We have all participated in these timeless fantasy football arguments, whether on message boards or via emails or over lunch at work, in many cases over multiple seasons.

Who is the real league champion, the team that won the most regular season head-to-head games or the playoff winner?

What is the fairest and therefore best scoring system, head-to-head or total points?

With the randomness of league schedules, are some teams just lucky in getting to play the stronger teams on weaker weeks? Wouldn’t it be fairer if everyone could somehow play every other league team every week?

There never seems to be an agreed-to conclusion for any of this, with positions sometimes influenced by where one’s team happens to reside in the standings at any given point in any given season. Not that I have ever been there, mind you, but I am told others can relate.

Anyway, as is often the focus of this column, we highlight an approach being used in the NFFC and discuss how you might consider applying it to spice up your local league.

The NFFC, like a seeming majority of leagues, embraces a playoff-type format with a twist. Both point totals and won-loss record are valued. And, once Week 14 arrives, the best from all leagues compete together.

“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) advance to the three-week playoffs. Any team that finishes in the top 10 percent of the total number of teams that didn't finish first or second in their league will also advance to the playoffs as a wild card team,” say the official NFFC rules.

But, you might ask yourself how that format would matter to you, competing in a single local league, not in a 23-league format. Certainly you could consider an approach to let a high-scoring team into the playoffs that would otherwise miss out due to a sub-standard head-to-head record.

There is another way to look at it, too. In support of their playoff format, the NFFC has implemented a nifty capability called “Power Rankings”, created for them by the folks at STATS, Inc.

Again, from the NFFC: “The power ranking of a team is based on the team's standing in three categories: W/L record, total points and "team breakdown”. The team breakdown category calculates what your team record would be had it played all the other teams in your league each week of the season.”

The rules continue. “Within these categories, a power ranking is awarded rotisserie-style. For example, if there are 14 teams in your league, the team with the best W/L record would receive 14 points for that category, the team with the next best record would receive 13 points, and so on, with the team with the worst record receiving 1 point. The same ranking system is applied for total points scored and team breakdown. The scores for each category are then totaled to create the overall power ranking.”

So, in this example, the best possible score would be 14+14+14=42 and the worst would be 1+1+1=3.

Here is an example from my NFFC league, New York 1:

Standings

NFFC New York 1	W	L	T	Points
Mongoose	2	0	0	292
Felix Flamingos Brother	2	0	0	291.3
The Fantasy Poet	2	0	0	266.95
Greenwich St. Tavern	2	0	0	243.9
HONOLULU HAMMERS	1	1	0	262.8
Team Maresca	1	1	0	247.65
CREATiVESPORTS Walton	1	1	0	215.65
Team suer	1	1	0	210.75
'Team Cummings'	1	1	0	198.1
MGBS109	1	1	0	188.5
GODIRTYBLUE NOLES	0	2	0	252.45
john mark karr	0	2	0	222.4
Nutty Scrats	0	2	0	195.5
Golden Domers	0	2	0	162.85

In my case, my 1-1 record is tied for second-best in the league, giving me 7.5 Power Ranking points (because I am tied with others), but my 215 points is only ninth-best in the league (good for six points).

My 118 points in week one would have been good enough to defeat six other teams, but would have left me short against seven others. In week two, with a whopping 74 points on my bench (a story for another column), my meager 97 points scored would have beaten just one of the 13 other teams. So, compared to the rest of the league, my hypothetical 7-19 head-to-head record is only tenth best (five points).

Therefore, totaling points, (7.5)+6+5, my Power Ranking of 18.5 is eighth-best in the league.

Power Rankings

	NFFC NY 1 Power Rankings
	Team	Record	Points	Breakdown	Power
1	Mongoose	12.5	14	13.5	40
2	Felix Flamingos Brother	12.5	13	13.5	39
3	The Fantasy Poet	12.5	12	11.5	36
4	HONOLULU HAMMERS	7.5	11	11.5	30
5	Greenwich St. Tavern	12.5	8	9	29.5
6	Team Maresca	7.5	9	9	25.5
7	GODIRTYBLUE NOLES	2.5	10	9	21.5
8	CREATiVESPORTS Walton	7.5	6	5	18.5
9	Team suer	7.5	5	6	18.5
10	john mark karr	2.5	7	7	16.5
11	'Team Cummings'	7.5	4	4	15.5
12	MGBS109	7.5	2	2.5	12
13	Nutty Scrats	2.5	3	2.5	8
14	Golden Domers	2.5	1	1	4.5

Back to why you should care. By starting now to calculate a similar weekly “Power Ranking” in your league, you can determine which team delivers the best balanced performance across each of these three areas and in aggregate.

It is simple to do with basic spreadsheet skills. Once you start and get into a groove, each weekly update should not take more than 15 to 20 minutes to keep your power rankings current.

A by-product is building a base of results that will allow you to compare and contrast head-to-head, total points and now power rankings over time. Who knows? With better information, perhaps you and your mates will decide in the future to adjust your league format.

But, whether or not you are considering a league scoring change today, having this history can enable you and your league members to have less-emotional, more factually-based discussions.

Or maybe it will at least stimulate some new variations on those tired old arguments!

Brian Walton’s work can also be seen daily at stlcardinals.scout.com.