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Best Fantasy Football Punishments

By Shane Hallam | Updated on Tue, 30 Jul 2024 . 11:16 AM EDT

Raise the Stakes with a Fantasy Football Punishment

 

Want to raise the stakes of your fantasy league?

Why not add a punishment for last place?

Not only are fantasy football punishments growing in popularity, but they also keep the bottom of the league competitive as managers scramble to avoid impending doom.

Whether you want a fun, light-hearted punishment or going for extreme humiliation, we have you covered with the best fantasy football punishments. 

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Painless Fantasy Football Punishment Ideas

A fantasy football punishment doesn’t need to be completely devastating. 

Adding a fun, light punishment can give teams that tiny bit of extra motivation to stay out of the bottom of the league.

If you have a live draft with all of your buddies, it opens up even more possibilities for some playful jabbing, as the punishment can extend into next year’s draft.

Here are a few relatively painless punishments: 

Giving To Charity

Before the draft, vote on an amount that the last-place manager will donate to charity.

You can let the league's winner pick the charity or have the whole league vote. 

Choose one of the charities below that is supported by specific players. Bonus points if that player is from the winning team’s roster:

  • Christian McCaffrey Foundation - The Logan Project
  • Tyreek Hill Family Foundation
  • A.J. Brown Foundation
  • 87 & Running (Travis Kelce)
  • Jessie Rees Foundation (Amon-Ra St. Brown)
  • Student Program for Academic & Athletic Transitioning (Deebo Samuel)
  • American Blood Clot Association (Kyren Williams)
  • Melanoma Research Foundation (Raheem Mostert)
  • Cure SMA (Rachaad White)
  • Single Moms Planet (Travis Etienne & Puka Nacua)
  • Laureus Sport For Good (Breece Hall
  • Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Dallas (CeeDee Lamb)
  • Boys & Girls Clubs of Metropolitan Baltimore (Lamar Jackson)
  • Oishei Children’s Hospital (Josh Allen)
  • KB Foundation (Jalen Hurts)
  • Special Olympics (Sam LaPorta)

New Team Name

Have the league nominate a few team name options for the loser.

Come up with something personal to them or the poor fantasy draft that led to their demise.

Take it further by printing the name on a t-shirt for your live draft.

Order Up

If your league meets for the draft, have the last-place team pay for food and drinks for the entire league.

Set a maximum price for them to pay, or go the rookie hazing route and have everyone load up on the most expensive items on the list.

 

Embarrassing Fantasy Football Punishments  

If you want to step up the punishment, choose an embarrassing punishment for the league loser.

Not only will this be memorable (and perfect for social media), but it will also increase the motivation to not come in last.

Here are some embarrassing examples:

Public Shaming

Make them wear an embarrassing shirt in a public place, perhaps to an NFL game or sports bar during a game. 

There are plenty of “I suck at fantasy football” shirts available online.

I suck at fantasy football t-shirt used as a fantasy football punishment

Barbershop Stop

The loser receives an absurd haircut, as voted on by the league. Make it even better by having another league-mate document the whole ordeal.

Is the last-place finisher follically challenged? Have them wear a wig picked out by the league for an extended time. The more absurd, the better.

One Night Only Performance

Find a karaoke or stand-up comedy night in your hometown, and make the loser give their best performance.

Record it for everyone to enjoy for years to come.  

Back To High School

One of the first viral fantasy football punishments, making the loser take the SAT (and publicly reveal their results), is a multi-layered punishment.

Not only does this force the loser to study for the SAT so they don’t have to post an embarrassing score, but taking the test in a room full of high school students is punishment itself.

Making this a long-term punishment also creates competition for who can achieve the top SAT score.  

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Use our Auction Values to build a championship squad that won’t have to suffer any punishment.

 

Torturous Punishment: The Food Challenge

The trending fantasy football punishment right now is the food challenge. 

Force the loser to spend 24 hours in an eating establishment where they can eat their way to less time. This combines all the best elements of punishments.

It’s intense and has a strategic element for attacking the food over the 24 hours. It can also be embarrassing for the loser if they fail to reduce the time and spend 20+ hours in a restaurant.

Here are two food challenge possibilities for your league:

Waffle House Challenge 

The loser spends 24 hours in a Waffle House and can reduce their time by one hour per waffle consumed.

It sounds easy at first, but your stomach fills up awful quickly on the giant Waffle House waffles.

The best strategy is to take it slow with significant breaks and only a waffle or two at a time. Don’t try to take down a big stack in the beginning.

Make it even more entertaining by forcing them to live stream their experience so the league can check in and watch.   

McDonalds Challenge

A new addition to the food challenge, the McDonalds Challenge, may be even more brutal than housing waffles.

Joe DeLeone went viral when his league forced him to sit in a McDonalds for 24 hours with the ability to eat his way out using the following chart:

McDonalds Challenge as a fantasy football punishment

Joe live tweeted his experience, including his mistake of trying to go hard on the hash browns at the beginning. 

With only one documented occurrence of the McDonalds challenge so far, there is little in the way of strategy.

It would be fun to see the loser of your league try and conquer this brutal punishment.

 

Don’t Draft Scared

The best fantasy football punishments are simply ones you observe – not experience for yourself.

Take a few minutes and learn about the best way to draft and gameplan to get atop your league standings:

Shane Hallam Author Image
Shane Hallam, Writer
Shane has over 20 years of experience creating content and playing every fantasy football format including redraft, dynasty, devy, IDP, and more. He is a multi-year winner of $500 dynasty leagues on the FFPC and utilizes deep film and scheme study to enhance his fantasy performance.
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