Last year I often talked about Reality Sports Online on the OTC podcast (which will be returning shortly) and every now and then on the site and this year we’ll be hosting a 12 team league for anyone interested in playing. RSO has created a year round fantasy platform that puts you in full control of a team as if you are a real general manager of an NFL team. The game itself is driven by the use of a NFL auction room where you and the other teams in your league will bid on every player in the NFL. Each team plays within the real constraints of the salary cap and you are limited to a number of multi year contracts such that the free agent pool continues to be filled year after year. You can try this out in their mock auction room to see how it operates, but essentially it condenses a real free agent period into 4 hours with your friends playing GM while their system plays the role of agent and identifies acceptable offers.
The season will kick off with the NFL rookie draft which for our league I believe is scheduled for May 8 at 8PM and should be 3 rounds in length. Just like regular games you can use autopicks for this if you can not make the time. Once your team is built you deal with everything an NFL team does including injured players, waivers, and the need to cut players. And of course anyone you cut is going to have salary cap consequences down the line. You can customize many of your leagues settings in regards to rosters, contracts, and scoring or just join a public league that best fits your needs.
All in all this is probably the most hardcore dynasty football league you can participate in. It is certainly not for the faint of heart, but if you have a passion for the NFL and can commit the time this is as close as you can get right now to being a GM and then watching the results unfold in real time in regards to your roster and salary cap situation.
Not surprisingly RSO was pretty popular last year with our readers and listeners due to the cap format and realistic nature of the product compared to some of the daily leagues we run during the season. So I think it will be fun to have a group from here get to join a league with other OTC readers. Hopefully if you sign up you plan on not just being active this year but in the future as dynasty leagues are great and the rules to this one I think make it extra challenging.
The cost for RSO is $9.99 per team and if you have never played RSO before and use promo code OTC10 when you sign up you will get a 10% discount. There are plenty of public leagues and you can always create private leagues as well for you and your friends if you want to do multiple leagues. Like with the other fantasy things in the past Ill probably post weekly updates (time permitting) of how the league goes week by week.
I’ll check with the team at RSO, but I believe I have to send invites out to join the league. The best way to let me know you are interested is by email. Im pretty sure we should be able to get enough owners by the May draft, but Ill do invites in the order I receive them. Hope to see some of you in the league!