A couple of mad ideas...

Was thinking about an old idea I suggested last year and ended up with a couple more that are mad but could also work really well with a bit of polishing. I wanted to put them out there and see what you thought.

1) Fantasy UCI Rankings
Like the UCI World Tour rankings, the top few players on each stage and at the end of each competition get a number of points. Those are tallied and the player with the most points at the end of the year is the winner of the Fantasy World Tour rankings.

Why would this be any different from the overall rankings?

By only awarding points to the top 10/20 teams per stage, weighted towards the top, those who win stages but not necessarily win races would be better placed than those consistently scoring well. In the Giro I was competing for a high place, I wasn't taking risks so was scoring top 50-100 each stage but not top 20, those people who were taking risks and not really in the running for the overall were the ones at the top of each stage. Likewise those who want to go for stage wins in the sprints might not switch in climbers like the overall competitors would and have a better chance in this as opposed to the overall or season long comps. Stacking your team with one type of rider would then have an actual purpose outside of going for a single stage win and then crippling your attempt on the overall.

Using the UCIs own rankings winning the P-N overall would be worth 100pts down to 4 in 10th place, stages would be worth 6pts down to 1pt in 5th. Winning a classic like the MSR would be worth 100pts, TdF stages 20 pts each.

I thought this scoring system (tweaked, possibly extended to include more team, the top 50 overall and per stage?) might keep people interested longer, give them something else to aim for outside of winning overall comps and also hopefully provide a format where the same people aren't always at the top. Two or three very good scores could move you right up the league and joining mid-year might not be as much of a hindrance if you get off to a flyer.

The high score league at the minute is good but you can't really move up it or work towards it any more than hoping for a good stage score, especially now the classics are done.

EDIT: I actually tried to get an idea of what this table would look like but the data's too spread out, if there was a way of seeing each team's positions on each stage that'd help

2) Teams of Teams
Kind of based around the above, some way of having groups of 9 fantasy players playing as a 'team', their Fantasy UCI points counting towards a team competition where each team of teams would compete against the others with a team of teams prize awarded at the end (similar to the UCI team prize in place for the highest scoring UCI team).

More than anything else I reckon this'd just be a laugh what could be more fun than beating a team of 9 road.cc employees

What do you think?

Also, as usual, actual prizes like bikes/vouchers aren't really that important for these little fun comps, something cool like a specific jersey or something fun would be ace but most of us just play for the fun of playing and competing so a massive prize wouldn't be required.