Returning Players: Signup Deadline is Super Sunday!

Don't miss it -- The PFFL 2011 Signup Deadline for returning players is Super Sunday!   If you played in 2010, we've got your spot in either Tier-1 or Tier-2 held for just one more week, and after that we're going to open it up to new players to start taking those spots.  Remember, with 12 folks moving up to Tier-1 that means there were 12 open spots in Tier-2, but those have all been filled up now.  That means that if you aren't signed up by Sunday, we can't guarantee you'll have a spot anywhere above Tier-3 for 2011.

So sign up now!

Also, in case you missed it, you can apply your winnings/earnings now if you've got PayPal set up -- just take a look at the 2010 Earnings Tracker to see your final winnings, and then send it to the Commish's paypal account: ptenney@gmail.com.  If not, you'll have a chance to collect any winnings before the season starts, and by 2012 we'll have a proper invoicing system in place so everyone can easily apply their winnings.

And don't forget, we've got a $25 prize to award for the most referrals in January, so if you get signed up and grab a few buddies today, you might just win!

The PFFL "likes" NFL Fan Strike on Facebook

And why shouldn't we?  We did, after all, create it.  Attempting to straddle the oh-so-fine line between genuine activism and shameless self promotion through guerrilla marketing, the PFFL today created the "NFL Fan Strike" page on Facebook.  The premise is to get a viral campaign started -- we want to let the NFL Players and Owners know that a strike in 2011 is going to hurt.  The more people that see this and like it, the more the NFL will understand just how bad it's going to hurt them in the old wallet.  Oh and...ahem...we might just drop in a few plugs for the PFFL along the way :)

Check it out, and pledge your support!

PFFL Patent Application Submitted

The PFFL is pleased to announce that our model is now officially patent pending.  That means not only is the PFFL the world's first Professional Fantasy Football League, but it's also the only such league.  What does that mean for you?  Well suppose you manage to work your way up to Tier-1 after a few years, and then just when the prizes were starting to REALLY get good, some megabux outfit like Sportsline or ESPN or Yahoo came along and ripped off the model.  Well kiss your top-tier standing goodbye!  But now that won't happen -- by applying for a patent, the PFFL has just ensured that you that your good standing with us is guaranteed.  You, the wise early-entrant into the PFFL that you are, have now truly put yourself on the path to quitting your day job and living the high life as a true Professional Fantasy Football Player.

Offseason Content: Bart Scott or Ollie from Family Guy?

From "The Five C's" comes an eerie comparison...is it really Bart Scott, or could it be Ollie from Family Guy??  You be the judge.

The PFFL: Unlimited Prize Potential

If you read this, you are going to sign up for the PFFL.  You would be stupid not to.  Because there is no limit to how big the PFFL can be, there's also no limit to how big our prizes can be.  This is why you want to get in now, and help us grow: don't kick yourself three years from now when others are winning thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars on a mere $50/year entry fee.

We want to illustrate to you just what the potential of this thing is, so below is a little peek into the future of the PFFL.  Just imagine -- if you get in now, you will be playing for some serious cash in a few short years.  Even if you never move up, as long as the PFFL keeps growing you'll be playing for more and more cash.  You might want to sign up even if you don't like fantasy football...

2010 Earnings Tracker

For all you returning from 2010, we've got a little surprise for you -- go ahead and take your 2010 winnings out of your 2011 Entry Fee Now.  All you have to do is have your own PayPal Account and just send me the balance directly rather than use the sign up form.

The PFFL handed out $965 in total prizes in 2010, and that's all out of our budget, so enjoy!  There's even a few prizes in there that haven't been announced yet, so if you're wondering how you got some more money you can probably figure it out...but otherwise we've got a few more prizes to announce soon.

Also, one last thing -- there's still a $25 monthly prize for whomever gets the most referrals to sign up each month, so if you get a few folks to sign up now you'll have a great shot at the prize for January, as well as chalk up a few referral credits before you settle up.  A Facebook Like still gets you $2.50 as well.

Okay -- here is everyone's current winnings and the amount to pay if you want to apply your winnings now:

PFFL 2011 Enrollment is now open!

Think you are good at Fantasy Football? Prove it.  If you haven't heard about the PFFL yet, you will -- we are the world's first Professional Fantasy Football League and we're looking for new players to join us.  You can win prizes, work your way to the Top-Tier League, or just have fun.  The sooner you join, the higher up you will be.  Interested?  Check us out or Sign Up Now!

PFFL 2011: Here's the plan

The PFFL is back for more in 2011 -- more players, more tiers, more prizes...simply put, PFFL 2011 is going to rock.  We've tweaked and tuned a few things from our inaugural season and our original plans, so check out what we've got on tap for this year and then get yourself signed up.

