As reliably as the swallows returning to San Juan Capistrano in March, the end of summer sparks a migration of a different sort, as aficionados of American football cluster in basement man caves, pubs, and Internet hangouts to draft their fantasy football teams. According to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association (FSTA), an organization that has tracked statistics for the greater fantasy sports industry since 1988, some 59 million people are expected to play fantasy sports in the U.S. in 2017—double the number of fantasy sports players in 2010. But, for the uninitiated, fantasy football (and fantasy sports in general) may seem like a riddle wrapped in an enigma. Why do people play fantasy football, and how do you “play” this game anyway?
(Read Walter Camp’s 1903 Britannica essay on inventing American football.)
First of all, what’s the draw? Well, competition, of course! The attraction to fantasy football (and other fantasy sports, such as fantasy baseball) is often rooted in winning bragging rights within a league typically made up of about 10 to 12 friends or associates. This competition is often combined with a financial reward, since many leagues require that each league participant donate money into a league pot, which is then doled out to either a single winner or a group of the top teams at the end of the season.
So, how are fantasy football games played? First, the members of a fantasy league take turns drafting (that is, picking and choosing) a number of current professional football players based on how they think those players will perform statistically in the upcoming season. Most leagues follow the National Football League (NFL) season. (But there are leagues that follow college football or the Canadian Football League too.) The fantasy league games follow the NFL’s game schedule. To win a fantasy football game, one league participant pits his or her players against another league participant’s. Each fantasy football team “starts” players in the same way that a real football team does (by activating certain players and “benching” others)—one at each on-field position. These players will garner yards, completed passes, points, etc., in their real-life NFL games in a given week, and those real-life statistics are translated into points in the fantasy league. The first fantasy football games were played in 1962, before the age of personal computers, so calculating player and team statistics from week to week was an arduous math-intensive process. Since the 1990s, however, many leagues have relied on Internet services and applications, which help with drafting, scheduling, and tabulating the statistics. For each head-to-head matchup, whichever league participant has the highest point tally wins the game for that week. Each fantasy football team in the league faces a new opponent each week.
Finally, how is the league winner crowned? Some fantasy football leagues simply go by the number of wins and losses tallied by each team over the 17-week NFL season. Many leagues, however, have a playoff system. In these leagues, the winners of the league’s subdivisions (whose members are determined randomly and parallel the divisions in the NFL) play against one another in the final weeks of the NFL season to determine which team is the best, second best, etc., so that payment—and, more importantly, league bragging rights—can be doled out.