Top Dog……With an *Asterick*

AF’s Top 25 thru Week 10 has been released and the Sock Bandits of AF’s Fantasy Circus comes in at #1 overall with a VsL % of .780  The ranking comes with an asterick attached, though, tarnishing the accomplishment.  Ice Cold Bruschis of the S-16 comes in right behind them with a .770 VsL% and League 28‘s DashNSMASH rounds out the top 3 with a .760 percentage.

The AF Top 25 is a ranking compilation of the top 25 teams (of the – currently – 90 teams) across all AF leagues.  The rankings are generated using teams’ VsL% which is the win percentage that teams would theoretically generate if they played weekly vs every team in their respective leagues.  Using this form of tabulation allows teams’ fantasy strength to be compared to each other across multiple leagues based on how the teams perform against the competition within their leagues.  In this way, the different scoring systems and formats of the different leagues become irrelevant and teams are able to be ranked in an aggregate form based on how dominant they have been against the teams in their own leagues.

The system does, however, have it’s flaws as evidenced by the Sock Bandits’ climb to number 1.  Playing in AF’s Fantasy Circus, the Bandits were victims of the fantasy scheduling gods, in that they were unlucky enough to often be the second highest scoring team of the week…while playing against the week’s top team.  They were able to amass a huge points total when compared to the other teams in the field, but did not have the W-L standings to match, and as such, were eliminated from competition after week 7 when the top 8 teams in AF’s Fantasy Circus advanced to round 2.  What this means is that Sock Bandits’ season lasted only from week 1-7 and their VsL% is based on that 7 week season, and it is theoretically much easier to amass that high win percentage on the shorter season.    Sock Bandits’ time at the top should be short lived as the fantasy season closes in on the playoffs and the teams that make the postseason see a coresponding bump in their VsL% – but, until then, congratulations to the Bandits.

The full Top 25 follows below, and can also be viewed here.  It is worth noting, that the previous number 1 team, Fantasy Addicts‘ The Great Khalil, has fallen all the way from #1 to #9, though in large part this is  not due to poor play by TGK, but rather that, On The Rox, Public Enemy, the Black Hats, monkeys on ecstacy, and the Pigs Island Dawgs have all been on an incredibly successfull run.  Congratulations to all teams making the list.