Section I: Official Rules and Regulations of the National Fantasy Football Championship
1. Overview: The National Fantasy Football Championship (NFFC) will consist of 23 leagues (or a maximum of 28 leagues), each comprised of 14 teams/managers. The NFFC regular season will begin with all Week 1 NFL games (including results from the Thursday, Sept. 10th game) and through all Week 13 games. Teams will play every other team in their league once in head-to-head competition and if a team finishes Week 13 with both the best overall record and the most total points it will win $5,000, with the next highest point total team finishing second and winning $2,500 and the third highest point total team finishing third and winning $1,250. However, if one team wins the h2h title and another team wins the total points title after Week 13, then each team will earn $2,500 and compete in Weeks 14-16 for the remaining $2,500, with total points from that three-week period determining the league champ and earning an additional $2,500. Each league will have a total of $8,750 in prize money: $5,000 to 1st, $2,500 to 2nd, $1,250 to 3rd. Tie-breakers for league title are listed elsewhere in the rules. Three teams from each league will advance to the Championship Round for a shot at the $100,000 grand prize: All league h2h champions, the team with the best total points (or in the case that the league champion had the highest points, then the team with the next highest point total in that league) and the third place team in each league. The Championship Round will be held Week 14 through Week 16. Teams will carry their weekly scoring average from the first 13 weeks of competition (i.e. 130.15 points) into the playoffs and then add their point totals from Weeks 14, 15 and 16 to that initial total to determine the overall champion.
2. Draft: All 23 leagues (or a maximum of 28 leagues) will hold their drafts simultaneously at the Flamingo Las Vegas, the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Chicago, the New York Sheraton Hotel & Towers in New York and online with MockDraftCentral.com on Saturday, Sept. 5, 2009. Each league will be comprised of 14 teams, and each draft will last for 19 rounds, with each team selecting a player in each round in a serpentine fashion (team 1 through team 14 in Round 1 and team 14 through team 1 in Round 2). All NFFC draft leagues will use 3RR (3rd Round Reversal) in 2009, meaning that the draft order will go back down to 14 to start Round 3 and then continue in serpentine fashion after that. The NFFC is using 3RR in 2009 to balance the talent pool throughout these 14-team leagues. Players can be drafted at any position at any time in the draft, but each team must have at least one player for each of the designated starting positions by the end of the draft. Each team must start a weekly lineup of 10 players and the team roster must remain at 19 players; there are no injured reserve lists beyond the team total of 19.
3. No Trading: Trading is not allowed during the NFFC season and owners are not allowed to trade draft picks.
4. Roster Requirements: Maximum of 19 players at all times.
5. Starting Lineup Requirements: Starting lineups will consist of:
(If no Week One lineup is submitted, the NFFC will determine your starting lineup. After Week One, if no starting lineup is submitted, your starting lineup will be that of the previous week.)
6. Scoring: Players can accumulate points in a number of ways:
RUSHING:
RECEIVING:
KICKING:
DEFENSE/SPECIAL TEAMS:
7. Free Agent Acquisitions: Any player who is not on a team roster within your league is considered a free agent for that league. The free agent system will be a blind bidding process for each individual league (Free Agent Acquisition Bidding or FAAB). Each team will start with a $1,000 FAAB budget, and will be permitted to bid for free agents on a weekly basis through Week 13. No team will be informed of any other team's free agent bids before they're announced and only the winning bid and the runner-up bid will be announced afterwards to NFFC owners. The team with the highest bid on any given player will be awarded that player. The amount of the winning bid will be deducted from the winning team's free agent dollars. For each winning bid, the winning team must drop a player to make roster room for the free agent acquisition. If a team's free agent dollars goes to zero, that team will no longer be allowed to bid for the rest of the season. No bid will be accepted that is larger than a team's free agent dollars. All bids must be in increments of dollars (no cents).
8. The Draft: The draft will be held simultaneously at locations in Las Vegas, New York, Chicago and online with MockDraftCentral.com. The draft will be held in a serpentine fashion for each round using 3RR (1-14 in Round 1, 14-1 in Round 2, 14-1 in Round 3, 1-14 in Round 4 and continuing from there in serpentine fashion).
