You hear the same excuse every year, from some owner in your league who struggles to a 3-10 record. “If I’d had the first draft pick, I would have won!” While this may or may not be true (most likely it isn’t, knowing the type of owner who says this every year), you can structure your league’s draft to give him what he wants. In fact, you can give every owner the first pick in the draft, because everybody wants that top player. Impossible, you say? Not in an auction draft. Bidding against your fellow owners and trying to fill your team under a salary cap becomes an exercise in will and strategy.

Having an auction draft instead of a traditional serpentine draft allows owners to control their own destiny. You want the top player? You can have him, but you’d better be prepared to outbid everyone else, and be prepared for one player to consume most of your salary cap. Draft strategies change in an auction, and the most prepared owners will reap the benefits. The guy who walks into the draft with a cheat-sheet he just bought at the 7-11 will be even less prepared than usual. Should you splurge on a couple top guys and fill in the rest of your team with cheap spares? Or should you go for a bunch of quality players, depriving your team of star power but having that precious deep bench? Trading becomes an art in an auction league, when both teams want to do the deal but salary ramifications are involved. Strategy permutations abound in an auction league.

The first thing that must be done to convert your league to an auction format is to set the salary cap. The salary cap is “fake” money, meaning that the cap number has nothing to do with the amount paid for league fees. The cap number should be high enough to allow for teams to be different, but low enough so that the draft doesn’t take forever. Most auction leagues devise a salary cap based on $10 to $20 per roster spot. For a league with 16 roster spots per team, a salary cap of $200 - $300 should yield acceptable results.

Once you have established the cap, it is time for the best day of the year: draft day. An auction draft usually takes a bit longer than a traditional draft, so make sure the owners are prepared. An auction draft is a bit free format, meaning that the order in which things happen is not quite as important as the end result, so the method for carrying out an auction draft could be anything. Some leagues assign an order to teams as to when they may name a player to start bidding on. Some leagues allow the last team that signed a player to throw out the next name. Regardless, once a player is announced to be open for bidding, a free-for-all ensues in which the highest bidder claims the player. A typical auction exchange would go something like this:

Commissioner: “Owner 1, you may open the bidding on a player of your choosing.”

Owner 1: “I open the bidding on Jesse Palmer at $1.”

Owner 2: “I bid $2 on Palmer.”

Owner 3: “I loved The Bachelor! Fifty bucks on Palmer!”

Commissioner: “Palmer at $50. Going once… Going twice… Sold to the Couch Potatoes for $50. The next team up may open the bidding on whomever they chose…”

Well, maybe it’s not a typical auction exchange, but you get the idea. The commissioner’s job becomes especially important towards the end of the draft, when some teams may try to sneak in an illegal bid here or there. Teams’ cap space should be tracked at all times. Auction drafts over the internet become a bit more complicated, but are still feasible.

Once the auction is over and the teams are set, the season begins, which brings us to the next phase of the auction league, free agent transactions. The best and easiest way to deal with free agency is to hold a weekly blind auction, where teams privately send bids on players to the commissioner. Give owners some time to make their bids, and conclude the auction at some point in the middle to end of the week. The teams who bid highest get those players, unless the bids are illegal and place them over the cap. If multiple teams send identical bids on players, the winner may be determined from a random draw, or by using worst record or lowest points-for total as a tiebreaker.

When it comes to auction drafting, creativity is encouraged in setting things up. The above describes only suggestions for your league. Tailor it to your specifications, because it is, after all, your league. Auction drafting is generally the way to go in most serious leagues, as drafting and team management turns into one big poker game. And if you want to create the ultimate fantasy football league, combine the auction draft with Keeper Rules and allow Individual Defensive Players. You are well on your way to the pinnacle of fantasy football greatness.