PFFL 2011 Signup Deadline

To all of you returning members of the PFFL, your sign up deadline is going to be Super Bowl Sunday at midnight.  Whether you are in Tier-1 or Tier-2 for 2011, we will only hold your spot until Super Bowl Sunday, after which we'll give Tier-1 spots away to Tier-2 folks, and we'll give Tier-2 spots away to new signups.  We've already got a growing list of people itching for your spot, so don't wait!  Get signed up now and reserve your spot for 2011.

Also, if you have prize money you won in 2010 sitting in your account, you can apply that to your entry fee now for 2011 -- all you need to do is drop me a line and I'll send you my PayPal details so you can just pay directly (Entry Fee minus winnings).

For you Tier-2 folks out there, one common question is, "which league will I be in?"  What we're going to do is a little reshuffle of all the leagues -- our preference is to get as many people that know each other as possible into each league, and then we'll try to at least organize by geography a bit from there.  Once we get Tier-2 all filled up, we'll start organizing the four leagues.  Easy stuff - let me know if you're interested or just pick that option when you sign up.

Can I own multiple teams? YES!

What we don't want to do is make this league about paying more money -- the whole point is to be able to win more money without making it a "high-stakes" league.  We also don't want to let people "buy" there way into a high-tier league, but given the relatively low stakes, I think this is a happy medium.

You will be allowed to enter one team per tier for every tier you are eligible for (if you are in Tier-1, you could have up to three teams in 2011, or if your best team is "Tier-2" then you could have two).  So you can increase your odds of winning a prize, but also increase your long-term chances of getting to a higher tier.

Imagine having a team in Tier-2 and a team in Tier-3 -- if you lose in Tier-2 and have to move down, but you win in Tier-3, you can effectively "stay" in Tier-2 for the following year, giving you access to even bigger prizes.  If your two teams end up in the same tier the following year, you will either have to surrender one of the teams or opt to remain in a lower tier with one of the teams.

PFFL Power Rankings

The PFFL takes power rankings to a whole 'nother level.  We use a system much like Sportsline's Power Rankings for those of you who've played over there, but now we get to compare it against ALL leagues and find out who's really the best of the best out there.  We can do this because all of our leagues use the same rules -- never before has there been a way of comparing teams across leagues like this.

The formula for power rankings is as follows: Your record rank + your points rank + your "breakdown" record (W/L record if you played every team every week).  We track this at three different levels: League Power, Tier Power (how you rank against everybody in your tier), and PFFL Power (your ranking against every team in all the PFFL).  To illustrate how this all works, just check out our Power Rankings from 2010.

Power Rankings aren't just for fun -- they're also used to determine Wild-card teams for the playoffs and to break ties.  We think it's the best measure of your performance as a player while still maintaining the fun and value of head-to-head play.

Rosters and Scoring

| Rosters and Scoring | Draft Rules | Terms and Conditions | Schedule and Playoffs | Tier System | Transactions |

We've got a few tweaks from 2010, but for those of you coming back it's pretty minor.  Here are the basic gameplay rules for 2011:

League Size: 12 Teams (3 divisions of 4 teams)
Scoring Type: Head-to-head
Player Pool: All NFL Players
Roster Size: 14
Starting Lineup: 1QB, 2RB, 2WR, 1TE, 1 Flex, 1K

Schedule and Playoff Rules

| Rosters and Scoring | Draft Rules | Terms and Conditions | Schedule and Playoffs | Tier System | Transactions |

Until those clowns get a CBA in place, we're a little up in the air with the exact schedule for 2011 -- will it be a 16-game season? An 18-game season?  Well until we know, here are the contingencies:

If it's a 16-game season: We'll play a 14 week regular season with a two-week playoff.  Leagues will be organized into three divisions of four teams each.  You will play each team in your division twice (6 games) and each team in the other divisions once (8 games) during the regular season.

Transaction Rules

| Rosters and Scoring | Draft Rules | Terms and Conditions | Schedule and Playoffs | Tier System | Transactions |

There are two kinds of transactions in Fantasy Football: Trades and Free Agent pickups.  This page explains how that will work for 2011, but I'll also give you all a sneak peek at some cool features we have planned for the future.

Tier System

The PFFL's "Tier Structure" is the innovation that sets us apart and makes us unique -- there's nothing like this out there.  It allows for a theoretically infinite number of teams and leagues to be interlinked into a larger organization, where over time the best of the best will rise to the top until we've got a true class of "Professional" Fantasy Football Players.  What's great is that it's still traditional Fantasy Football -- you play in a 12-player league just like you always have.  The difference is that after each season, you will either "move up" to a more competitive league if you win or "move down" to a lower tier if you suck.

