12 Fun Ways to Determine Your Fantasy Football Draft Order (2024)

By Nick ErcolanoApr 1, 2022

5 comments

Often overlooked and underrated, how you choose to make your league’s draft order can set the tone for the entire season. Is this year actually going to be serious? Competitive? Fun? There’s a million different ways this can be done to spice up your league’s off season, it just depends on your particular league and it’s players.

But before you even start stressing about how to determine your order, you need to make sure to make sure you have the big day covered.

Grab a FantasyJocks Fantasy Football Draft Board early to avoid any shipping delays. Still need a trophy? My personal favorite are their Fantasy Football Rings!

Here are 12 fantasy football draft order ideas for the season!

1. Bet on a Sporting Event

Sports on sports on sports. My girlfriend most likely stopped reading after that previous sentence. The wait for football season is grueling. My brain needs an alternative stimulation to get through the dog days of summer. Luckily, there are plenty of exciting sporting events that take place in the months prior to your fantasy football league’s draft date. Some events that can be used:

2. Beer Game Competition

If you’re anything like me, in that you’re friends are 50% human and 50% alcoholics. Is there a better way to decide your league’s draft order than through a drinkinggame tournament/competition? If you’re in college, that’s perfect, tensions will run high. Apparently, everyone is the best beer pong player in the history of their fraternity. If you received your bachelors before Justin Bieber became a full-grown woman, even better. It’s likely your league hasn’t gotten rowdy in some time and a good bonding experience can only help rally the league before the season begins.

Beer pong tournament anyone? Teams of two, once a team gets knocked out, those two individuals play 1-on-1 to determine draft order. Last team standing repeats the 1-on-1 game as well, vying for the top selection of draft spot. Maybe a giant game of flip cup is in order. Whatever sinks your submarine.

3. Video Game Tournament

If you like sports, you probably like video games; mindless activities help you get away from your own reality. Sorry, that was depressing. But, the good news is you can get the best of both worlds with this option.

Set up a tournament, with the game of your choosing. Whether it’s Madden, NBA 2K, Super Smash Bros, Mario Kart, James Bond: Golden Eye, etc. Doesn’t matter. To make it fair, throw 10 game choices into a hat and choose from that. Set up a tournament if the in-game settings allow, or simply create a manual bracket using pen and paper, then play to determine the champion.

Just make sure none of your friends are German, or French, or whatever these guys are:

Winner, as always, gets their choice of draft spot.

4. Wonderlic Test

Forget the SAT, the CPA and the GMAT. This is now the most important test of your life. The Wonderlic Test is often associated with the NFL draft process, a measure teams use to gage a player’s intelligence off the field. You can find a sample 50-question test at www.footballiqscore.com. Have everyone in the league take the test, highest score gets first choice of his or her pick.

*fun fact -Morris Claiborne scored a 4, the lowest by any NFL player in history.

5. Pick From a Hat for a Draft Order Lottery

Boring, yes. But it gets the job done when you can’t get everyone physically together to act out a draft order event. Just make sure one or two of your buddies can join you or simply take a video of the random picking so the rest of your league mates know you’re not pulling a Brady. I recommend using Ping Pong Balls for added realism.

6. Texas Hold-em Tourney

Anyone over the age of 35 should have a soft spot for this one. Gone are the good old days of losing half of your monthly salary to bots on PokerStars. But a good ole fashion fixed buy in Poker Tournament is the perfect way to not only steal some cash off your buddies but also decide your draft slot!

7. Hold a Reverse Draft/Draft

Everyone agrees the draft is the highlight of the season right? Why not hold 2? Let me elaborate. If your league has been around for at least 1 season already, then you can choose your draft slot in reverse order of the previous years standings.

Instead of automatically assigning a member the first pick, they get first CHOICE of his draft slot. Gives you a chance to strategize based on your keeper given our keeper rules.

8. Punt/Pass/Kick Competition

Self Explanatory. Grab a ball, find a field and bring something to mark each attempt. Quick and easy way to establish your slot. (Also a quick way to crush the self confidence of the lucky person to finish dead last)

9. NFL/Fantasy Football History Trivia

This one takes a bit of prep work and needs to be administered by an independent and unbiased third party. You may need to incorporate some level of a drinking game to keep some league members awake.

10. Cornhole Comp

Have league members line up in the reverse order of last year's standings and begin tossing beanbags at a Cornhole board from the same distance away. The first person to get the beanbag into the hole on the board gets to choose their draft spot first. Repeat until all draft spots are filled.

11. Paper Air Plane Competition

Another simple and easy idea. Each league member constructs their own airplane, writes their name on it and then lets it fly as far as possible. All at the same time. Just be warned that you will probably waste close to an hour of your life "researching" on YouTube.

12. Test your MANHOOD (our favorite)

Who’s the true alpha dog of your fantasy wolf pack? Find out once and for all. If you’re over the age of 30, you will probably concede that you may not be as full of piss & vinegar as you once were in your glory days. IE – your testosterone levels are probably nosediving like a plane without fuel.

Here is your chance to check in on your man health and also determine your draft order.

Have everyone from the league order an at home testosterone test kit.

Highest numerical score drafts first, lowest last (or reverse order, if you want to show some sympathy to the noodle armed choir boy who has the lowest score in the league)

Either way, your league will be armed with some fantastic trash talking material for the upcoming season.

Please let us know if your league has any fun traditions in the comments below. If your league still needs a real trophy, check out our Fantasy Football Belts on your way out!