By Zack Cimini
Notjustagame23@gmail.com

The advancement and growth of fantasy sports and fantasy football specifically has been exponential year by year. There are many different types of leagues setup by giddy commissioners that drool for preparation each summer. Owners currently find the biggest differences in comparitive leagues based on scoring formats and starting spots. Whether it’s an additional flex spot, or other minimal differences there is a big glaring neglecting hole that needs to be used in 2010. A roster’s bench.

A bench is basically there for owners to have depth in order to sidestep bye weeks, injuries, or unfavorable matchups. It works out perfectly most of the time until you look at your teams loss and see all the accumulated points and non used contributions that sat on your bench. Owners predictably can count on losing multiple games by their boneheaded moves of starting the wrong players.

The main variable that makes fantasy football so enticing is it’s real life management feel on top of watching that come to fruition every Sunday. You deal with the injuries like a true manager, make cuts, trades, and even get into a few spats every now in then with your divisional opponents.

The element missing from fantasy football is the ability to use your bench the same way a coach in the NFL can. Why should you as a fantasy owner have to witness an absolute horrid performance from one of your starters? Just like a coach can yank a poor performing quarterback to give his team a chance at winning, a fantasy owner should be able to as well. When that coach makes the sacrifice it’s not an automatic restart to the game. He lives with that decision in belief his team has a stronger opportunity to grab a win from that point forward.

Losing out on whatever time has surpassed in the game; a quarter or whichever length should easily be a technology ramification Yahoo Sports, ESPN, and many other fantasy football software companies can do. Owners than can decide where to make a move and maybe gain an extra five to ten points to pull out a win. Case in point a quarterback like Kurt Warner is one you can tell if he is going to have a strong or poor game after a few series.

Maybe he comes out flat and you started him because of a favorable matchup. You would still get his crappy performance as part of your team for the length of time it took you to pull him out. If you make that sacrifice too bench Warner for another quarterback playing at the same time the Cardinals game started, you’d take the hit for how many minutes that game is behind the Cardinals game. If the game is ahead minutes wise than whoever you inserts statistics would not count until it met the official time period of Warner being benched.

This would be the same for a player on your bench that’s game is starting later. Software would recognize the time that players statistics can start counting based upon your move. Of course this could backfire and Warner could go out and have an incredible second half as does happen in a game of momentum swings. The best push for this is in the case of injuries. When a player goes down on your fantasy team you usually have to eat that donut of points in costly fashion.

Let the fantasy owner have the ability to utilize his bench in a true manner. Right now it is not a bench it is a minor league team waiting for call up spot duty on a sporadic basis. We truly believe this element needs to be added to fantasy leagues as quick as possible. It’d be comparable to the stock market where making that sell too early could be fatal to your team, but making that daring move can also reap a big pay day and ultimately win for your fantasy team.

Provide us feedback on what you think by emailing us at notjustagame23@gmail.com. Start contacting Yahoo, ESPN, and your favorite league setup to implement this for 2010. Fantasy football needs a new twist to it, and this is it.