Fantasy football (gridiron)

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Fantasy Football is a game in which the participants (called "owners") each draft or aquire via auction a team of real-life NFL (or college depending on the league) players and then score points based on those players' statistical performance on the field. Leagues can be arranged in which the winner is the team with the most total points at the end of the season or in a head-to-head format (which mirrors the actual NFL) 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 leagues set aside the last weeks of the NFL regular season for their own playoffs.

Fantasy football has evolved in recent years from a mere recreational activity into a big business industry due to the Internet. Fantasy sports in general have grown into an industry that generates an estimated $100 million in annual revenue and involves about 30 million Americans, according to a Harris Interactive poll. Fantasy football has surpassed fantasy baseball in popularity and is now the most popular fantasy sport in the United States. And it is continuing to grow: the number of websites, magazines, and drafting software dedicated to fantasy football has increased substantially in each of the last several years.

Typically, a fantasy football league comprises 8–12 teams, which allocate NFL players among themselves by holding a draft or auction before the start of the season. Most leagues are "re-draft" leagues in which each team begins each season with an empty roster to be filled via draft or auction. (The drafts are usually held in serpentine fashion; i.e., the team picking first in the odd rounds will pick last in the even rounds.) Some leagues, however, are "keeper" leagues in which owners can designate a certain number of players (sometimes just one, perhaps as many as five) to keep on their roster from the previous season, removing them from the annual draft. Other leagues, termed "dynasty" leagues, take this further: the owner keeps his entire roster from the previous season (or at least the vast majority), with the annual draft consisting only of rookie players.

Undrafted players become free agents, meaning that they are not on a current roster. During the season, owners may alter the composition of their teams either by adding players from pool of free agents (and dropping a corresponding number of players from their rosters, who then become free agents) or by making trades with other owners.

Scoring is based on the performance of each team's individual players in their weekly NFL games. A common format for a starting lineup is:

Some leagues use Individual Defensive Players (IDPs) and a Punter, instead of a Team Defense/Special Teams.

Players earn their team points based on their performance in their weekly games. A common scoring format is:

  • 1 point for 20 passing yards
  • 1 point for 10 rushing yards
  • 1 point for 10 receiving yards
  • 6 points for a rushing or receiving touchdown
  • 3 points for a passing touchdown
  • -1 point for every interception thrown
  • -2 points for every fumble
  • 1 point for an extra point kicked
  • 3 points for a made field goal (with varying bonuses for long distance kicks)

Defensive scoring varies greatly from league to league.

Some examples of successful fantasy football leagues include:

Some examples of fantasy football information sites include:


Fantasy football leagues have also been run for Association football.

Origins

For a detailed history of the origin of fantasy football see [1]. The original league, GOPPPL (Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League), was created in the fall of 1962 and first drafted in August 1963 in Wilfred Winkenbach's basement in Oakland California. Winkenbach was a limited partner of the Oakland Raiders. Another early pioneer of GOPPPL was Philip G. Carmona, a best friend of Winkenbach.

Mr. Winkenbach passed away in 1993 but as of May 2003 his wife still is a limited partner of the Oakland Raiders.

According to NFL.com[2], Fantasy Football began in 1962 among beat writers for the AFL Oakland Raiders.

Other historians argue that the form of fantasy football popularly shared by many online leagues was developed by Russ Ulrich, orginally of Glencoe, Minn. Ulrich now lives in Hastings.