 How It All Began
August 7th, 2009
It all started in 1989 with a Playboy magazine (not what you're thinking). My roomate brought to our attention an article about a new craze called Fantasy Football. Little did we fathom that football as we knew it would never be the same.
As I was getting ready to go to class, my roomate came storming out of the bathroom. "Hey, check this out! It's something called Fantasy Football where you draft players, submit lineups and score points based on the player's performance."
He had me at, "Hey," and we immediately proceeded to go over the rules and regulations regarding this Fantasy Football thing. We decided to give it a try and asked our other two other roomates if they were interested; they loved the idea. As Playboy's Fantasy Football rules required eight teams, we only needed four more to start our first league. Since our neighbors were huge football fans, it didn't take much to recruit them, too.
After reviewing Playboy's scoring system and taking into consideration that point totals would have to be tallied manually, we decided to modify certain aspects of their scoring system to make life easier on our Commissioner, me.
Fantasy Football sure has come a long way in twenty years. Gone are the days of tallying point totals in one's head while watching Sportscenter on Sunday night. The duties of Fantasy Football Commissioners have become a lot simpler with the advent of multiple Fantasy Football League web sites with live scoring, point totals and online drafts.
Back in the day, all that stuff had to be done by hand. Every Monday morning during football season was spent pouring over the newspaper's NFL box scores to determine point totals for each Fantasy Football team, then the point totals were announced to all Coaches (remember, this is before email was widely used and way before everyone carried around a cell phone) and we all sat together watching the MNF game with eager anticipation. There was no instant gratification, no live online scoring, no web sites with player information or trends, no last second Fantasy Football injury reports prior to games and ne'er an iPhone app with score updates every quarter hour.
It was a football nerd fest never seen before and I am proud to have been a part of it. Now, after twenty-years experience and six championships, I am sharing my Fantasy Football travels with you all. Welcome to FantasyFool.com. I hope you have as much fun and success as I do.
~ The Fool |
