Living In A Fantasy World
Long before reality television became so popular, people started playing "fantasy" sports. The idea, in general, is to draft a team of real players and then pit your players against some other guy or gal's players.
I'm not sure how it all started. Maybe the headwaters started in the minds of young children and baseball cards, putting together all-star teams from their cards and pitting them against their friends' cards in a make-believe match for the ages.
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_football_(American) , the first fantasy football league started in 1962, years before there was a Super Bowl. The GOPPPL (Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League), was born in the fall 1962, with the first draft in August 1963 in the Oakland basement of Wilfred Winkenbach, a limited partner of the Oakland Raiders. Another early pioneer of GOPPPL was Philip G. Carmona, a best friend of Winkenbach.
I started playing fantasy football in fall 1989, drafting a horrible team that lost every week but stimulated my interest to the point where I continue to play to this day, in several leagues ... and several sports. Some years I'm a big winner, and other years my players let me down.
I wouldn't call it as much an addiction as a hobby. Plus, when you have a personal interest in a game, it makes watching the games and reading the statistics all that much more interesting.
Fantasy football essentially works like this: There are typically between eight and 16 team owners. I personally prefer 12.
The owners hold a draft, either via the Internet or in person, at a home or a bar or wherever. After picking a draft order, you pick NFL players, focusing on quarterbacks, running backs and wide receivers. You also pick a kicker and a defense. More complicated leagues get into picking individual defense players.
So now you've got a team of between 16 and 20 players. Every week, before the games start, you pick a starting lineup, which in most leagues is 1 quarterback, two running backs, three wide receivers, a kicker and a defense. Your team goes head-to-head with another team in your league, and the winner is the one who scores the most points on the statistical grid iron. Generally, quarterbacks get 1 point for 25 passing yards and 4 points for a passing touchdown. Running backs and wide receivers get 1 point per 10 yards rushing/receiving and 6 points for a touchdown.
There are all kinds of other details, but I won't go into that.
Having a fantasy team makes Sunday afternoons in the fall so much more exciting. Sure, you love the Dallas Cowboys and all, but you love watching even more when Drew Bledsoe, your fantasy quarterback, chunks a 50-yard touchdown pass. That's 6 points for you!
But, alas, the fantasy football season only lasts for four months, so where can you get your fantasy sports fix?
Well, there's fantasy NBA basketball, fantasy baseball, fantasy NASCAR, fantasy soccer, fantasy hockey and fantasy tennis, to name a few. If there is a sport, there is likely a fantasy league for it out there somewhere. Some play for money. Some play for free.
My wife and I play fantasy "Survivor" and fantasy "The Bachelor." We draft characters on the shows, and whoever has the final "Survivor" or the person who gets the final rose wins a free dinner. Yeah, it's silly, but it adds a new dimension, particularly when your dimensions in life are limited by having a couple of young critters running around the house and refusing to go to bed.
The Internet has not only fueled the popularity of fantasy sports but become a multi-billion-dollar business. Just plug "fantasy football" into a search engine and see how huge it is. I just plugged it into Google and found 59.5 million references.
Yahoo offers all kinds of free fantasy leagues in several sports. You can play in a public league or join/start a private one. Right now, I'm playing fantasy golf and drafting a fantasy baseball team. Playing doesn't take much time. Just a few minutes to set up a starting lineup, in fact. Soon, after the baseball season starts, part of my morning will be spent pouring over the previous day's statistics as I shovel cereal into my mouth.
After all, isn't baseball all about the statistics anyway?
But all this fantasy stuff can go a lot further.
How about some fantasy stock market: http://www.simustock.com
You get a fantasy $100,000 to play with and can put it into real stocks. If you lose all your money, you can just start anew with a fresh $100,000. You can play alone or, of course, join a league and indulge in some friendly greed competition with others. Right now, I'm down about $5,000.
Meanwhile, I've developed lasting friendships with people whom I've met on a fantasy football forum. In fact, when my wife and kids fled as Hurricane Rita approached, they took shelter in a fantasy-football friend's home in DeRidder, La. Then there is the woman and man who hooked up at the fantasy football forum and are now living together. I've never met them, but if I were in their neck of the woods up there on the East Coast, I'd go out of my way to visit.
The old saying goes that nothing is certain but death and taxes.
I've never heard of a fantasy income tax league, but, you guessed it, there are fantasy death leagues, or "ghoul pools," as some people call them. Here's an example: http://www.racetothegrave.net/dlist.html
How it works is that sometime in January, competitors pick a list of 10 or so people for their ghoul pool. As the year wears on, competitors get points if someone on their list dies. Points usually are based on how many years the listed person is away from 100 years old.
Sure, it's sick, but like a young boy fantasizing about being his favorite football or baseball hero, gallows humor and laughing in the face of death is just another wacky aspect of human nature.
