Introducing: the Twitter Fantasy League

I'll to be honest with you up front: I'm not very good at fantasy sports.

I do tons of mock drafts, read up on all the sleepers and tune out everything Matthew Berry says. And yet, try as I might, I never place higher than fourth or fifth.

That changes today, because I invented my own fantasy sport. Introducing: the Twitter Fantasy League

The rules are simple. We'll pick a theme each month ("athletes who have won a championship in the last year" this time around) and arbitrarily select a pool of 25-30 eligible tweeters from that group. Each player drafts three tweeters, who accumulate points based on their based on their originality, creativity and cringe-worthy social faux-pas.

Here's the nitty gritty:

Scoring:

Positives

• A picture of something they ate: 1 point (If tweeted using instagram, 2 points)
• Asking a question about the city they're visiting: 1 point
• Trash talk directed toward a player or team: 3 points
• Trash talk directed toward a member of one's own team: 5 points
• An inspirational quote/life lesson: 1 point
• Trying to make a hashtag happen: 1 point
• Shoehorning in a hashtag: 1 point
• Accidental tweet (egregious typos, half-formed sentence, etc): 5 points
• RTing a fan making a funny comment: 2 points
• Being hacked: 20 points
• Tweeting during a game: 5 points
• 'Mic Drop': 10 points

Negatives

• A political tweet: -1 point
• Inside joke: -1 point
• More than one "lol" in a tweet: -2 points
• Twitter syntax error (using punctuation in a hashtag, etc): -1 points
• RTing a fan who blatantly asked for an RT: -1 point
• Being fined for a tweet: -20 points
• TUI (Tweeting Under the Influence): -2 points
• Shameless Promotion: -5 points
• Claiming they were hacked when they clearly weren't: -10 points

Draft Results:

Matt Christopher's Nightmare -- Dakota Gardner

Brad Keselowski, NASCAR driver
Floyd Mayweather, boxer
Torrey Smith, wide receiver, Baltimore Ravens

Team #WOHLO -- Dan Wohl

Dustin Penner, forward, Los Angeles Kings
Missy Franklin, Olympic swimmer
Michael Oher, offensive tackle, Baltimore Ravens

J.R. Smith and Sons Plumbing Co. -- Ian Kay

Terrell Suggs, linebacker, Baltimore Ravens
Bryant McKinnie, offensive tackle, Baltimore Ravens
Ricky Berens, Olympic swimmer

MyCousinTweeter -- Matt Monagan

George Kontos, pitcher, San Francisco Giants
Novak Djokovic, tennis player
Vonta Leach, fullback, Baltimore Ravens

Jackie Robinson Onassis -- Molly Fitzpatrick

Bernard Pierce, running back, Baltimore Ravens
Kerri Walsh Jennings, Olympic volleyball player
Victoria Azarenka, tennis player

Free Agents

Waivers

Tweeters can be added from the Free Agent pool weekly via a waiver-auction process. Each team may submit a bid using their total accumulated fantasy points to purchase a tweeter. The team with the highest bid rosters the tweeter and has their bid amount deducted from their total score. If two teams submit the same offer, the tiebreaker goes to the team lower in the standings.

There are a few more rules and wrinkles we'll elucidate throughout the coming months (read: we're figuring this out as we go along), but that's the core idea. Feel free to play along and let us know how you do in the comments, or if you have any brilliant suggestions for new rules, scoring ideas or anything else.

For now, let the tweets begin.

-- Dakota Gardner and the Cut4 Staff