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2008 CBSSports.com Fantasy Football Welcome to CBSSports.com Fantasy Football (the "Contest"), where you can start your own 12-team, head-to-head Fantasy league, or join an existing one. No matter what your skill level, we'll have plenty of leagues to choose from. Most leagues include one sentence describing the type of player the league is looking to recruit (e.g., "experts," "beginners," "Dolphins fans," etc.) so you should have no trouble finding the right league for you. The rules for the Contest are explained fully in this document. If you'd rather make your own rules than play by ours, check out CBSSports.com's Football Commissioner stats service. The commissioner of a Fantasy Football league is responsible for coordinating and managing the league. CBS Interactive Inc. ("CBSII") will serve as the commissioner for all CBSSports.com Fantasy Football leagues and will be responsible for resolving any disputes that arise regarding unbalanced trades, alleged rules violations or anything else. Signing Up You may sign up to play the Contest after the start of the NFL season; however the deadline to sign up will be no later than 11:59:59 PM ET on 10/14/2008. Signup cost depends on the level of competition you choose. Fantasy Football Gold costs $39.95 per team for your first team, and $29.95 per team for each additional team. Fantasy Football Platinum costs $99.95 per team for your first team, and $79.95 per team for each additional team. Fantasy Football Diamond costs $249.95 per team for your first team, and $199.95 for each additional team. Fantasy Football Double Diamond costs $499.95 per team for your first team, and $449.95 for each additional team (prizes available in connection with the foregoing levels are outlined in "Prizes" section below). For purposes of the Official Rules, all dollar amounts are in US Dollars. NOTE: Any additional team purchases may NOT be used in a league where you already have a team. If you have multiple teams, each team must be in a different league. If you are not a Registered User (as defined below), you'll be prompted to register free with CBSII prior to signing up for the Contest. As noted, we will provide a list of available leagues for you to choose from after you sign up. *CBSSports.com Fantasy Football Gold is open to: (a) Registered Users; (b) legal residents of one (1) of the fifty (50) United States, Washington DC, or Canada (excluding Quebec) (for purposes of clarity, Puerto Rico is expressly excluded); and (c) at least eighteen (18) years of age or the age of majority in their state of residence at the date of registration in the Contest. PLEASE NOTE: Notwithstanding the foregoing: (i) eligible legal residents of Canada (excluding Quebec), Arizona, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Montana, and Vermont may play Fantasy Football Gold, but are not eligible to win any prizes; and (ii) in all events you must be eighteen (18) years of age or older (if the age of majority in a jurisdiction is over 18, you must be of the age of majority within your jurisdiction) in order to win any prizes. *CBSSports.com Fantasy Football Platinum, Diamond and Double Diamond are open to: (a) Registered Users; (b) legal residents of one (1) of the fifty (50) United States (excluding residents of Arizona, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Montana, and Vermont) (for purposes of clarity, Puerto Rico is expressly excluded) and Washington D.C.; and (c) at least eighteen (18) years of age or the age of majority in their state of residence at the date of registration in the Contest. For purposes of these Official Rules, "Registered User" means a person who has successfully completed the registration form and has obtained a User Identification ("ID") and associated password ("Password") on one of the CBSII network of Websites which currently include the following: CBS.com, CBSnews.com, CBSSports.com, theinsideronline.com, etonline.com, NFL.com, NCAA.com, and/or CBSgames.com. If you are not a Registered User you may become a Registered User and obtain an ID and a Password by completing the CBS Sports Service registration form by going here on the CBS Sports Service. There is no fee or charge to you to become a Registered User. *All CBSSports.com Fantasy Football contests are subject to the complete applicable Official Rules. Void where prohibited by law. Employees of CBS Interactive Inc. and CBS Broadcasting Inc. (collectively the "Contest Entities") and each of their parent companies, affiliates, subsidiaries, advertising, promotion and fulfillment agencies and members of the immediate family or household of each are not eligible to win. Immediate family member is defined as a parent, sibling or any person residing in the same household as an employee of the Contest Entities. Void where prohibited. Such excluded employees and/or family members may play, but WILL NOT be eligible to receive any prizes. Live Draft Leagues or Automated Draft Leagues Your Fantasy Football team will acquire its players through a draft. CBSSports.com leagues can draft players in one of two ways: a Live Draft or an Automated Draft. During a Live Draft, all 12 league participants ("owners") log in to an on-line "draft room" at a scheduled time. Each owner, in draft order, has just 90 seconds to select an available NFL player for his or her team. This kind of draft is exciting but extremely fast-paced and recommended for experienced owners. See "Live Draft Instructions" section below. If you are a beginner, or are unable to schedule a block of two to four hours for a live draft, you may prefer to participate in an Automated Draft league. At your convenience you