How to Manage a Fantasy Football League on ESPN.com

Create an ESPN.com account. Just fill out your personal information, create a username and password, and make sure to write it down so you do not forget it in the future (see Resources below).

Create a new fantasy football league. Under all the sports tabs, click on "Fantasy Sports." At the main page, click on the "Create new league." You have the option of making the league public and open to everyone, or private, which requires invitations from the commissioner in order to join. You will also name your league and decide what type of fantasy scoring your league will use. Head-to-Head leagues feature weekly matchups similar to the NFL, where the team with the highest amount of points wins, while Total Points leagues disregard weekly matchups and instead reward a champion based on total points throughout the NFL's regular season. Note: ESPN automatically calculates scores in all formats, saving you much needed time on math equations.

Customizing your league. Set the amount of players allowed on each team's roster, which consequently will effect how many rounds you will have in your draft. ESPN instantly sets default settings for all these options, so you can stick with the default options or ignore them and customize to your liking.

Know the rules of scoring. The goal of fantasy sports is to "own" players who collect stats in actual games and in return are calculated as points in your league. Here you can set how many points equal certain stats or let ESPN.com stick with the defaults.

Know the general rules. Specify oddball rules dedicated to new player acquisitions, such as free agency and team trades, or remove them altogether.

Determine team information. Set the number of teams in the league, the name of each team and the name of each owner. Here you will invite owners to join in private leagues.

Set the schedule. You can either customize the schedule yourself or let ESPN.com create it. This is also where you will set playoff and championship game settings and the weeks on which they will occur. This is only applicable for Head-to-Head scoring systems.

Arrange the draft. The draft is one of the most important steps in the fantasy league process. Make sure you take your time here. You can either conduct the draft offline or online through the league homepage. Both types of drafts are feasible, depending on time and availability of the other owners. Online drafts work great if you cannot all meet in one place at the same time. Keep in mind that the number of players you specified on the roster setting is the number of rounds you will have. The ESPN default is 16 players, so you conduct 16 rounds in the draft. Note: If you decide to make the draft offline, then you can enter the team selections at a later time.

Finalize your league. The final step will summarize all your league settings. After you agree to the settings, your very own league homepage will be created with many of options at your disposal. This will serve as your league's headquarters throughout the year. Remember that you do not have to conduct or enter the draft selections or invite all owners during the previous steps; you can complete those tasks at a later date. Another nice feature of ESPN.com fantasy sports is if your fantasy league was a success and you decide to do it again next season, ESPN will save all your league settings and owners.