Our league: an introduction

Okay, I have finally gotten my act together enough to think about this league, discuss with some others, and send an e-mail out about it.

As you all know, we have been thinking about starting a fantasy league centered around Us Weekly magazine, inspired by a column by the Sports Guy. The rules will be pretty simple:

Everyone who wants to play will create a team of seven male and seven female celebrities. There won't be a draft, so if I want Jessica Simpson and five other people do too, we can all have her. (This is much like the Real World/Road Rules Challenge fantasy league in that way, for those of you who have played.)

However, there will be an "A-list" of celebrities. This list will consist of five male and five female celebrities. Each team can only have ONE male and ONE female celebrity from the A-list on their team. (If you don't want a celebrity from the A-list, you don't have to have one.) The remainder of your team can be made up of any celebrities not on the A-list.

A List
Lindsay Lohan
Paris Hilton
Jennifer Aniston
Britney Spears
Jessica Simpson
Brad Pitt
Tom Cruise
George Clooney
Jake Gyllenhaal
Matthew McConaughey

The scoring will be as follows--you will get a certain number of points for photos of your celebrity that appear in Us Weekly magazine.

Cover: 10 point
Cover inset: 3 points
Inside photo: 1 point
"Look of the week": 3 points
"Who wore it best" winner: 3 points
"Who wore it best" loser: -3 points
Fashion police: -3 points

We are also going to have something called "accessory of the week." Every week, the scorer for the week before (one person who will go through the magazine and tally everyone's scores--I'll do this for the first week, and no one is required to volunteer for this, although it is certainly welcome) will get to choose the accessory of the week. It can be anything the scorer wants--large white purse, sunglasses, something with the Louis Vuitton logo, anything. You get an extra point each time your celebrity sports that accessory.

The league will be head-to-head, so each week you will be pitted against a new rival (one-on-one). You will get points for that week, and whichever person has the most gets the win. We will keep track of cumulative points, but those will only matter in the case of a tie.

We will also have a playoff system, although we will determine how long that will run once we know the number of teams we have.

We would like the season to start on Monday, June 19. Teams will need to be set by Sunday night every week, so you would have to choose your initial team by Sunday, June 18. You can add or drop players as many times as you would like throughout the season, but those drops and adds must be done by Sunday, or else they won't count until the next week. If you don't make any adds or drops by Sunday, you will just have the same team as the week before.

We have set up a blog for the sole purpose of people posting their teams for the week. Don't be afraid of the blog! It is just as easy as sending an e-mail with your team out--the only difference is that this way we have a central place where everyone can look at everyone else's team. It is super-easy to use, and I can walk you through it if you need help. Once you e-mail me that you want to play, I will send you an invite to the blog (if you want me to use a different e-mail address, just let me know), and then you can post your team. The web address is http://www.celebweeklyfantasyleague.blogspot.com/ and this e-mail will be posted there.

So--who is in? I think this will be really simple (despite the length of this e-mail) and a lot of fun. To add to the fun, we would like to have a $20 buy-in.

Please let me know if you are going to be playing, and feel free to send this along to others I may have forgotten.