will simply arrange players, using Rank Lists provided by CBSII, in the order that you'd like those players selected for your team. The Automated Draft is then processed using your lists. The highest-ranked player on your lists who is available, and fits the roster needs of your team, will be selected for you during each round of the automated draft. See "Automated Draft Instructions" section below. If you know all the owners who are going to be in your league, or you want to recruit individuals, you may want to join or create a Private league. The person who creates a Private league sets a password and other owners use that password to join the league. If you already know all of the owners in your league and want complete control of your league's rules, you should also check out the CBSSports.com Football Commissioner, our powerful and fully-customizable stats service. If you played a CBSSports.com fantasy league (excluding Commissioner leagues) in a previous year and won your league, you may be eligible to play in an exclusive Winners League. To create or join a Winners League, you must use the same CBSSports ID you used when you won your league. After you have signed up, you may join a league anytime up to 11:59:59 PM ET on 10/16/2008. All leagues are required to have 12 participants, or team "owners." For leagues that draft after 09/03/2008, your league's start date will begin with the next official scoring period. The last day of Contest play is 12/28/08. After you sign up for the Contest, you may receive a full refund of the purchase price up to 48 hours prior to your league's draft date. All other refund requests will be subject to the sole discretion of CBSII. Live Draft Instructions After you join or create a Live Draft league, you will have the opportunity to make changes to CBSSports.com's default Rank List, which is a list of all NFL players that are eligible to be drafted, ranked from best to worst by our Fantasy experts. It is recommended that you, prior to your draft, organize the Rank List according to your own player preferences. However, you are welcome to leave the Rank List in the order our experts have provided. During the live draft CBSSports.com will use your Rank List as a backup in case your time limit expires before you make a pick (explained below). On draft day there will be a "Draft Room" link in the Message Center on your League home page - the link is also available in the Draft Prep component of your League Home page. This link will allow entry into the draft room. During the Live Draft, each team will have 90 seconds to select an NFL player. The order of the draft will be randomly generated between midnight and 6:00 AM ET either the day of, or the day before the draft. If your league has the mandatory 12 owners as of approximately 48 hours prior to your scheduled draft date, the league will aggregate and generate a draft order. If not, your league will receive an e-mail explaining that you must have 12 owners as of 24 hours prior to your draft date. If your league does not have 12 team owners at that time, your league will be disbanded and each owner will have to join or create another league. In the draft room, you will be able to place NFL players into a Draft Queue - which is simply a list of players, in order of priority, that you are interested in taking with your next draft pick. When it is your turn to pick, you will have 90 seconds to draft a player. If the 90 seconds pass and you have not manually selected a player, the player ranked highest in your Draft Queue will be automatically drafted. If the Draft Queue is empty, a pick will then be made from your Rank List. In such a case, the highest rated player from the Rank List will be drafted unless that position is filled - in which case the next best available option, at the next highest Ranked position list, will be drafted. The draft order will "snake" at the end of each round, meaning that the team with the last pick in the current round will have the first pick in the next round. Waiver priority immediately after the draft will be the reverse order of the first round of the draft. So Team #12 will have the highest waiver priority and Team #1 the lowest waiver priority. You'll find more help with the live draft in the Help Center inside your league after signup. As with a Live Draft, after creating or joining an Automated Draft league, you will have the opportunity to rank all the eligible NFL players. However, in an Automated Draft you can organize 6 Rank Lists - one list for each Fantasy position: QB, RB, WR, TE, K, DST. You will rank the players on each list in the order of your preference, with the player you'd most like to draft being #1 on a list, and so on. You will assign these rank lists to each of the 14 rounds of your draft, based on the position you would like to draft in each round (i.e. If you feel QBs represent the strongest position, then assign the QBs rank list to the first round; if you feel RBs represent the next strongest position, assign the RBs rank list to the second round, and so on.) As in the Live Draft, you are not required to make changes to our rank lists. If you choose not to, our default lists, which reflect the rankings of our Fantasy experts, will be used. However, if you decide to organize the lists yourself, you will have up to 24 hours prior to your draft day to do so. When there are 24 hours left until your draft day, the rank lists will be closed and considered ready for the draft. On the morning of the scheduled draft day, an Automated Draft will be conducted. Players will automatically be drafted for you using your Rank Lists. An e-mail will be sent to each owner after the draft has been completed.
