Year 5 is upon us, but before we get into that, one more congrats to Ben Musselman and Nacua Matata for winning League Bowl IV in 2025. Ben is the fourth champion in four years - something I don’t expect to change this season.
Season 5 brings the most changes yet.
LINEUPS
There were a few large shakeups in our 2026 lineups. Watch the video breakdown to understand how our 36-team league was solidified for the year. And check out my last post so you don’t miss the reinstatement letters that Stevie and Sam submitted to the Office of the Commissioner and the official responses from the League.
NEW THIS YEAR: SLEEPER
I’m a sucker for tried-and-true, never-failed-me-yet products. For the last 17 years, Yahoo Fantasy Football has been one of those products for me.
However, for a few reasons, this year we will be transitioning to the Sleeper platform for our fantasy football season (primarily app-based, but you can use web also - functionality is more limited via web). If you must know, here are the top three reasons for the change:
Managing three divisions at once. Managing three tiers of this league is difficult, especially with Yahoo. I have relied on other players to be ghost-commissioners, sharing their log-in info to allow me the ability to gather scores, standings, intel, and use my commissioner tools across the three divisions. Sleeper allows me to be the commissioner of leagues I do not actively participate in, making it a seamless solution.
Your engagement. Sleeper has developed a reputation for building league engagement through its chat feature. For having 36 guys, a full-fledged blog/website, and platforms that offer chat features, we have traditionally had significantly less engagement in this league than I anticipated. If Sleeper makes it easier for you to trash-talk, it’s worth a shot in my book.
$$$. This year will be the first that a buy-in will be implemented. Each team must pay a $25 buy-in to the Commissioner before the draft. Sleeper offers a tracking system for paid dues, which makes it much easier on me as I hound 35 other managers to pay up.
NEW THIS YEAR: WINNER PAYOUTS
Bragging rights is great, but this year you might be able to earn some cash on top of it. Your $25 buy-in goes into a pot that gets paid out on the following schedule:
The goal behind this change is to increase engagement. Your $25 represents your willingness to put some skin in the game and, hopefully, will give you more motivation to stay on top of your lineups and keep pushing to move up the ranks.
Even if you do not earn a payout, I hope the intentionality that goes into trying to make this a fun, memorable, community-building experience and the dang-Sy-it’s-just-fantasy-football-this-is-way-too-deep analyses along the way justify the investment.
DRAFT
Our randomized-order, snake draft will be on August 30 at 7:00 EST.
I’m especially excited about this season.
Best of luck out there in RFL Year 5.
