 This month I joined an offbeat fantasy league run by Minneapolis-based SportsHub Games Network. Among the gimmicks: You draft 30 players instead of the usual 15, and rather than allowing 60 seconds for each draft selection this game allots 4 hours per pick. With 12 teams of 30 players, and up to 4 hours to finalize each choice, the draft could last 1,440 hours. It's more frustrating than watching artificial turf grow.
Diehards are being drawn to an increasing array of offerings, run by outlets such as ESPN, which has over 10 million fantasy customers. Though gambling laws are being relaxed in many states, fantasy sports—even those with sizable monetary payoffs—are generally categorized as games of skill.
Here's how that argument is framed by the Fantasy Sports & Gaming Association: "Managers must take into account a myriad of statistics, facts and game theory in order to be competitive. There are thousands of websites, magazines and other such publications that seek to synthesize the vast amounts of available fantasy sports information to keep their readers informed and competitive. A manager must know more than simple depth charts and statistics to win; they also must to take into account injuries, coaching styles, weather patterns, prospects, home and away statistics..."
Whether you believe it's skill or chance, the process is definitely addictive. A friend who works on Wall Street, with access to some fancy computers and software, basically spends August through January plotting his fantasy football moves. I doubt he's alone. I'd wager that fantasy football research occupies more misappropriated time than "Minecraft," "Call of Duty" or "Crash Planning," an office game designed to be played under the boss's nose because the screen looks like an Excel spreadsheet.
Just naming fantasy teams has become a sport in itself. The Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes has inspired names such as "Country Roads, Take Mahomes" and "Sherlock Mahomes." Some monikers are more obvious, like drafting Tampa's Tom Brady and naming a team "The Brady Bunch," or taking New Orleans running back Alvin Kamara for a squad called "Lights Kamara Action."
The regular NFL season begins Sept. 8 but we fantasy addicts have been crunching the numbers since early summer and participating in dozens of mock drafts. There are now so many websites, blogs, podcasts and videos offering fantasy football guidance that an entire industry has sprung up to catalog and rate them. The data company Feedspot publishes a spreadsheet listing 588 outlets that provide fantasy tips.
Fantasy football's most acclaimed guru, Matthew Berry, jumped this season from ESPN to NBC. Berry was a Hollywood screen writer until he turned his love of fantasy sports into a full-time industry. His annual column of "100 Facts" is a must-read kickoff to the season.
Berry began his latest dispatch with an admission. "I spent the last 15 years at ESPN and I learned a great many things. Including how to make stats say anything I want."
That's a sobering thought as I stare at my screen, waiting for the actual games to begin, and watching a 4-hour draft clock tick down as I nervously deliberate who I should take with the 358th pick.
(c) Peter Funt. Distributed by Cagle syndicate.
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