Waiver priority immediately after the draft will be the reverse order of the first round of the draft. So Team #12 will have the highest waiver priority and Team #1 the lowest waiver priority. Teams Overview Each CBSSports.com Fantasy Football league will consist of 12 teams, divided into three divisions of 4 teams each. The divisions will be called: East, Central, and West.
PLEASE NOTE: The Roster Requiremments have changed. *You are allowed as many as 9 players in your starting lineup, according to the positional requirements listed in the table above. However the numbers in the "starting lineup" column represent the "maximum" number of players you may have at each position. You may use fewer players than the number listed at each position without penalty. Point Values Each week your team will compete against another team in your league in a head-to-head matchup. During a matchup, each of the players in your 'starting lineup' ('active' players) for that week will earn points based on their actual statistics from NFL games. The charts below list the statistics and their corresponding point values.
Wins & Losses For each head-to-head matchup, the team with the greater number of points will earn a Win and the team with the lesser number a Loss. During the regular season, if two teams have the same number of points, each team will get a Tie. During the playoffs, there are no ties. The tiebreakers for head-to-head matchups in the playoffs are as follows:
If this doesn't break the tie, then the team with the higher playoff seed will earn the Win.
Following the completion of each week's games, all statistics and point totals are verified, and corrections are made where necessary. However, all statistics and point totals for the week are considered FINAL as of Wednesday. If a stat correction is announced for the previous weekend's games on Wednesday or later, it will not be included in our statistics and your official Fantasy scoring will be based on the original statistic. Regular Season The first 14 weeks of the NFL season represent the regular season for CBSSports.com Fantasy Football leagues. During these 14 weeks, each team will play the other teams in its division twice each, and they will play teams in the other divisions once each. When the draft is complete, you can see your team's specific schedule by clicking the Schedule link. When the 14-game regular season ends, 4 teams from the league will make the playoffs: the three division leaders (the team with the best win/loss record in each division) and a wildcard team, which is the team with the best win/loss record in the league, excluding the 3 division leaders.
For teams that do not qualify for the playoffs, the season will effectively end. No further add/drop transactions will be permitted for any team that does not make the playoffs, or for any team that is eliminated from the playoffs. Weekly Lineups Each week, owners have the opportunity to select their starting lineup for the coming week. If an owner doesn't set a lineup before the weekly lineup deadline (explained in the "Deadline to Change Status" section below), the owner's lineup from the previous week will be used. If an owner has an Illegal Lineup, their team will score zero points for the scoring period. An owner may change the status of the players on his/her team (i.e., "active" or "reserve") up to 5 minutes before a player's NFL team is scheduled to start. While there are benefits to last minute research, please play it safe and make changes well before this 5-minute window arrives. CBSII will not be responsible if your watch or clock and our system clock are not synchronized. Please note that, if 9 of your players were "active" and played on Sunday, you will not be able to change the status of one of your "reserves" to "active" on Monday even though the player didn't play yet. Adding and Dropping Players Throughout the season you may want to improve your roster by adding available free agents and dropping players who are not performing up to your expectations. You can submit a free agent request at any time. With the exception of requests for players on Waivers (discussed below) free agent moves are first-come, first-served and are executed immediately.
To provide an equal opportunity for all owners to add players to their roster, a Waivers process is used. Requests for players that are on Waivers are not executed immediately, but are put in a pending status. All players will be placed on Waivers at the start of games every Sunday afternoon, at 12:55 PM ET during the course of the NFL season. If there are NFL games scheduled for Thursday or Saturday, only the players from those teams will be placed on Waivers five (5) minutes prior to the start of their respective games. Any player that is new to the player pool will be placed on Waivers, and subject to the league's Waiver process. The Waiver process allows multiple teams to request the same players. Most weeknights between midnight and 6:00:00 AM ET, CBSII will process all of the pending requests. The order in which these requests are processed is based on the Waiver Rank of each team. The table below lists when an NFL player is on Waivers and for how long.
