StupidLeague

East or West Time Zone

Neither seat is a clean time zone, and both cuts were forced by the same thing: on a superflex board the elite quarterbacks lump together by geography. Eastern time is seventeen of the thirty-two franchises and took 2.2 times a fair share, but cutting all four East divisions out of it removes Allen, Daniels, Hurts and Maye in one go and drops it to 0.22x — which is why the cut is the AFC East alone. Mountain and Pacific between them are seven franchises and finished last on the whole menu, so Western reaches into the Central for the teams on its own half of the map. The two land at 1.08x and 1.24x; every tidier version of this seat has one variant winning and one watching.

Light, Mid, or Heavy

Graded against the player's own position: QB ('215 or under', '216-225', '226+') · RB ('210 or under', '211-220', '221+') · WR ('190 or under', '191-205', '206+') · TE ('245 or under', '246-250', '251+'). Stated in pounds rather than BMI — within a position the two orderings are nearly identical, and nobody can remember a BMI cutoff at a draft table.

Short or Long Last Name

Letters only — apostrophes and hyphens do not count.

Big Ten + Big 12, SEC, or Anywhere Else

College conference under the 2026 alignment.

Order Matters

Every pick must come at or after the one before it along whichever axis you chose. Ties are allowed, and have to be — there are barely more distinct heights on the whole board than there are roster spots, so a strictly-increasing version could not be drafted at all. The trap is self-inflicted: go too high too early and the rest of your draft is whatever is left above you. The run carries on through the season. Every player you trade for must come at or after the last one you traded for, so if your first trade of the year brings in a "B", the next one cannot bring in an "A". That half is commissioner enforced: the app can see the order your picks came in, but not the order your trades did.

No Repeat Initials

Unlike the jersey shticks this one bites from the very first pick: every player you take burns a letter for the rest of the draft. Twelve men means twelve different letters, and the alphabet is not evenly spread across a football roster. Confined to one conference it is tighter still — roughly two dozen letters over a third of the board, so the common ones run out and you end up hunting a Q or an X in the late rounds.

Proven Only

Five NFL seasons before you are allowed to own him. The all-rookies side of this seat is gone — it leaned entirely on one incoming draft class, which is a lottery ticket rather than a shtick.

Bye Week Bingo

One player from every bye week your conference plays, and never more than two from any single one. A conference plays eight or nine different bye weeks, so filling the card takes most of a twelve-man roster and leaves only three or four spare picks — which are the only free choices the seat gets all draft, and are far easier to spend early than to get back. The order no longer matters, only the roster you finish with: this used to be a cycling rule that closed a bye week the moment you held one, which made it the tightest seat on the menu and not in an interesting way.

Common Man

Surname in the 100 most common in the United States (2010 census).

Lucky Number 7

Counts every non-exempt player you hold, bench and IR and taxi included; kickers and defenses are exempt here as they are everywhere else. Nothing binds until the roster is full — this is a rule you steer into over the last few picks, not one you draft under all day.

Dome or Tundra

Old, Young, or Prime

Age on opening day. Whole years, so nobody has to argue about birthdays.

Odd or Prime

Jersey number. Odd is the broad half of the board and Prime the specialist pick at about a third of it — and every prime but 2 is odd, so these two seats are drafting out of the same bin.

One Per Team

No two players from the same franchise. At sixteen roster spots against a conference's sixteen teams this was an exact bijection, and that is what made it work; at twelve spots there is slack, and four teams you simply never touch. Left to the whole league it would be no rule at all — thirty-two franchises against twelve picks means taking the best player available almost every round and never repeating yourself. Confined to one conference the teams you are deep at run out, and the last rounds are a hunt through whoever is left on the clubs you have not touched.

Birds or Animals

NFL team mascots. Birds is the smaller pool of the two -- five franchises against nine -- so it drafts thinner but faces less competition.

Short, Mid, or Tall

Graded against the player's own position: QB ('6'1" or under', '6'2"-6'3"', '6'4" or taller') · RB ('5'9" or under', '5'10"-5'11"', '6'0" or taller') · WR ('5'11" or under', '6'0"-6'1"', '6'2" or taller') · TE ('6'3" or under', '6'4"-6'5"', '6'6" or taller')

Jersey Limit

Twelve men under 80 means an average jersey under seven, so single digits and the teens are most of what fits. The cap was 60 while the roster was sixteen men; twelve of them under 60 measured at half a fair share and 80 measured at 1.04x, so the number moved with the roster rather than being left where a longer roster had put it.

Pick a Region

Both divisions of that name, AFC and NFC.

Draft Capital

Split three ways rather than two. A straight rounds-1-2 against everyone-else cut hands the first seat 50 of the top 60 players and the other seat 10, which is not a league. Three bands trade top-end talent against depth.

Vowel Movement

Only about one surname in twelve starts with a vowel, which was too thin a pool to field a team from. Counting either end of the name opens it up — every -a, -e and -o ending joins the Abdullahs and the Ekelers — and still leaves out most of the board.

All J's

Blue's Brothers

Blue as a genuine primary colour. Teal and aqua do not count, so Miami and Jacksonville are out.

College Mascot

Any living creature counts. The animal-only and bird-only splits used to be offered here and are gone: birds alone covered barely a tenth of the board, which is not a seat, and animals alone was this rule minus the ducks.

Jack Reacher

Named for a man who never reaches. ADP is the market's own board, so this seat is barred from paying up: at pick 12 the market has to be waiting until pick 17 or later on him. A player with no ADP at all is fair game — the market never drafts him, which is later than any pick. The season is the same rule with the picks run out: every player you hold must carry an ADP over 5. Every legal draft pick already does, so trades and waiver claims are judged on exactly what the draft was, with no stored draft to replay. Read the mark on this seat before you take it. Buying at a discount every single pick is expensive in a way no value of the discount fixes: across 5, 10, 15 and 20 picks it won 0.0% of simulated seasons at every one of them. What it does instead is compress — its season-to-season spread is a third of a normal seat's, because a rule that bars the top of the board bars the rosters that win leagues. The ceiling goes long before the floor does. It is here because it was asked for, at the mildest of the four discounts, and flagged.

Late Bloomers

Rookie season at 23 or older. Structurally the weakest seat in the set: players who reached the NFL late are under-represented at the very top of the board, and no cutoff fixes that.

One Team Only

Never appeared on another franchise's regular-season roster — and stayed long enough for that to mean something. Loyalty on its own was the loosest rule on the menu, because every rookie trivially qualifies; the tenure clause is what turns it into an actual one-club man.