While I am well-versed at NFL dynasty leagues, adding college players to the mix is a new experience. Up until this offseason, I had dabbled in DFS on the college football front but nothing more. The projection model is now equipped to go into the college ranks beyond the upcoming rookie class, but my tangible fantasy experience was nil…until a few months ago.
Former UTH contributor Kyle Pollock invited me to join a pretty unique dynasty format – one that would force me to jump into the collegiate-devy pool with two feet. While doing something, anything, for the first time is a significant learning curve, I needed to do this.
The Format
This was not your average devy dynasty league. You know, the kind where owners have a standard dynasty rosters with a few dozen college players sprinkled in. This was a serious, devy on steroids, type of situation.
First of all, there are two connected leagues. The first is a 700-player deep college-only draft, 50 rounds total, for a 14-team league. This league has a deep starting lineup, matchups during the college season, and an annual champion. This college-only version is fully-functional. In addition to playing in year-long college fantasy for the first time, all your drafted players feed directly into your deep NFL-only roster when they graduate – another 14 teams drafting 35 rounds deep. As I said, this is devy on steroids and I was about to get a crash course.
While I was confident I would do well on the NFL side of the house, there would be no rookie drafts on an annual basis. This first college-only draft WAS the rookie draft, for at least the next three years. The annual draft would be only incoming and free agent college players entering on the NCAA side of the league. The college draft was first, so I scrambled to create some semblance of method to my upcoming 700-player deep madness. Heck, my super deep projection model only had about 350 players between running back, wide receiver, and tight end for the upcoming three draft classes. Of those players, I had probably only watched legitimate film on 150 of them or so.