Draft Rules

The PFFL uses an Auction-style draft.  If you've never done an auction before, they are a ton of fun, and are much more strategic as well -- they say, "you can have any player you want, you just can't have every player you want."  No more getting stuck with the 12th pick and watching all the best players come off the board...you get who you want.

If you've never done an auction before, make sure to check out our draft prep page and our historical draft results page to get ready, and by summertime there will be mock auctions available as well.  For the most part these auctions will occur online only but we're hoping to have a live draft for at least Tier-1 in Vegas this year.  If you want to organize a live draft in your area, sign up as a League Commissioner and we'll help you get set up.

You will have a budget of $200 (note the change from a $100 budget in 2010) and you must draft a full roster of 14 players.  That means from the start your maximum bid will be $87, leaving you at least $1 for the needed 13 other roster positions.  You will be randomly "seated" in a position from 1-12 when you join the auction room, and when the draft begins the player in position 1 will be first up to nominate a player for bids.  When it's your turn, you can nominate anyone you want, and also set the starting bid.

Once the bidding begins, the clock will start ticking down from 30 seconds and anyone can bid on the player as long as they still have the budget available to make the bid.  Within the last 10 seconds, any new bid will result in the clock being re-set to 10 seconds to give other players time to make another bid, and whoever has
the highest bid when the clock finally expires will be awarded that player.  When you get a player, that roster spot is locked down and your budget will be automatically updated to show your new budget and maximum bid.

The Auction will take approximately 2 hours and details for how to sign on and participate will be forthcoming.  As for WHEN the draft will be and WHICH LEAGUE you will be assigned to, some of those details are TBD until the NFL sets their schedule for 2011, but for some general information about that you can check out our draft assignment page.

Draft Assignment

When is the draft?  Which League am I in?  Reasonable questions, for sure.  Right now we're all in limbo -- until the NFL sorts out it's Collective Bargaining agreement, we won't know when the season will start, so we're going to ask that everyone take a little leap of faith right now and just know that it's all going to work out.

Here's the basic idea: when you sign up, you will be assigned to a Tier -- our winners from 2010 will be in Tier-1, all other players returning from 2010 will be in Tier-2.  The first 12 players after that will join Tier-2 as well, and then everyone else will be in Tier-3.

Once we know when the season will begin, we'll start forming leagues and assigning draft times -- AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE, we want to put people together who know each other or are located in geographical proximity to one another, so as long as the NFL gives us enough lead time we'll coordinate all of that as we can.  If you want to get 12 guys together yourself, you can either sign up as a league or sign up as a commissioner, and then you pick the draft time whenever you want.  If you've just signed up as an individual, the PFFL will help find you a league, or once all of the leagues have been created and the draft times set, you can just pick a league in your tier with a time you can make.

Keep your eyes peeled -- as soon as the NFL gets its act together the PFFL will kick into gear!

Historical Draft Results

For those of you out there that consider yourselves a "numbers guy/gal," this is one of the coolest parts about the PFFL.  By leveraging the exact same rules over an increasingly large number of leagues, we start to see an actual market value emerge for each player.  No other Fantasy Football analyst can have access to data this reliable and relevant to your draft because they are comparing apples and oranges across the different leagues.  Starting in 2011, we will publish the result of each draft as it happens, so that later drafts can leverage PFFL-wide results to make their decisions.

So far we've just got 2010 data to go on, and PLEASE NOTE -- the auction budget is doubling from $100 in 2010 to $200 in 2011, so if you're using this guide as a reference, you'll want to double all of these values.

Draft Strategies and Analysis

It's never to early to start prepping for the draft, is it?

Sure, you're a seasoned Fantasy Football player, and you're all ready for your draft, right?  Well, have you ever done an auction-style draft before?  Most people haven't, but even those of you that have are probably playing with new rules, new players, or new tools to conduct the auction.  Why an auction-style draft, you might ask?  Simple: it's more fun, and it's more strategic than a traditional draft.  You don't have to have the first pick to get Chris Johnson or Adrian Peterson -- if you want that guy you can have him...for a price!

This page is here to help you get ready with strategies, past player values, etc.  It is still very much under construction, but it will get you started for now and we'll continue to add to it right up until draft season.

Sign up as a Division

Since it's now possible to Sign up Your Entire League to the PFFL, I figured, "why not let people sign up as a division of 4 people too?"  Well, now you can.  What's the point?

• Save Money -- get your $15 in referrals instantly
• Play with your friends -- maybe you don't have a whole league's-worth of friends to sign up, but you've got a fearsome foursome.
• Guarantee a playoff spot -- somebody from your division will advance, maybe even two of you!
• Keep your division together -- even if one of you moves up, you can keep your division in tact.
• Compete for the "Division of the Year" Prize!