Waiver Rank During the waiver process, pending transactions are processed in an order determined by each team's waiver rank. The team with a waiver rank of 1, considered the highest, will get its first requested player. After the transaction is executed, the team's waiver rank is then set to 12 (last), and all other teams move up one. The waiver ranks are reset once each week after standings are updated on Monday night/Tuesday morning. The last-place team (based on won/lost record) will be given the waiver rank of 1, down to the first-place team, which gets the waiver rank of 12. We'll use the following criteria to break any ties for waiver rank:
If a team's highest pending transaction becomes invalid because another team received the requested player, the transaction gets deleted and the team's next waiver request, if one exists, becomes that team's highest. If a team doesn't have any pending transactions because all players requested were taken by other teams, or the owner simply didn't request any players, there isn't any penalty and the Waiver Rank will not be changed for that week. The waiver process will run for the first time each week between midnight Tuesday/Wednesday and 6:00:00 AM Wednesday which is approximately 24 hours after the completion of Monday night's game. In a typical week where there are not any Thursday or Saturday games, the waiver process will run every night through Saturday night (the last process will be early Sunday morning). If there are Thursday or Saturday games, the players involved in those games will be placed on Waivers five minutes prior to the start of their game and will not be eligible to be added to a team's roster until the first Waivers process of the following week runs. Preseason Once a league's draft is completed, players can be added and dropped subject to the Free Agent and Waiver rules discussed above. The initial Waiver Rank after the draft will be the reverse of the Draft Order. After the draft, all players not drafted will be placed on Waivers. The waiver process will run each night, 7 days a week, starting the day after the draft through the Wednesday night before opening day (Thursday, September 4, 2008). To maintain the integrity of your league, you will be prevented from dropping certain star NFL players throughout the season. CBSII, as commissioner of all CBSSports.com Fantasy Football leagues, will decide - in its sole discretion - which NFL players are undroppable. If there are players we've deemed undroppable on your roster, they will not be displayed on the Add/Drop page for your team. You may appeal to CBSII for permission to drop an undroppable player; however, CBSII will make the final decision on all undroppable player requests. Appeals can be sent via the Help, Help Center page and should include the names of the players you want to add and drop. Trade Deadline Throughout the season, owners can trade players with other teams. In an effort to keep the integrity of the league, a deadline for trades will be imposed at 11:59:59 PM ET Tuesday, 11/11/2008. No trades will be allowed after that time. Any trades accepted by two parties before the deadline will be subject to the trade approval process. In an effort to prevent collusion among owners, and to ensure fair competition, a trade approval process is used. After two owners agree to a trade, the trade will be put in a pending status for at least 24 hours. If four owners in your league object to the trade within the pending time period, the trade will not be executed, but will go to the Commissioner for evaluation. Example: a trade made at 5:00:00 PM Tuesday will not execute at 5:00:00 PM Wednesday, but between midnight and 6:00:00 AM ET Thursday, assuming four owners do not object before then. All trades between owners must be made at least 24 hours before the first game day of the week and not be disputed by four owners in order to be effective for the current week. If four owners object to a trade, the Commissioner can overrule the objection but the trade may be made effective for the following week. If you make a trade offer, be sure to monitor the status of that offer (on the My Team, Trade page) as the weekly lineup deadline approaches, to ensure that acceptance of that trade does not cause your team to have an illegal lineup for the current week's gamesi Fantasy Match-up. Owners can enter unbalanced multi-player trades such as a 3 player for 1 player trade. A trade that results in an illegal roster will be allowed, however you will be required to enter the necessary transactions to correct your roster before your lineup is due for the coming week. If your roster is not legal by the weekly deadline, you will receive zero points for that particular week. General Sportsmanship By participating, you agree to abide by the general sportsmanship rules set forth in these rules and fantasy games in general. You further agree to accept and abide by the rulings and the decisions of CBSII regarding all questions of sportsmanship. If an owner does not comply with the sportsmanship rules as defined in these official rules, or CBSII determines (in CBSII's sole discretion) that an owner has acted in an unsportsmanlike manner, CBSII reserves the right to disqualify the owner and/or remove that owner from the league. All decisions by CBSII in sportsmanship and related matters will be final. In order to keep the leagues as competitive as possible, owners will only be allowed to have one team in a league. CBSII does not permit two or more owners in the same league to work together to better one team at the expense of the other (for example, making one-sided trades, one team dropping highly-rated players so the other team can pick them up, etc.). The Fantasy and League Message Boards, League News area, League Email Address and Chat Room are available for you to communicate with other league owners. We ask that you refrain from posting or sending messages that could be construed as offensive to other owners. Inappropriate communication can also include spamming other league team owners with trade offers and posting multiple messages on the message board. If a team owner is unable to abide by the guidelines specified in the CBS Interactive Terms of Use, CBSII reserves the right to terminate that team owner's ability to communicate within the league and/or remove that owner from the league. League Champion Priz | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