I'm not sure how it all started. Maybe the headwaters started in the minds of young children and baseball cards, putting together all-star teams from their cards and pitting them against their friends' cards in a make-believe match for the ages.
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_football_(American) , the first fantasy football league started in 1962, years before there was a Super Bowl. The GOPPPL (Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League), was born in the fall 1962, with the first draft in August 1963 in the Oakland basement of Wilfred Winkenbach, a limited partner of the Oakland Raiders. Another early pioneer of GOPPPL was Philip G. Carmona, a best friend of Winkenbach.
I started playing fantasy football in fall 1989, drafting a horrible team that lost every week but stimulated my interest to the point where I continue to play to this day, in several leagues ... and several sports. Some years I'm a big winner, and other years my players let me down.
I wouldn't call it as much an addiction as a hobby. Plus, when you have a personal interest in a game, it makes watching the games and reading the statistics all that much more interesting.
Fantasy football essentially works like this: There are typically between eight and 16 team owners. I personally prefer 12.
The owners hold a draft, either via the Internet or in person, at a home or a bar or wherever. After picking a draft order, you pick NFL players, focusing on quarterbacks, running backs and wide receivers. You also pick a kicker and a defense. More complicated leagues get into picking individual defense players.
So now you've got a team of between 16 and 20 players. Every week, before the games start, you pick a starting lineup, which in most leagues is 1 quarterback, two running backs, three wide receivers, a kicker and a defense. Your team goes head-to-head with another team in your league, and the winner is the one who scores the most points on the statistical grid iron. Generally, quarterbacks get 1 point for 25 passing yards and 4 points for a passing touchdown. Running backs and wide receivers get 1 point per 10 yards rushing/receiving and 6 points for a touchdown.
There are all kinds of other details, but I won't go into that.
Having a fantasy team makes Sunday afternoons in the fall so much more exciting. Sure, you love the Dallas Cowboys and all, but you love watching even more when Drew Bledsoe, your fantasy quarterback, chunks a 50-yard touchdown pass. That's 6 points for you!
But, alas, the fantasy football season only lasts for four months, so where can you get your fantasy sports fix?
Well, there's fantasy NBA basketball, fantasy baseball, fantasy NASCAR, fantasy soccer, fantasy hockey and fantasy tennis, to name a few. If there is a sport, there is likely a fantasy league for it out there somewhere. Some play for money. Some play for free.
My wife and I play fantasy "Survivor" and fantasy "The Bachelor." We draft characters on the shows, and whoever has the final "Survivor" or the person who gets the final rose wins a free dinner. Yeah, it's silly, but it adds a new dimension, particularly when your dimensions in life are limited by having a couple of young critters running around the house and refusing to go to bed.
The Internet has not only fueled the popularity of fantasy sports but become a multi-billion-dollar business. Just plug "fantasy football" into a search engine and see how huge it is. I just plugged it into Google and found 59.5 million references.
Yahoo offers all kinds of free fantasy leagues in several sports. You can play in a public league or join/start a private one. Right now, I'm playing fantasy golf and drafting a fantasy baseball team. Playing doesn't take much time. Just a few minutes to set up a starting lineup, in fact. Soon, after the baseball season starts, part of my morning will be spent pouring over the previous day's statistics as I shovel cereal into my mouth.
After all, isn't baseball all about the statistics anyway?
But all this fantasy stuff can go a lot further.
How about some fantasy stock market: http://www.simustock.com
You get a fantasy $100,000 to play with and can put it into real stocks. If you lose all your money, you can just start anew with a fresh $100,000. You can play alone or, of course, join a league and indulge in some friendly greed competition with others. Right now, I'm down about $5,000.
Meanwhile, I've developed lasting friendships with people whom I've met on a fantasy football forum. In fact, when my wife and kids fled as Hurricane Rita approached, they took shelter in a fantasy-football friend's home in DeRidder, La. Then there is the woman and man who hooked up at the fantasy football forum and are now living together. I've never met them, but if I were in their neck of the woods up there on the East Coast, I'd go out of my way to visit.
The old saying goes that nothing is certain but death and taxes.
I've never heard of a fantasy income tax league, but, you guessed it, there are fantasy death leagues, or "ghoul pools," as some people call them. Here's an example: http://www.racetothegrave.net/dlist.html
How it works is that sometime in January, competitors pick a list of 10 or so people for their ghoul pool. As the year wears on, competitors get points if someone on their list dies. Points usually are based on how many years the listed person is away from 100 years old.
Sure, it's sick, but like a young boy fantasizing about being his favorite football or baseball hero, gallows humor and laughing in the face of death is just another wacky aspect of human nature.
posted by Brian Pearson at 2:06 PM
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