April 17, 2013 by Sean Childers in Livewire, Opinion with 2 comments
There’s already been some great back-and-forth in the comment section of our MLU Fantasy article.
MLU fantasy will have the same player scoring different amounts of points each week, depending on whether you position him as a handler, cutter, O Line or D Line player. One reader, Alex, takes issue with that divide:
Really don’t like the split O and D scoring. One of the cool things about Ultimate is the fluidity of lines and positions. . . . There is a line between “boring fantasy” and “completely arbitrary decisions about point scoring that don’t really have anything to do with the way Ultimate is played.” Offense starts struggling, coach decides to put your D guy in on O and he rocks out? No points for you.
But another anonymous commenter suggests that this scoring and positional complexity is what makes MLU fantasy innovative and appealing:
Go play boring fantasy in the other league. Simple. I think this is awesome! You’ll have to keep track of who is doing what and decide how to assign your players. Such a cool angle on this whole thing.
Both readers support their arguments by making analogies to positioning in NFL fantasy. From emails with MLU Commissioner Jeff Snader, it’s clear that MLU wanted to incorporate strategic elements from other fantasy games. In fantasy football, you could draft the best team but lose because you set your lineup unwisely; the same is true in MLU fantasy. MLU also feels that fantasy ultimate is still in its beta stage, as no one knows yet what is best, especially given the vast array of analysis possible using the UltiApps statistical system.
I see merit in both comments. Ultimate has more fluid positions than other sports like football, and one important part of new Ultimate statistical tools should be to show that even little contributions matter. But I’ve spent far more time drafting and thinking about my MLU fantasy team, in part because of the scoring and position innovations. In the future, Ultiworld hopes to do its own fantasy, drawing on the best aspects from a variety of fantasy games.
