I unabashedly relish punishments for fantasy football leagues.

Too often, I participate in leagues where the bottom few teams are checked out by week eight. There’s nothing worse than fighting for a playoff spot while your competition faces a ghost ship with a half-empty lineup.

The threat of a menacing last-place punishment is sometimes enough to encourage engagement throughout the season. However, when it’s not, someone has to pay.

Here are some creative punishments for those last-place teams when threats alone aren’t enough.

Pay for the End of the Season Party

I love the idea of making the loser pay for a party at the end of the year. This penalty involves making them pick up the tab at your local bar or buying pizzas for the league.

It’s also an excellent excuse to get everyone together to debrief after the season and relive the season’s highs and lows. You can commiserate on injuries, decide who won or lost trades, and bond over hating the owner who won the championship (obviously pure luck!).

A couple of sensible caveats do apply. 

First, this punishment is more applicable when everyone in your league lives in the same geographic region. No one is driving three thousand miles for a pizza party.

Second, you probably want to set a price cap (maybe a couple of hundred bucks). I don’t know about your friends, but the guys in my leagues are savages that could run up a bar tab higher than a mortgage payment.

The Loser Eats It, Literally

This punishment idea is truly Fear Factorish.  

For this punishment idea, you’ll pick some extraordinarily disgusting and disturbing (but preferably non-toxic) for the loser to consume.  And get it all on camera, of course.

You can let the commissioner set the menu. Or better yet, allow the league to vote on the dish at the beginning of the season.    

Here are some ideas to get your creative juices flowing:

• Dehydrated spiders
• Nattō
• Baby mouse wine
• Casu Marzu Cheese
• Surströming
• Frog juice

There are so many truly horrific things that humans voluntarily eat that you can repeat this punishment year after year.  And the losers will never have to eat the same thing twice. 

Bottoms up, bottom feeders!

The Loser Endurance Test

Another classic league punishment is making the loser complete an extreme physical challenge.  This test could require completing a half-marathon, running the stairs at your alma mater’s stadium, or performing a few thousand pushups.

For this to be effective, it helps to know your league owners and their individual fitness levels.  After all, one owner’s morning workout is another’s Bataan death march.

So pick a physical challenge that is unpleasant but reasonably achievable.  

The Public Test Humiliation

As a commissioner, I favored stressing my league-mates minds in place of their bodies.  So rather than grading my fantasy football team, I chose to test the league loser.   

Here’s a fun fact about the LSAT, MCAT, SAT, ACT, and GRE: you don’t have to be a current student to take the test. 

Literally, any dummy can sign-up.

Make the league loser endure the ignominy of sitting through an hours-long test, surrounded by intelligent young people with actual potential.  And to maintain transparency, require that the user post their scores to each of their social channels.

The Sexy Calendar Shoot

For this idea, the league loser has to come out of pocket for an actual, professional photo shoot.  These photos then must be used to publish a custom league calendar for each owner.

The Calendar Shoot is ideal retribution for 12-team leagues because each owner can pick the outfit for one month. The league champ would naturally get to pick the calendar theme along with the cover photo.

A bonus with this idea is that the league calendar can be used for the following season.  You can highlight important dates like draft day, the trading deadline, and the start of league playoffs.

Awarding Team-Naming Rights

This punishment is an oldie but goodie: the champ gets to name the loser’s team the following season.  Alternatively, this idea could double as a prize for the fourth place team in place of a cash payout.

Granted, this isn’t nearly as evil as the other ideas in this article.  But it does have the benefit of staying in league. 

Maybe you’re in a work league, and forcing your manager to dress up like a ballerina and covering him in chocolate syrup for a photo shoot isn’t an option.  So this punishment allows you to keep the humiliation in-house while avoiding lawsuits.

Mediocrity is Forever, and so are Tattoos

Make the loser get the fantasy league name tattooed somewhere on their body.  Alternatively, you could also make them tattoo the logo of the league champion.

This is one of the most extreme options on the list.  So this is only for the most insane and committed leagues.

As such, you usually have to let the loser pick the size and location of the tattoo.

The Public Roast

This loser penalty involves forcing the fantasy league loser to post a photo of themselves on Reddit’s r/roastme.  This is a subreddit dedicated to tearing down its subjects with the cruelest (and most accurate) attacks possible. 

While this punishment is free, it is particularly vicious.  But it’s ideal for leagues that want to destroy their members’ psyche in place of their finances.

The Social Media Takeover

The loser has to give their fantasy league-mates the login credentials to their Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or another platform of their choice. The other owners get a full twenty-four hours to post whatever statuses, photos, memes, and links they choose.

Again, it’s a good idea to set some sensible limits here about the type of content that is and isn’t acceptable.  No one should be in danger of losing their jobs, just the respect of their friends and family.

A Final Warning

I’ll close with a few words of caution.  Remember, the punishments you dish out to your fantasy crew could (and likely will) come back to haunt you in a future season. 

Don’t do anything to your league-mates that you wouldn’t want to be done to you.  Alternatively, just make sure you don’t come in last!

Good luck, losers.

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