Every fantasy sports season starts the same way.
You gather your friends, crack open some beverages, and then spend thirty minutes arguing about who gets to pick first. Someone always claims their birthday gives them draft privileges, while another insists their terrible season last year earns them the top spot.
Instead of the same tired arguments, why not settle your draft order with something that brings laughs and creates stories you’ll tell for years? These methods turn the mundane task of determining pick order into an event that’s almost as entertaining as draft day itself.
The best part about creative draft order determination is that everyone walks away happy, even if they end up picking last. After all, how can you stay mad when you lost because you couldn’t guess how many gummy bears fit in a mason jar?
Funny Ways to Determine Draft Order
These methods range from mildly ridiculous to completely absurd, giving you options whether your group prefers gentle humor or full-blown chaos.
Each approach comes with everything you need to execute it flawlessly.
1. The Great Cereal Debate
Have each participant bring their favorite childhood cereal to the draft. Set up a blind taste test where everyone samples each cereal (without knowing which belongs to whom) and ranks them from best to worst. The person whose cereal receives the highest average ranking gets first pick, and so on down the line.
This method works brilliantly because it forces grown adults to defend their loyalty to Lucky Charms or Fruit Loops with the passion of a Supreme Court argument. Watch as your friend who brought steel-cut oats realizes he’s about to pick dead last while the person who brought Cookie Crisp claims victory. The beauty lies in how seriously everyone takes rating cereals they haven’t eaten in twenty years.
For added entertainment, require each person to explain their cereal choice before the tasting begins. Nothing quite matches the intensity of someone defending their Grape-Nuts selection to a room full of skeptical friends.
2. Wikipedia Speed Run Challenge
Give everyone the same starting Wikipedia page and the same target page. Set a timer for five minutes and see who can click their way to the destination fastest using only the links within Wikipedia articles. The first person to reach the target page gets first pick.
Choose challenging but achievable paths like getting from “Banana” to “Medieval Warfare” or from “Taco Bell” to “Ancient Egypt.” The strategy involves finding creative connections through completely unrelated topics, leading to hilarious commentary as people explain their logic.
This method rewards both knowledge and creative thinking while creating moments where someone accidentally spends three minutes reading about 14th-century farming techniques instead of clicking toward their goal. Pro tip: Have someone monitor screens to prevent cheating, because there’s always that one friend who’ll try to use the search function.
3. Childhood Photo Guessing Game
Request that everyone submit their most embarrassing childhood photo anonymously ahead of time. During your gathering, display all photos and have participants guess which photo belongs to which person. The person who correctly identifies the most photos earns the first pick.
The real entertainment comes from the photos themselves. Expect bowl cuts, questionable fashion choices, missing teeth, and poses that seemed cool in 1987 but now look like evidence from a time capsule. Watching your friends squint at a picture of a seven-year-old in a dinosaur costume while trying to identify distinctive features creates priceless moments.
Even better, this method often reveals surprising stories. That friend you thought was always cool? His mom dressed him like Little Lord Fauntleroy until age ten. These discoveries become running jokes that last far beyond draft day.
4. Text Your Ex Challenge
This one requires careful consideration of your group’s relationship status and sense of humor, but when appropriate, it delivers unforgettable results. Have everyone compose and send a text to an ex asking for fantasy football advice. The person who receives the most helpful response gets first pick.
Responses range from immediate blocks to surprisingly detailed analysis of running back depth charts. Some exes respond with single-word answers like “Brady,” while others write paragraphs analyzing offensive line strength and coaching changes. The variety of responses tells you everything about both the relationships and the fantasy football knowledge of various former partners.
This works best when everyone can laugh about their past relationships and when current partners understand the comedic intent. Skip this one if anyone in your group recently went through a messy breakup.
5. Grocery Store Receipt Archaeology
Have everyone bring their most recent grocery store receipt. Calculate each person’s “adulting score” using this formula: (Number of vegetables + Number of cleaning products) รท (Number of frozen dinners + Number of energy drinks + 1). The highest score picks first.
