Article: Fantasy football, like regular football, relies heavily on competition. Playing in a league allows you to build relationships and camaraderie, as well as providing an extra incentive to choose your players wisely. There are several types of leagues to consider, so try to pick one that fits in with your commitment, your experience, and your seriousness. In head-to-head play, your team matches up against a different team each week, and the team that receives the most points is declared the winner. In a total points league, teams accrue points throughout the season on an ongoing basis. At the end of the regular season, teams with the best won/loss records meet in the playoffs to decide an eventual champion. Head-to-head leagues are fun to play with your friends, so you can have fun trash-talking during the week, leading up to an end-of-season playoff among the teams with the best records. Points leagues are good if you like watching the NFL games over the course of the weekend, giving you more stake in the action when your players are playing and keeping track of the individual players. It's better if you have less time to commit to the season. You can choose between various ways of accumulating points for the performance of the players you draft, as well as the structure of the roster. Most normally you'll play the head coach, playing individual players and picking the best guys to give you the best chance of winning. In terms of scoring, most leagues employ a "points for reception" scoring style, which gives points not just for points scored by individual players, but for stats like receptions, yardage gained, and sacks. The score-tallying won't affect the way you "play" fantasy football, but it might affect the way you choose players to play week-to-week. IDP, Individual Defensive Players, options utilize defensive players on an individual basis, as well as using team defensive units. Other leagues simply use team defenses. The additional players and positions to fill require owners in an IDP league to do a lot more research to determine which defensive players to draft and when to draft them, and makes it more difficult to determine which players and positions are most important. However, these leagues can be rewarding to win for big football fans. You can sign up for leagues via ESPN and Yahoo, probably the two most popular ways to play. Go to their Fantasy Football tab and search for open standard leagues that are free, or contact friends that play in leagues you'd like to join and get the administrator to give you an invitation. You can start new leagues, but try to get a little experience in different types of playing and play a few fantasy seasons before you try to start a league of your own.
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Choose a league that fits in with your time and commitment. Consider a standard head-to-head league or a standard points league. Choose your roster and scoring options. Find a league that fits in with your desires and sign up online.