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Why do you play fantasy football? That's an important question to answer because it provides a little window into how you might respond to some of the situations we discuss in this column.

There are those who play fantasy football to win. Period. They make transactions 24 hours a day, and like a coach trying to freeze a field goal kicker, they stand poised with their finger on the mouse until the last possible second, hoping to make that last roster move that will tip the scales in their favor. Then there are those who play the fantasy game to enhance the real game of football. They have a favorite team, and they root for them. They never used to watch the other teams in the league too much, but now that they have a vested interest in some of the outcomes, they can enjoy watching Cincinnati versus San Francisco on a cold December Saturday night and actually have a reason to do so.

Believe it or not, I am more in the latter category than the former. Although I certainly am a happier camper when my fantasy football team wins than when it loses, I'm not going to get all cutthroat about it. In fact, the first paragraph of my primary league's constitution contains the following sentence: "This league exists in order to add an extra element of fun to the NFL season." My fantasy football league was created with the idea of being fun, and my owners embrace this philosophy. It doesn't mean I'm right and you're wrong if you disagree. It's just a window into what I think about the game and its rules.

But to those of you out there this morning concocting vast conspiracy theories involving Jessica Simpson and Brian Westbrook, or blaming Al Roker and his weather forecast for your fantasy losses, you're taking the game too seriously. Just saying …

Regardless of your opinion on what the "correct rules" of a fantasy football league should be, one thing I think we all can come to an agreement on is that your league needs to have them. Rules. Written down and record rules … and not merely existing in a Schrodinger's Cat state of quantum flux. Consider Tommy's problem, which is far from unique: "My semifinal has ended in a tie this week. My league didn't set up any tiebreaker procedures for this. How do we solve it?"

Yes, even though we scolded several leagues just a few weeks back for not having a predetermined tie-breaker in place for who qualifies for the playoffs, that didn't get the wheels turning for everyone that they might actually have a playoff game end in a deadlock and that there might be need for a remedy. Now there's a big problem, and the answer I'm about to give isn't pretty.

Tommy, since your league didn't come up with a plan in advance, you're going to have to use the ESPN default tie-breaker. The higher seed advances. Personally, I hate this. I don't think it is fair for a team to get the nod when it might only be the higher seed because of winning its division, and might even have lost to the team it is playing head-to-head (during the regular season), lost more overall games and/or scored fewer points. But the thing about a default setting is that if you don't like it, you are free to circumvent it with your own tie-breaker system and then to edit the matchups based on that. You just have to put your system in place before the problem arises. Unless you can come up with a system for settling playoff ties in the future that every owner in your league, including the two owners playing in the game, signs off on, you simply can't choose for yourself who wins the game.

Assuming you want to attempt to sway your league, I'm going to propose a couple of ideas for settling these playoff ties. Maybe one will appeal to your leaguemates, fitting your setup so snugly that even the owner who loses because of it will still agree it's the best option. First things first: Make sure this is really a tie. I don't mean you must wait until the NFL makes all of its scoring adjustments; that should be done anyway, as a matter of course. What I mean is that if your league is one that uses fractional points and the final score is 106.2-106.2, then get yourself a calculator and make sure it's not actually 106.24-106.19. Removing the rounding could easily settle the situation at hand, though you'd still need to figure out what to do if the answer isn't so simple.

If the idea is to determine who won this week's game, then whatever you use to decide who wins should come as a result of this week's stats alone. Who had the higher seed, who had the most regular-season points, who can pick the right side of the coin that lands face up … none of these qualify. Here are a few ideas to use, in my order of preference:

1. Go to overtime! Before each playoff game, in addition to your regular lineup, each owner submits three bench players, in ranked order, used as overtime players in the event of a tie. Tie game? Go to the list. Compare the first player on each one. Still tied? Go to the next player. If one player scored more, then you have a winner. This is a much fairer method than simply resorting to total bench points. For one, it requires some forethought by the owner to predict his highest-scoring bench players and secondly, it doesn't penalize an owner for having zero-point handcuffs or backup quarterbacks on his bench.

2. Total yardage: If your league awards a point per 10 rushing/receiving yards, then a guy who rushes for 89 yards gets the same number of points as a guy who rushes for 80. Normally, I'm fine with this; after all, you don't get a first down if you gain "almost 10" yards. Still, we're trying to settle a tie here, so add up all the yards -- in essence, do your own fractional scoring -- and see if that tips the scales one way or the other.

3. Lose the kicker: They're fantasy afterthoughts anyway, and if the only reason you pulled off a tie in the first place is because Phil Dawson scraped the uprights, you have no business advancing to the next round of the playoffs.

4. Kill the flex: You started two running backs and three wide receivers. Your opponent started three running backs and two wide receivers. Let's level the playing field and see what would have happened if everyone started the same positional breakdown.

5. Most touchdowns scored: Lets' face it. In the end, it's all about scoring. And as long as you don't own Westbrook, you shouldn't have anything to worry about.

If you have two teams tied even after executing all of these, then you might as well go to the old tried and true, sure-fire tie-breaking method that has stood the test of time: "I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 10 …" After all, this whole game is really there to prove which one of us is the most psychic, isn't it?

All rise! The Court is adjourned.

A.J. Mass is a fantasy football, baseball and college basketball analyst for ESPN.com. You can e-mail him here.