In the United States, it is just about that time. Time for football camp, find out who’s in shape and who’s out of shape. To also find out who the starting line up will be for the Raiders, Eagles, Colts and Ravens. You got it, it is time for football NFL style. And if you are really good, then you play Fantasy Football.
Fantasy football is a fantasy sports game in which participants, also called owners, are arranged into a league. The person who creates the league is called the commissioner and that person invites other owners into his or her league. Each team drafts or acquires via auction a team of real life American football players and then scores points based on those players’ statistical on the field performance. A typical fantasy league will employ players from a single football league, such as the NFL or an NCAA division for college football or basketball.
The game originated in 1962 from an idea of Bill Winkenbach, then a limited partner in the Oakland Raiders, with assistance from Bill Tunnell, the Raiders’ public relations man, Scotty Stirling, the beat writer from the Oakland Tribune, and George Ross, the Tribune’s sports editor, as well as Philip Carmonna, Winkenbach’s friend. The idea emerged during a three-week road trip the Raiders took to the East Coast. Winkenbach and the others fleshed out the idea during the trip and upon their return, formed the first fantasy football league.
With the rise of personal computers and the Internet in the late 1990’s, the participation and popularity of fantasy football increased to the level of prominence it holds today. Most leagues are now hosted online through providers such as CBS, ESPN, NFL.com, and Yahoo!. Most of these premier league fantasy football providers offer free fantasy football, making the games extremely accessible.
Leagues can consist of anywhere from 4 to as many as 20 teams. Each owner in a keeper league is allowed to retain a small number of players they owned during the previous season, eliminating these players from the draft, while each owner in a dynasty league is allowed to retain as many players as desired from the previous season, with the draft encompassing only rookies and other unowned or unretained players. Players are drafted on a team from either a serpentine draft, standard draft or auction system. In each format of the fantasy football draft, the draft order and budget are considerations.
The two main types of competition formats are head to head with weekly games played against specific opponents, much like real life NFL, or total points, in which cumulative points during the season determine winners, playoff teams and fantasy football rankings. Fantasy baseball and fantasy basketball are played in much the same fashion. There are variations on the drafting and scoring systems but offers the participants much in the way fantasy games.
Football season is almost here! Are you ready for your fantasy game? Enjoy!
