My first article for a Fantasy Football website

20 Years of Fantasy Football

It was 1988, as a junior in college, that I started getting involved in Fantasy Football. I thought it would be fun to take a look back as we get ready for 2008 and see just how different the game was then and where it might be the same.

Let’s start with ‘draft preparation’ since that is what everyone is doing right now. What tools did we have in 1988? There was the local paper and access to regional ones and of course there was ESPN, which basically consisted of highlights on SportsCenter. I don’t think there was a magazine out there yet and there certainly was no internet. I honestly don’t remember doing very much draft prep per se. There were some things we didn’t have to worry about though; bye weeks, Running Backs by Committee and protracted camp holdouts thanks to greedy agents. Look at how different today is; if you walk into a draft with a cheat sheet from a magazine that was printed in May and that’s it, you are doomed. From ESPN, to CBS, to sites like Draftsharks.com and rotoworld.com there is a wealth of information available. Sites pay bloggers with every NFL Team to provide them with in depth notes on a daily basis and all of this is available to us for free or for a fairly nominal cost. Also, every NFL Player today is firmly aware of their ‘fantasy value’ and they love to follow along. How many hours does the average fantasy player prep these days? For me, I am on the low end of prep. I tend to not have the patience for 39 mock drafts deep into the night. I like to go through certain websites and even a magazine or two and then come up with my own draft strategy based on my league’s rules and the other owners and the tendencies they have. I believe this is the one facet that the internet and overflow of information can never help with. As a good reader of people through years of playing poker, it’s nice to know my fellow owner’s tendencies or tells. Does Owner A who drafts right before me in Round 3 like to have 2 backs before going WR or does he think getting a top 3 QB is most important. These are the subtle tips that will help your draft strategies.

So, if draft prep was first then the actual draft would be next. For my league not much has changed here. We are all friends and we could never imagine drafting via a website or exchanges of emails, but that is the predominant method of drafts today. Millions of players flock to sites like ESPN to play for free or for money and draft virtually. About the most high tech my league gets here is every once in awhile one or two of us might have to draft via conference call. As someone who has had to do this twice, it is not nearly as fun, but it is effective. I imagine technology could also lead to collusion with IM chats and other devices that would allow owners to communicate with others behind the ‘internet curtain’.

Once the draft is over the rest of the year is dedicated to trades, free agent moves and weekly line ups and scoring. Once again, here is where technology has taken over. Back in the day I remember waiting for the Thursday edition of the Gainesville Sun so I could read the ‘injury report’ to know who was hurt. Today we can watch SportsCenter 7 times a day or flip over to the NFL Network and each team has its own website with all the info. However, with information comes deception. What once was a true injury report is today a load of bull; probable means definite, questionable means most likely. Then there are coaches like Bill Belichek who either likes to screw with reporters, the gamblers or the fantasy players or most likely all three because he is likely to put EVERYONE on an injury report. It reminds me of the Stanley Cup Playoffs in the NHL when someone loses an arm in Game One and they are listed with an ‘upper body injury’ for Game Two and are listed as day to day. Besides the injury issue, the access to information has made life so much easier for in season moves. Back in the day you would have little access to who the third string tailback is in New Orleans but today everyone knows who Pierre Thomas is and IF he goes undrafted what a pick up he could be.

The last major change I can think of is scoring. In the fall I would wake up on Monday early whether I had class or not and run to the newspaper machine outside the fraternity house to make sure I got a copy of the Sun so I could ‘do my stats’. Yes kids of the internet age, we actually went through box scores the next day to figure out who had won and by how much. Today if you play on a site you get instant updates and even if you don’t you can follow along with the internet or the NFL Network. This also brings us to ‘How we watch the games’. Back in ’88 we were excited if local TV carried two 1:00 games and what we often did was get to THE local sports bar so we could catch all of the action. Today, even without Direct TV you can stay on top of all the action right from your couch.

At the end of the day though one thing will never change; fantasy football is about competition, friendship and the love of a sport we all dreamed we could play at one point in our lives. It is our way of being on the field or owning the team we grew up loving. Whether you go wire to wire this year or are locked in a battle for the cellar, enjoy every minute of it, because before you can say TJ Houshmanzadeh it will be all over again for the year.