ABC26 men enter. 1 man leave. The Reality TV Dating Thunderdome starts next week, but you guys probably know it better as The Bachelorette.
JoJo Fletcher, who may not have won Ben Higgins' heart on last season of The Bachelor but certainly won America's heart, will begin her journey of love, hot tubs and questionable group date activities very soon. And while watching the madness unfold on the small screen is certainly entertaining enough, we thought we'd add an extra layer of entertainment to this season in the form of competition among friends. And also, what else are you going to do while fantasy football season is still months away?
The premise is very similar to playing in a fantasy sports league. But we assume there isn't a complete overlap of people who watch The Bachelorette religiously and people who play in fantasy leagues, so we'll run down the basic rules of a fantasy league before getting into the details of the scoring system.
First, you must decide how many contestants each participant can have on their "team." There are 26 total contestants, so say if there are 4 people playing in your league, we suggest that each team draft 6 players and just leave 2 leftover. Or you can draft only 3 contestants and then have the rest leftover to pick up should someone on your team get eliminated. Before the first episode, hold a draft and choose your players based on bios and photos. Just draw numbers to see what order you are in the draft and then pick in a snake order, i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 3, 2, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4 and so on.
You can also choose to draft players directly after the limo introductions to get a better feel for the contestants. That's up to you!
After you have your team of Bachelorette contestants, you get points any time your "player" does something in an episode. We came up with these rules, but feel free to add your own or tweak them based on other situations. You'll notice that some of these might be seen as negative interactions, but we added them as points to make the game a little more interesting. Sometimes you might want to draft a douche if you know he's going to get into fights a lot!
Below is our suggested point system. Your player gets a certain number of points for each action/situation per episode. So if your player gets a kiss during a one on one date and then gets a kiss at a cocktail party later in the episode, that's more than one kiss and double the points! Also, you guys probably need to decide amongst yourselves what constitutes a make out session, as it's probably different for everyone.
1 point for...
Getting a group date invite
One on one time during group dates/cocktail party
Getting drunk
3 points for...
Hot tub time
A kiss
Receiving a rose at the ceremony
Crying
5 points for...
Getting a one on one date
Make out session
Receiving a rose before the ceremony
Getting into a verbal fight with another contestant
10 points for...
JoJo saying "I love you"
S.E.X.
Getting into a physical fight with another contestant
20 points for...
Jojo saying "yes" to a proposal
Automatic 5 points for making it to these episodes, to be awarded on the night the episode airs for the first time:
International travel episodes
Hometown episodes
Overnight episodes
Finale
As the episode goes on, mark down any points your player scores. Add them all up at the end of the night and that's your team score for the week. The person with the most points at the end of the season wins! Play for money, pride or some ridiculous prize. If someone on your team is eliminated, you can always pick up a player off the "waiver wire," or you can just choose to stick with the team you draft at the beginning of the season.
Ready to have some fun at the expense of these poor souls vying for JoJo's heart? Us, too! Have fun and good luck!