This method exposes who’s got their life together versus who subsists entirely on Hot Pockets and Red Bull. Watching someone try to argue that french fries count as vegetables or that energy drinks provide essential vitamins creates fantastic entertainment.
The scoring system rewards responsible shopping while gently mocking poor dietary choices. That friend who bought twenty items of produce gets rightfully rewarded, while the person whose receipt shows only beer, pizza rolls, and cat food faces some good-natured ribbing about their life choices.
6. The Spotify Embarrassment Shuffle
Everyone opens their Spotify (or music app of choice) and hits shuffle on their entire library. Whatever song plays first determines their draft position, ranked by the year the song was released, with the oldest song getting first pick.
This method creates hilarious moments when someone’s shuffle lands on a Disney soundtrack, early 2000s pop hits, or that one death metal song they forgot they downloaded. Watching your friend explain why “Baby Shark” exists in their library while everyone else landed on relatively normal music choices never gets old.
The beauty of this approach lies in its complete randomness combined with personal exposure. You can’t control what plays, but you have to own whatever your music library reveals about your secretly questionable taste.
7. Roommate Horror Story Tournament
Each participant shares their worst roommate story, whether from college, post-graduation apartments, or that time they lived with their cousin who collected vintage mannequins. The group votes on the most horrifying tale, with the winner earning first pick as compensation for their suffering.
Stories typically range from roommates who never cleaned dishes to people who brought home random dates at 3 AM on Tuesday nights. The voting process involves careful consideration of factors like duration of torment, creative grossness, and long-term psychological impact.
This method works particularly well because everyone has at least one roommate horror story, and the competitive aspect encourages people to dig deep for their most traumatic experiences. Plus, learning that your quiet friend once lived with someone who kept a pet iguana that had free roam of the apartment adds fascinating depth to your friendship.
8. Fast Food Tier List Creation
Give everyone fifteen minutes to create and defend a tier list ranking major fast food chains. Have the group vote on whose list most accurately captures the objective truth of fast food quality. The creator of the winning list gets first pick.
Watch as people passionately defend placing Taco Bell in S-tier while others argue that Wendy’s deserves more respect than McDonald’s. The debates become surprisingly intense when someone places a regional chain that half the group has never heard of in their top tier.
The entertainment value comes from how seriously everyone takes ranking establishments they probably shouldn’t eat at regularly anyway. Plus, you’ll discover which friend considers gas station hot dogs legitimate fast food and which one genuinely believes Subway makes healthy choices.
9. High School Superlative Voting
Create a list of fake high school superlatives specifically for your draft group, such as “Most Likely to Check Fantasy Scores During Their Wedding” or “Most Likely to Trade Their Starting Quarterback for a Kicker.” Have everyone vote anonymously, and the person who wins the most superlatives picks first.
The superlatives should reflect your group’s actual personalities and fantasy football quirks. Categories might include “Most Likely to Drop Their Entire Team After Week 1” or “Most Likely to Spend More Time Setting Their Lineup Than Talking to Their Family.”
This approach creates lasting inside jokes while celebrating everyone’s unique contribution to your group’s dynamic. Even picking last becomes entertaining when you’ve been voted “Most Likely to Accidentally Start Their Bench Players All Season.”
10. Baby Picture Beauty Contest
Similar to the childhood photo challenge, but specifically focused on baby pictures and judged purely on cuteness factor. Everyone submits their baby photo, and the group votes on the most adorable infant. The cutest baby gets first draft pick.
This method acknowledges that some people just won the genetic lottery from day one, while others took a few years to grow into their looks. Watching adults seriously debate the relative merits of various baby pictures while trying to identify distinguishing features creates absurd entertainment.
The voting process often reveals who had the most supportive parents behind the camera. Some photos involved professional lighting and perfect timing, while others look like they were taken during a diaper blowout emergency.
