Fantasy Football

Beginning in 1963, fantasy football has since become a mainstay in our sports loving country. Created by Wilfred Winkenbach and Phillip Carmona, the GOPPPL or Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League was the first ever fantasy football league. Winkenbach was a limited partner in the Oakland Raiders and was a statistics junkie that just wanted even more out of his favorite thing in the world, professional football.

Fantasy football is a game in which owners draft or buy players from NFL teams and score points in the league based on a players' statistical performance during the games each week. There are two types of fantasy football leagues, Rotisserie, which determines the winner of the league by whoever scores the most total points in the season or Head to Head, in which each team plays against a single opponent each week, and at the end of the year the team with the best win-loss record wins the league. Most fantasy football leagues set aside the last weeks of the NFL regular season for their own playoffs.

Fantasy football leagues usually consist of 10-12 owners with teams built through drafts or auctions. In the draft format, the draft order is randomly picked with the draft going in a snake style, meaning the owner with the last pick in the first round gets the first pick of the second round and the owner with the first pick in the first round gets the last pick of the second round and so on. The auction format means that every fantasy football owner has a set budget and auctions for players with the player going to the highest bidder. The entire roster must be filled while keeping it within the budget.

Since there are so many players on the field at once in football, fantasy football rosters usually only include quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers, tight ends, kickers, and team defenses. Most leagues have a starting lineup of 1 quarterback, 2 running backs, 2 wide receivers, 1 tight end, 1 kicker, and 1 team defense.

The following scoring format is very common in fantasy football and used in every fantasy football league with only slight variations:

• 1 point for 20 passing yards

• 1 point for 20 rushing yards

• 1 point for 1 reception

• 1 point for 20 receiving yards

• 6 points for a rushing or receiving touchdown

• 5 points for a passing touchdown

• 2 points for scoring 2-point conversion

• -1 point for every interception thrown

• -2 points for every fumble lost

• 1 point for an extra point kicked

• 3 points for a made field goal (with varying bonuses for long distance kicks)

• 10 points for defensive/special teams touchdown

• 3 points for an interception

• 2 points for a fumble recovery

• 2 points for a sack

• 10 points for points allowed

• 6 points for 10 or less points allowed

• 3 points for 20 or less points allowed

• -2 points for 40 or more points allowed

Many fantasy football owners spend hours a week figuring out how to give their team there best chance to win. In fantasy football, there are a lot of match-ups to study and many crucial factors in each game. Weather can be a huge factor in football, in cold weather, teams opt to run the football much more than pass so quarterbacks are not always great fantasy football options when they are playing in Green Bay in December but they are great options when they are playing in Miami in December where the weather is always beautiful and prime football playing conditions. Injuries are also important because football is a tough sport and injuries are common. Also, football has bye weeks, for the teams to take one week off of the grueling season. All of these and more must be considered when trying to win a fantasy football championship.

For those looking to get started in playing fantasy football, there are hundreds, if not thousands of places to choose from, however, I have found that the best leagues you can find are on Yahoo, ESPN, and CBS.Sportsline. There are leagues built for the more competitive fantasy football players that have in-depth analysis available and offer a prize for winning the championship and there are leagues dedicated to keeping it simple and concentrating on the sheer fun of fantasy football. Good luck!