Before I start listing the nightmares with free fantasy football, I'd like to say that free leagues do have their place. The correct way to play free fantasy football is with a group of known friends with a person acting as commish. If you know everyone in the league and you have a strong commish with well written down rules, the free leagues are pretty great.

If you don't know anyone in the league and the league is just a Yahoo, Sandbox, Sportsline, or any other free league, then look out! These nightmares do happen and happened often, ruining your entire fantasy football season.

These free fantasy football league nightmare happen every year:

• The worst nightmare is collusion! Here's what happens. You have joined a CBS Sportsline League, drafted well and are off to a great 4-0 start. The first indication of problems occurring is a trade that doesn't quite look fair. Perhaps it's an injured 1st round player traded for a good 1st round player and a scrub. What you don't know is Tim and Jim each joined your league, and they are best friend. After a while, Tim and Jim decide that if they take all the good players off of both teams, they can together build a great team and win the league. So, over a few weeks, they trade all the good players from Jim's team over to Tim. Tim now has a super team and easily wins the league. Trades are hard to overturn in the free CBS leagues. You'll write emails and complain, but in the end, you'll lose even though your team was the better team.

  AntSports doesn't have 10,000 leagues. We take emails that accuse teams of collusion and unfair trading very serious. We don't tolerate cheaters. Fantasy Football is supposed to be fun. We make sure it is!

• The second nightmare with free leagues is owners quitting. Since team owners do not have anything invested in the league, once they lose a few games, they quit. Who wants to play in a league where half the owners have quit by week 8? Not me.

  Team owners who actually pay for their team usually stick with their team until the end. At AntSports, a few each year do give up, but for the most part all leagues remain competitive right until the end. With AntSports keeper leagues, all owners are motivated to keep winning throughout the entire fantasy season.

• Another nightmare that free leagues enjoy is not only do many teams quit, but once in a while, just before they quit, they dump their entire roster to free agency. Some of these free leagues are first-come-first-served and if you weren't online for a few days, you will find out that the rest of the league had a feeding frenzy of free agent grabbing and you missed out. Your once great team is now just average since each other active team just grabbed 2 new starters.

  At AntSports dumping your team is not allowed. As soon as the team dumps their roster, AntSports is notified via email and we can instantly correct the problem and lock down the quitting team's roster. So far, I've never had to resort to this.

• Most free leagues don't give out prizes. Or their prizes only go to the top teams in the entire country. I believe CBS Sportsline gives away a T-Shirt to the winner of the league.

  All winners of AntSports Trophy Leagues will get a 16" Engraved Trophy exactly like the Image on the Trophy League page. It's an awesome trophy, see what past league champions had to say about it. Trophy Comments.

• Personalize commish. I will personally oversee all my trophy leagues and give each league attention that the Free leagues cannot with 1000's of leagues.

• How many teams make the playoffs in free leagues? If it's only four of 12, like most free services, that's a problem. In 1999, I played in one of these leagues. My team had the most total points and the 2nd best record in the league. Problem was, I didn't win my division because the team with 1 more win than me (we both had way more wins than any other team) was in my division. Guess what happened in the playoffs? The best team plays the wild card team. Hmmm... That the Best team plays the wild card team, my team, i.e., the team with the second best record and the most total points. Shouldn't the best team play the worst team in the first round?

  That's why AntSports uses 6 teams in the playoffs. The best 2 teams regardless of division get BYEs. That's right, they did great the entire season, shouldn't they be rewarded? Shouldn't the regular season count for something? I love getting the bye. Let the other teams fight it out the first week.

• Free Leagues die after the season ends.

  Unless someone acts as commish and tries to keep the free league together, the free leagues all disband after the season. What about next year? Where's the rivalry?

  At AntSports, each year, most of the same teams return to their league. The idea is you build up a good group of team owners and each year you keep playing against them. It's great and it's fun. The way fantasy football is meant to be. Keeping the league together leads to a much more fun and competitive league.

• Free Leagues season ends on NFL Week 16.

  AntSports Leagues, NFL Week 17 is the Free-For-All week, where each Team owner can field a starting lineup using any NFL players they want. Highest score in each league wins.

  During the playoffs, AntSports also has a Playoff Challenge. Didn't win your league? Maybe you can win the playoff challenge. It's all just part of playing at AntSports.