9. Bidding Time Frame: The bidding process will be held each week after Week 1 and continues through the end of the NFFC regular season. Bids will be accepted on the league web site from Tuesday at 9 am ET until Friday at 9 p.m. ET in each of those weeks. If you are submitting by phone, you must submit your bids by 2:30 p.m. ET on Friday. Rosters will be updated by 10 p.m. ET Friday with the results of all successful bids.
The FAAB deadline will be moved to Wednesday, Nov. 11 at 9 p.m. EST to comply with the Thursday night games which resume in Week 10. There are no FAAB pickups in Weeks 14 through 16 during the NFFC Championship Round and NFFC Consolation Round. All winning FAAB bids on Nov. 19 and 26 are final at that time, even if a scoring change is made after that which would affect tied winning bids.
10. Conditional Bids: Conditional bids can also be offered. In the event you may lose out on a player, you can place conditional bid(s) for other players during the bidding time frame. The first conditional bid will become relevant only if you lose out on the first bid. Subsequent conditional bids will become relevant only if the previous conditional bid fails. Bids do not require conditional bids. Bids may have several sequential conditional bids.
11. Number of Bid Limits: There is no limit to the number of bids each week in which bids are permitted.
12. Tied Bids: If there is a tie bid, the team that receives the player will be determined in order by:
13. Trades between managers: To minimize the possibility of collusion, there will be no trading allowed. All drops are also subject to review by the commissioner of the NFFC and can be revoked if the dropped player is deemed too valuable to be offered to that league's free agent pool, thus damaging the credibility of the overall contest. In the case of a star player being dropped in a league for a valid reason, the NFFC commissioner does reserve the right to allow the cut but keep the player out of that league's free agent listing for any length of time, possibly the entire season. All decisions by the NFFC commissioner will be final.
14. League Structure: Each league will consist of 14 teams competing in a head-to-head format for the league championship. The team with the best won-loss record in each league plus the team with the highest point total (second highest point total if the team with the best won-loss record also has that) and the third place team will advance to the three-week playoffs. Any team that finishes in the top 15 percent of the total number of teams that didn't finish first or second or third in their league will also advance to the playoffs as a wild card team. So if the NFFC finishes with 322 teams in 2009, the top 48 teams in total points will be guaranteed a playoff spot in the Championship Round even if they finished third or lower in their league. Teams will carry their weekly scoring average (i.e. 130.15 points) into the playoffs and then accumulate points to that total over the last three weeks of the regular season to determine the overall NFFC champion. Those teams which did not advance to the playoffs will carry their weekly scoring average from Weeks 1-13 into a consolation round playoff and add their weekly totals during Weeks 14-16 to determine the consolation round champion.
15. Random League/Draft Spot Selections: The NFFC will randomly select the leagues and the draft orders of each league once all entries have been submitted by city. For instance, if the NFFC receives 140 entries for the main event in Las Vegas, we'll put all 140 names into a computer program and select in order: League 1, pick 1 is John Smith; League 1, pick 2 is John Doe, League 1, pick 3 is Jane Andrews, etc. until all 140 names have been selected. We will do this in each city for all of the leagues. In the NFFC main event, the Draft Champions and in the Ultimate Draft Leagues, we'll also implement the Kentucky Derby Style process to allow owners more draft preference. The KDS process allows owners to rank their order of preference for Draft Day, ranking their preferences 1 through 14 BEFORE the leagues are selected. If an owner wants the third pick and is selected No. 1 overall in his league, he would choose that option and he would then be moved to third in that league on Draft Day. NFFC officials will look at every owner's Draft Preferences after the leagues and orders are randomly selected and then announce the draft orders for each league. Once each NFFC owner has officially signed up for the contest, they can find this feature in their game site under My Settings. Then click on Draft Preferences and you'll see the Draft Order ranked 1 through 14 and the option to change those preferences next to them. If you decide not to rank your preferences, your preferred order will remain 1 through 14. Owners can change their Draft Preferences right up until the announced deadline is set. An example of a KDS preference would be: 1, 2, 3, 14, 13, 7, 8, 9, 4, 5, 6, 12, 11, 10. If you were picked fourth out of the hat for your league and the top three teams took 1, 2, and 3, then you'd be slotted in the 14th spot (your fourth preference) on Draft Day.
