So you want to dip your toes into College Fantasy Football? The latest product drop from Yahoo! Fantasy Sports gives you the opportunity to experience the joys and pains of the game that those of us here at Campus2Canton love and enjoy, in a format that most closely mirrors the NFL game you should already be familiar with.
If you haven’t already, make sure to read Jared Palmgren’s “What You Need to Know” article that breaks down the key differences between College Fantasy and its NFL counterpart. Once that’s done, you’re ready to come along for the ride as we break down some basic roster-construction strategy for drafts in Yahoo!’s default-format leagues.
| Position | Number of Starters |
| QB | 1 |
| RB | 2 |
| WR | 2 |
| TE | 1 |
| FLEX | 2 |
| D/ST | 1 |
| Team Offense | 1 |
Above is the breakdown of what your starting lineups will consist of on a weekly basis. As you can see, benches will remain pretty tight as ten of your 18 roster spots will be starting. The good news is, waivers will be a godsend, as they’re much more valuable and plentiful on a weekly basis with the increased player pool — you have a nice 69 teams to draft from in the P4 (including Notre Dame) in contrast to the 32 in the NFL. The bad news is you’ll have some tough decisions about who to roster, so let’s jump into the best roster-construction habits to use when drafting.
Full-Stream Ahead
Let’s get this out of the way: streaming is going to be your friend in these leagues. Streaming at positions like TE and defense will be a must. However, taking it one step further, streaming QB could be your friend in these drafts.
Using Campus2Canton’s P4 Bestball Projections as a guide, QB12-QB37 are all separated by roughly 4 fantasy points per game (disclaimer: this assumes 4 points per passing touchdown). That flat distribution suggests there should be good QBs in the waiver pool available for your taking when a juicy matchup looms. You may need to play a few weeks ahead, but streaming QBs seems viable in these leagues.
Approach your draft with the idea that you can land one or two late-round QBs and navigate their out-of-conference schedules before finding some matchup-based options as conference play begins.
The Dirty Dozen
Loading up on RBs and WRs early on in these drafts is a good way to stockpile talent and ensure you have high-scoring players at both positions and in each of your FLEX slots. Grabbing a combination of 12 at these two positions lets you build your lineups with 2 QBs, 6 RBs, 6 WRs, 1 TE, 1 D/ST, and 2 Team Offenses.
This appears to be the ideal construction as it allows you to employ the streaming options at both TE and D/ST. The flexibility to stream QBs late, the ability to use the TeamOffense spot as a matchup-oriented one, and the ability to do so regardless of whether you draft them early or risk it and draft them late. Which brings us to the last item…
What’s Best for the Team?
Team Offenses are a wrinkle that Yahoo! has thrown into the mix, which is a wildcard for those who have played the CFF game and newcomers alike. Using their own breakdown of this new position, you can see that the top scorers of the position from last year would have included some of the usual suspects (Ohio State, Oregon, and Indiana are all straightforward options), but we see that this position will likely have some dark horses emerge as very usable options.
Vanderbilt’s Team Offense would have placed 5th overall in 2025.
This seems like an opportunity to use that risk to your advantage and target two teams that may be a bit off the radar. Consider targeting Big-12 and ACC teams that typically face far weaker defenses than their Big-10 and SEC counterparts. Having two options in your pocket throughout the season will help you maximize scoring based on matchups and navigate injuries, as a team’s entire outlook can change if its star player gets banged up.
