At the end of this past summer, I was given an opportunity to try something that I had not tried before: One of my best friends asked me to join a fantasy football league.
Prior to this, I never had an interest in playing in a fantasy league for a variety of reasons. I am not a particularly huge fan of the NFL, as I prefer the college game over the less-passionate professional one. On top of not really caring about the NFL, I had no idea how fantasy football is organized and felt that taking the time to learn was not worth it. I’ll do the work for you.
To enlighten the unexposed males and the majority of females, here’s how it works: A fantasy football league is most commonly conducted online. There are hundreds of Web sites offering leagues, advice and rankings for the fantasy game. Once you’ve joined a league (on a site like ESPN.com where fantasy football is free), there is a draft. The draft is an interactive chat room at a scheduled time that lets league members select players while chatting with the rest of the league.
The object of the draft is to pick players who will have the most prolific stats for their particular position. This is because the points that a fantasy team scores are based off each player’s individual performance during his game each week. For example, the league could award a team a point for each 10 yards gained and six points for a touchdown scored. So if a running back rushes for 65 yards and a touchdown, he would have scored a fantasy player 12 points for that week.
Each week the fantasy player must start a quarterback, two running backs, two wide receivers, another running back or wide receiver (known as the “flex”), a tight end and a defense-special teams, which is an NFL team’s defense and special teams put together. The Web site will automate a schedule for your league and match you up against another league member’s team each week where the team with the most points wins.
The draft is just the hook. Once the season starts, league members can add and drop players, claim players off waivers, make trades with other league members and deal with the ever-troubling decision of starting and benching players for that week.
Basically, fantasy football is the closest most of us will ever come to managing a real football team. That is the sinker: Having ultimate control over who represents your fictional franchise on Sundays is both empowering and challenging. And I’ve become addicted.
I play with my team at least twice a day. I’ve had to make some adjustments over the course of the season because of some terrible picks. (Colts running back Joseph Addai was my first pick and first bad pick. 49ers tight end Vernon Davis, Seahawks receiver Nate Burleson and Steelers running back Rashard Mendenhall were among my less celebrated choices.) I’ve added the wonderful services of players like Eagles receiver DeSean Jackson and the Buccaneers’ defense by dropping most of my dud picks.
Despite some poor draft decisions in some areas, I got lucky enough to have picked two excellent receivers in the Cardinals’ Larry Fitzgerald and Falcons’ Roddy White, along with Saints quarterback Drew Brees.
After learning the rules and structure of a fantasy league, I was still hesitant to join. Do I really want to invest so much of my energy in the NFL? Do I want to cheer for individuals over teams, contradicting the idea of teamwork? Is this kind of thing going to take away from homework time?
After having participated in a league this season, the answer to all of those questions is yes. There is outright fun to be had in a fantasy league by even those who don’t care for or know a lot about the NFL and football in general.
Fantasy football is just as much of a gamble as it is about football knowledge. It’s kind of like making a bracket for the NCAA basketball tournaments in March because even the most statistically established players are hit-or-miss for a given season. (Details magazine estimates that pay-league members who drafted stat-heavy Patriots quarterback Tom Brady will lose a combined total of $150 million, as a result of his season-ending injury.)
For me, it sparked interest in a facet of football I didn’t really care to follow, except the Colts or when there was nothing else on television: the NFL. The risk of drafting or starting a player, the anxiety of the “game” process on Sunday afternoons and the competition with friends and strangers alike makes fantasy football a blast for anybody with a mouse.
Unless nobody on your freaking team breaks double digits, as mine accomplished Sunday.
— Oliver Casey is a junior in enterprise management. He can be reached at [email protected].