11. Cookie Decorating Competition
Buy plain sugar cookies and basic decorating supplies. Give everyone thirty minutes to create the most impressive cookie design. Have a neutral party (spouse, significant other, or local child) judge the results. Best cookie artist picks first.
This levels the playing field since most adults have roughly equal cookie decorating skills, which is to say, almost none. Watching competitive fantasy players struggle with frosting tubes and sprinkles while trying to create edible masterpieces provides excellent pre-draft entertainment.
The judging process often favors creativity over technical skill, meaning the person who attempts a realistic portrait of their favorite player might lose to someone who simply wrote “FOOTBALL” in green frosting. Sometimes simplicity wins, which teaches valuable lessons about both cookie decoration and fantasy football strategy.
12. Voice Recognition Challenge
Record everyone saying the phrase “I’m going to win this fantasy league” on their phone. Then play back the recordings with voices disguised (speed up, slow down, add effects) and see who can correctly identify the most voices. Best voice detective gets first pick.
This seemingly simple challenge becomes surprisingly difficult when familiar voices get distorted. Friends you’ve known for years suddenly become unrecognizable when their voice drops two octaves or speeds up to chipmunk levels.
The method works because it combines technology with personal knowledge, creating a skill-based competition that nobody can prepare for. Plus, the voice recordings become great soundbites for trash talk throughout the season.
13. Childhood Dream Job Reveal
Everyone writes down what they wanted to be when they grew up at age seven, along with their current actual job. Mix up the papers and have the group match childhood dreams to current realities. The person who gets the most matches correct picks first.
This creates entertainment on multiple levels. First, learning that your accountant friend wanted to be a professional dinosaur hunter adds delightful context to their personality. Second, watching people try to deduce who dreamed of becoming a princess versus who wanted to drive garbage trucks reveals how well you know each other.
The matching process involves serious detective work as people analyze handwriting, consider personalities, and remember random childhood conversations. Sometimes the connections are obvious (the guy who’s now a teacher probably wanted to be a teacher), while others completely surprise everyone.
14. Social Media Deep Dive Trivia
Create trivia questions based on everyone’s old social media posts, focusing on embarrassing status updates, questionable profile pictures, and posts that didn’t age well. Most correct answers earn first pick.
Questions might include “Who posted ‘Just ate the best sandwich of my life’ in 2011?” or “Who had a profile picture wearing a fedora for six months in college?” The challenge requires both good memory and dedication to scrolling through years of digital history.
This method works best when everyone in your group has been friends long enough to have an extensive social media history together. The questions should be embarrassing enough to be funny but not so personal that they cross friendship boundaries.
15. Mystery Skill Demonstration
Create a list of random, useless skills like “juggling fruit,” “making animal sounds,” or “folding fitted sheets properly.” Everyone draws a skill from a hat and has five minutes to either demonstrate the skill or convince the group they could definitely do it if they tried. The most impressive performance gets the first pick.
The beauty lies in the complete randomness combined with public performance pressure. Watching your friend attempt to whistle loudly while another tries to touch their nose with their tongue creates moments that epitomize why you’re friends with these people in the first place.
Some skills prove surprisingly controversial. Can beatboxing for thirty seconds really count as a demonstration? Does knowing the lyrics to your state song constitute a valuable skill? These debates become almost as entertaining as the actual demonstrations.
Wrapping Up
These draft order methods share one crucial element that traditional approaches lack: they create stories worth telling.
Years from now, you won’t remember who picked first in 2025, but you’ll definitely remember the time your friend lost their draft position because they couldn’t identify their own baby picture.
The best fantasy leagues understand that the journey matters as much as the destination. Whether your group chooses the cereal taste test or the social media archaeology approach, you’re building traditions that make your league special. After all, anyone can randomly draw names from a hat, but only your league will have draft order determined by cookie decorating skills.
Choose the method that fits your group’s sense of humor and comfort level, then commit fully to the absurdity. The laughter you generate during draft order determination sets the tone for an entire season of friendly competition and memorable moments.