's just to take a few bucks off your friends over the course of the NFL season, know that there are two main free platforms for online fantasy football -- Yahoo! and ESPN.
Other People Are Reading
Instructions
-
ESPN
-
1
Sign up for an account at ESPN.com. When you finish, or if you have an account already, browse to ESPN's "Fantasy Football" page. EPSN's setup process (and fantasy football system) is a bit more complex than Yahoo!'s.
-
2
Click "Create League" to start the setup process. Choose a league type. Go with either "League Manager" for multi-season pools or "ESPN Custom" for a single-season contest. Click "Create League Manager," and type the name of your league. Choose the number of teams, from "10" to "20," and click "Create League."
-
-
3
Adjust any of the many settings until you are happy with the setup. You have to choose which positions count in your league; ESPN can be fine-tuned to be precise and to include safety, punters and even head coaches. Set your scoring settings and click "Create Your League!" when ready.
-
4
Click "Invite Owners" to invite your friends to your league. You can use the ESPN Fantasy Football interface to search your email from friends, or enter their email addresses separately into the fields.
Yahoo!
-
5
Sign up for a Yahoo! account. When you finish, or if you have an account already, browse to Yahoo!'s "Fantasy Football" page, and click "Create league."
-
6
Type a league name and set a password for your league. Choose a scoring system, either "Head to Head" (in which teams play against one other team each week) or "Points" (in which all your players' points are totaled and teams get position based on total points). You can also choose "Custom setup" for more advanced options.
-
7
Choose a draft type. You can set up a live online draft, which requires all parties to be present on Yahoo! at the same time to pick players, or run an offline draft or auto draft. An offline draft requires a lot of legwork on your part, as you'll have to coordinate with everyone in the league and enter teams manually.
-
8
Click "Save and Continue" to continue. Create and customize your team, and then click "Save and Continue" again to invite your friends to join. Enter email addresses into the fields and click "Send invitation." If you chose a live draft, your friends will be notified of the time of the draft. You can change this later to meet people's schedules.
-
1
Resources
- Photo Credit NA/PhotoObjects.net/Getty Images