If a main event league in one of the cities doesn't fill exactly with 14 teams, the NFFC also reserves the right to fill that league with owners from one or more other host cities to make it full. In that scenario, the NFFC reserves the right to place some of the final signups in any of the cities in that teleconference league. Early-bird signups will not be placed in a teleconference draft league.
16. Tie-breaker procedures. If after 13 regular season games, teams are tied for first place, second place or third place, the following tiebreakers will be used in this order:
17. Prize Breakdown:
Overall Grand Champion $100,000, PLUS National Fantasy Football Championship trophy
Second Place $15,000
Third Place $7,500
Fourth Place $2,500
Fifth Place $1,400 or free entry in 2010 NFFC
Sixth Place $1,400 or free entry in 2010 NFFC
Seventh Place $1,400 or free entry in 2010 NFFC
Eighth Place $1,400 or free entry in 2010 NFFC
Regular Season Points Leader = $1,400 or free entry in 2010 NFFC
Combined points lead of NFFC Classic and NFFC Primetime through 16 weeks = $2,000 or free entry in 2010 NFFC Classic and 2010 NFFC Primetime
Each (28) League h2h Champion (best won/loss record after Week 13 with total points as tie-breaker plus most total points after Week 13) $5,000
Each (28) League Runner-up: Most Total Points behind league champ, or most points if h2h champ wasn't also the league total points leader $2,500
Each (28) League 3rd place finisher
(next highest total points behind league runner-up) $1,250
Each (28) League Playoff winner in Weeks 14-16: if one team in any NFFC league wasn't the h2h champ AND total points champ, then the h2h champ will earn $2,500 after Week 13 and the total points champ will also earn $2,500. Those two teams will then compete for the remaining $2,500 and title as league champ over Weeks 14-16, with the highest scoring team earning the remaining $2,500 prize.
First, second and third place league finishers all advance to the Championship Round for a shot at the $100,000 grand prize. $2,500
Consolation Round Champion $2,500
Consolation Round Runner-up $1,500
Consolation Round Third Place free entry in 2010 NFFC
Consolation Round Fourth Place free entry in 2010 NFFC
18. Draft Rules:
19. NFFC Guarantee: Once a participant signs up online and submits valid payment, no money will be refunded to participants or co-managers unless the National Fantasy Football Championship is canceled. A team spot is considered filled when the entire $1,400 entry fee is paid. Krause Publications reserves the right to cancel any entries not comprising a full 14-team league. At its sole discretion, Krause Publications also reserves the right to terminate The National Fantasy Football Championship in its entirety if there are an insufficient number of teams by August 30, 2009. In this unlikely event, Krause Publications will refund all entry fees within 48 hours of cancellation notice and/or provide a new application form with the newly stated prize figures. All pre-registered applicants would have the right to a full refund or agree to play for the newly announced prize structure. Krause Publications is not responsible for any loss or liability incurred by any participant or co-managers due to cancellation of The National Fantasy Football Championship, including but not limited to travel or hotel expenses, time taken off from employment, etc.
20. Prize Winnings. If your prize winnings exceed $600.00, The National Fantasy Football Championship must file a Form 1099 with the IRS at the end of this calendar year. If necessary, we will request your social security number. The Form contains the amount paid to the principal owner (and ONLY the principal owner) and you will receive a copy of the Form for tax purposes. You are responsible for paying any taxes that result from your cash prize. Please consult your income tax advisor for filing advice. The NFFC's 2009 prize structure is based on 322 teams, but the NFFC reserves the right to expand to 392 teams with the guarantee that 75 percent of all additional entry fee money will be returned in the overall prize structure.
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