FORUM: Comment

How FanLax Selects Our NCAA Teams

As FanLax is a Keeper League, subtracting an NCAA Team is not simple. e.g. If a coach drafts a freshman from Dartmouth and the following season FanLax no longer uses Dartmouth as an NCAA team, the relevant coach is being shortchanged. Similarly, adding too many NCAA teams makes the Draft too concentrated. We don’t want our league to be all Blue chip players. As a consequence, we try not to change our NCAA teams. But when a team demonstrates in no uncertain terms that they’re not a good fit with our FanLax League (e.g. Dartmouth, Hobart) and other teams demonstrate in no uncertain terms that they are (e.g. Denver, Yale), we make changes. In the many years of FanLax, the only change we’ve made is removing Dartmouth and Hobart while adding Denver and Yale. When we add (or drop) teams, our top considerations are:

1. Premier Squad – Is the team we’re adding/removing good relatively to the other NCAA D1 Teams.
2. Current FanLax NCAA Teams within their Schedule – We prefer teams that lay other FanLax NCAA teams.
3. Team We Like with Players We Like – There is a subjective factor to our decisions. Though, the two former factors which are relatively objective heavily influence this third.

By looking at the data below, it would appear that Albany (Premier squad and 6 of their 14 games are against FanLax NCAA teams), Brown (Premier squad, though they seem to be heading in the wrong direction, and 6 of their 14 games are against FanLax NCAA teams), and Michigan (Not necessarily a Premier squad but their star is on the rise and 9 of their 14 games are against FanLax NCAA teams) have good shots of being the next FanLax NCAA Team while UMBC has the best shot of being dropped. Though it’s doubtful that we’ll be dropping any teams in the near future.

2016 … 2017
1 Notre Dame * … UMD *
2 SU * … Notre Dame *
3 Duke * … SU *
4 UMD * … Duke *
5 UNC * … Denver +
6 Denver + … UNC *
7 JHU * … JHU *
8 UVA * … Loyola *
9 Loyola * … UVA *
10 Cornell * … Yale +
11 Yale + … Albany
12 Princeton * … Cornell *
13 Albany … Towson *
14 Brown … OSU *
15 Towson * … Princeton *
16 Upenn * … Brown
17 OSU * … PSU *
18 Bucknell … Upenn *
19 Villanova … Villanova
20 PSU * … Bucknell
21 Drexel … Army *
22 Harvard … Hofstra *
23 Fairfield * … Harvard
24 Umass * … Fairfield *
25 Hofstra * … Drexel
26 Army * … Marquette
27 Stony Brook … Umass *
28 Colgate … Bryant
29 Navy * … Stony Brook
30 Georgetown * … Colgate
31 Marquette … Navy *
32 Bryant … Georgetown *
33 Lehigh … Lehigh
34 Hobart – … Hobart –
35 St. Johns … Rutgers *
36 UMBC * … St. Johns
37 Delaware … UMBC *
38 Rutgers * … Delaware
39 Marist … Marist
40 Hartford … Hartford
41 Robert Morris … Robert Morris
42 Mt. St. Marys … Mt. St. Marys
43 Dartmouth – … Dartmouth –

FORUM: Comment