There are three key offseason events during any fantasy football offseason:

  1. Watching your loser friend complete their last-place punishment
  2. Deciding draft order for the upcoming season
  3. The draft

The Fantasy Life staff is hard at work in the laboratory to create a cool tool regarding No. 1, while our content team continues to grind day and night to help with No. 3.

This brings us to today’s goal: What is the best way to decide your fantasy football league’s draft order?

Part of this discussion comes down to the league’s preference toward just how much skill should go into the event. I tend to believe pure randomness is the way to go in order to not overly favor one particular manager, although events that make the “skill” more about “how bad do they want it” are intriguing.

Without further ado: 10 fun ways to decide your 2023 fantasy football draft order listed in no particular order.

1. May the best gambler win

There are several variations of this method depending on your state’s casino and sports gambling laws. Either way: Each league member gets a relatively small amount of money ($20? $100?) to bet for a predetermined length of time, and the order is derived by the best returns on investment!

Sports gambling allows this to be done over a multi-day stretch, while a 60- to 120-minute time limit at the casino would make the most sense there.

Not completely random obviously, but undoubtedly a fun time? Absolutely.

2. Have a celebrity on cameo randomly assign your draft order

The possibilities here are endless.

  • Hue Jackson for $70?
  • LaVar Ball for $133?
  • Hank from Breaking Bad for $150?

It’s been brought to my attention that former all-world Browns returner Josh Cribbs in particular has done a great job with this in the past. While this one isn’t free, it’ll undoubtedly create some great memories and one helluva reveal for everyone.

3. Everyone takes the NFL Wonderlic test (h/t Shawn Foss)

There are online equivalents that measure your ability on the 50-question test in 12 minutes or less. While league mates could feasibly spend extra time practicing and studying for the test, the reality that this is a real-life pre-draft evaluation tool makes it awfully funny to apply to a fantasy football league.

Ultimately, this is a quick way to accomplish the goal at hand while also providing the opportunity to make fun of your friends who inevitably perform poorly on the test.

Sounds like a win-win to me.

4. WWE-themed event

There are two realistic (ha!) ways to go about this:

  1. Buy the WWE video game and create a match with as many wrestlers as you have league members. Because some wrestlers will have higher ratings than others, consider adding your fantasy football managers into the game with the same skills to create a level-playing field.
  2. Watch an old Royal Rumble match (again, easy enough to find on YouTube) and assign each league member a set of numbers that will reflect their contestants. Traditionally, a Royal Rumble match has 30 wrestlers, so each fantasy manager will get two or three randomly assigned contestants.

So much random madness happens in these events that at least one of your friends is destined to get their hopes up before hilariously crashing back to reality. After all, entertainment at your friend’s expense is what fantasy football is ultimately all about.

5. Super Smash Bros

The allure here is the randomness factor: All versions of this video game allow the ability to randomly assign characters and set the skill level, allowing you to make a tournament-style format to decide your draft order. Hell, you could feasibly just make everyone the exact same character if you’re trying to really watch some madness unfold.

The only problem here is that the N64 version doesn’t allow for more than four players at once, while newer games on the Switch only go up to eight. You’ll have to get a pen and paper out to determine a bracket structure, but beyond that you should be all set to watch fictional characters single-handedly determine your fantasy football hopes and dreams.

6. Dave and Busters Decathlon (h/t Chuck Bass)

Feel free to use an arcade bar equivalent instead, but the gist here is that you collectively figure out 12 games for everyone to play throughout the evening, keep track of points and assign 1-12 scores depending on how each person did, and at the end tally up everything to determine the order.

My only issue with this is that we all have that one friend who inexplicably crushes random video games. As you can guess: I’m not that guy, pal, but regardless it’s easy to see how everyone wins during a night out at one of America’s finest establishments.

7. Beer pong tournament

This one is contingent on the entire league being able to get together for a draft weekend but if possible provides a competitive — albeit far from random — way to get your order figured out.

A few house rules that might help prevent games from going on for too long:

  1. One-on-one games
  2. Six cups per side (3-2-1 starting position)
  3. No re-racks
  4. No rebuttals

Not the best choice if the goal is for the selection process to be as random as possible — although it’s hard to argue that the entertainment factor is off the charts.

8. Let golf decide

I’m open to the idea of mini golf deciding things, although that will inevitably come with some rather steep skill discrepancies between league mates.

The better, albeit longer, plan: Assign each league member a random golfer (top-12 highest ranked in the world makes sense) ahead of an August tournament and assign draft order based on who finishes the highest.

There are four main options here, with the latter two representing the best bets to include most of the world’s best golfers:

  • Wyndham Championship (Aug. 3-6)
  • FedEx St. Jude Invitational Championship (Aug. 10-13)
  • BMW Championship (Aug. 17-20)
  • Tour Championship (Aug. 24-27)

I prefer this concept in situations where the league isn’t able to get together for a weekend. This way everyone can talk shit for days on end without spending four days together waiting for the tournament to end before figuring out who is drafting where.

9. Horses races

The year’s big-three horse races have already concluded, but there are other options:

  • Find an old event on YouTube and randomly assign numbers to all of your league mates. Some races have more horses than others; focusing on the Kentucky Derby (20) or Preakness (14) will provide enough options to satisfy most (all?) league sizes.
  • There are also arcade games online that accomplish this goal.
  • Round up the mates and head on over to your local track and make a day out of it.

Pure adrenaline for a few minutes while you watch some of the world’s finest horses race to decide your fantasy football fate, is that something you might be interested in?

10. Fantasy draft combine

The order is simple:

  1. Flip cup
  2. Make a beer pong shot
  3. Throw a football through a target
  4. Make a corn hole toss
  5. Sprint across the finish line

You’ll need ample space, but man oh man this looks fun.

Maybe not the most random event, although maybe that’s not always the point. Winners focus on winning and losers focus on winners, after all.

Some other honorable mentions include: YouTube marble racing, poker tournament and Little League World Series-themed betting, among others.

Does your league have an even better way of deciding draft order? Let us know over @MBFantasyLife. After all: It’s always a great day to be great.

Decide draft order