So sign up your division now and get yourself a primo spot in PFFL 2011.

Division of the Year Prize

Who is the best Division in the PFFL? Like the "League of the Year" award, the best "Division" in all of the PFFL each year will receive an award for their efforts and each of the four members of the division will win a prize

The prize amount for 2011 is still TBD right now, but it WILL be substantial -- the more fun your division has, the more fun everyone has. So go get your division signed up, then kick some ass on the "gridiron" and then do all of those things that make the PFFL the place for Fantasy Football!

Here's how it works:

Sign up your whole league

Can my whole league play in the PFFL?  Yes -- now you can.  This is one of the most frequently asked questions of the PFFL -- if I move my league to the PFFL, won't it just get broken up after the first year?  Not anymore.  Due to popular demand, we've come up with a way to keep your WHOLE LEAGUE together forever in the PFFL.

You'll also save money and have a chance to compete for the "League of the Year" prize!

League of the Year Prize

Your League would crush these guys, right? Which PFFL League is the best of the best?  We're not talking about just "on the field" stuff here, but which league is the most fun, talks the most smack, and otherwise contributes the most to the PFFL? Starting in 2011, we're adding a prize for "League of the Year."  At the end of the year, the Commissioner will select the top nominees and the whole PFFL will vote for their favorite. Prize money is TBD right now, but will be significant -- we want YOU to help make the PFFL great.

Sign up as a League Commissioner

Save $20 off your 2011 PFFL Subscription by signing up to be a League Commissioner.  Just like every league you've ever played in, the PFFL needs League Commissioners too.  At a minimum, the Commish job is easy and shouldn't take more than a few hours of time, but the more fun you can make your league the better!

If you think you can get a full league of 12 signed up, then you could nab $55 in referral fees too, so your entire entry fee will be paid for!  Not only that, you'll be eligible for the 2011 "Commissioner of the Year" award that is not only highly prestigious but pays you too!

PFFL Draft Weekend 2011

Is there anything better than draft weekend? Nope -- not New Year's eve, not your birthday, nothing.  It's THE event of the year, hands down.  For those of you that do a live draft every year, you know exactly what we're talking about -- it's like an annual standing bachelor (bachelorette, for you ladies) party with your best friends.

Well the PFFL is going to take that concept to a whole new level.  Welcome to the PFFL Draft Weekend.  Starting in 2011, The PFFL is going to descend on Las Vegas for our first annual live event, and everyone is invited.  Do not miss this -- it's worth signing up for PFFL 2011 now just to make sure you lock down an invite to the party.  There will be parties, there will be bad behavior, and there will of course be all kinds of Fantasy Football.  The centerpiece, of course, will be an actual LIVE draft for the top-tier league, and we'll cram as many fans in as we can to watch the best-of-the-best show us how the draft is done.

But what's going to make this really crazy is the numbers -- as the PFFL grows, so grows the party.  Let's say just one in 10 PFFL'ers actually come to Vegas.  That means we'll have 100 people there in 2011, 1000 in 2012, and we'll aim to come back in 2013 with 10,000 people.  Seriously, we're going to take over Las Vegas.

When: TBD -- pending the schedule release from the NFL.
Where: Vegas -- venue TBD
Cost: Free -- you'll have to book your own plane tickets and hotel room, but the event is free.

As soon as we get dates from the NFL we'll make a full announcement...stay tuned!

2011 Prizes

Are you ready to win some serious cash? Well we're handing it out left and right.  Yeah, The PFFL is all about having the best competition, having the most fun, and becoming the place for all things Fantasy Football, but we're also in the business of making some seriously huge prizes -- without having to spend huge money. [Click here for a little walkthrough of just how huge the prizes can get.]

The PFFL is not a "high-stakes" league -- you make more money by proving that you are an elite Fantasy Football player, not by paying more money.  Read on to see what we've got planned for 2011

Earn Money

Being a Professional Fantasy Football Player isn't just about
winning prizes -- our vision is give as many people as possible an opportunity to earn money doing something they love: playing Fantasy Football.  The more people we get to sign up, participate, and contribute, the more fun the PFFL is going to be, so if you're going to help us, shouldn't we help you?

Maybe you're looking at that
entry fee and thinking it's a little steep, well at a minimum, we want to make it easy for you to afford -- with very little effort, you should be able to earn back your entry fee and then some!

Check out all the easy ways you can start making cash right now:

PFFL Payment Module

PFFL 2011 Subscription

One Team $72.50 One Division $275.00 One League $815.00

Referred? Get your friend $5 by typing their name here:

Read our Terms and Conditions and our Refund Policy