Big Blue View
Thinking of giving fantasy football a try? Keep reading!
Have you ever played fantasy football? Has your brother-in-law, work colleague, or old college buddy been bugging you for years to join his or her league? Have you resisted because you don’t want to learn a new game or are worried it’ll be too big of a time suck?
Let me try to lure you in. I’m the resident fantasy columnist here at Big Blue View and I’ve been playing fantasy football for more than 30 years. I can say from experience that most people who give it a try enjoy it. Some become real enthusiasts and experts. And all of that is true for both men AND women.
Tens of millions of people worldwide play fantasy football, and it’s grown into a multi-billion dollar industry. People have flocked to this pastime for a variety of reasons. It’s a great way to enhance your engagement with and enjoyment of NFL football, and it provides an avenue to stay connected with old and new friends, co-workers, and family members, regardless of geography. It’s also straight-up fun to play, and easy to pick up.
Believe it or not, fantasy football has been around since the early 1960s, but has really exploded in the last 10-15 years. Over time a variety of forms of the game have emerged. There are daily fantasy games and contests, which are offered by the major online gaming sites, dynasty and keeper leagues where you retain some or all of your players from year to year, and more.
I’m going to focus on the oldest, simplest, and most straightforward version of the game, which is called season-long redraft, or redraft for short. In a redraft league, the competitors draft brand new teams of NFL players every season (typically in late August), and compete against each other throughout that NFL season, with a league champion usually being crowned at the end of the Week 17 games.
The basic construct of fantasy football is present in almost all of the varieties mentioned above: You draft a team of actual NFL players across a number of positions, you manage your roster via trades, waiver wire transactions (adds and drops), and weekly lineup decisions, and you compete against your league-mates to determine who has the best team. Points are scored when starting players accumulate statistics. The scoring grids can be customized and vary across leagues, but points typically are awarded when players accumulate yards and catches, or are engaged in scoring plays (touchdowns, two-point conversions, field goals, and extra points).
In most league setups, teams are pitted against each other each week in a head-to-head matchup, and the higher scoring team wins. At the end of the season, the teams with the best records and the otherwise highest-scoring teams make the playoffs, and then face off in two or three rounds of single-elimination play until a champion is crowned.
Here are a few a more...
