Every Sunday guarantees
one thing, Fantasy Football. For people who are not familiar with Fantasy
Football, this online activity uses real NFL players in created leagues in which
people compete in. Fantasy Football is to be played with multiple people that
can be friends in a private league or with other football enthusiast across the
county in a public league. Leagues consist usually of 8-16 teams with only one
champion at the end of the season. According to the Fantasy Sports Trade
Association, or FSTA, there are 33,559,990 fantasy sports users in the USA
alone which is larger than the entire population of the 39th most
populous country in the world, Morocco (32,649,130). There are certain “haters”,
the majority of who are angry wives and girlfriends, which claim Fantasy
Football is just a bunch of guesses and random numbers. This claim is actually
the exact opposite reason that Fantasy Football is not illegal and not classified
as online gambling. FSTA states that opposed to gambling “Fantasy sports
leagues are games of skill. Managers must take into account a myriad of
statistics, facts and game theory in order to be competitive.” As for those
wives and girlfriends out there, I am sorry but Fantasy Football is not just a
bunch of random numbers.
The most important, and
riveting, part of the Fantasy Football season is the pre-season draft. Each
participant in every league is awarded one draft pick at random. The draft
format is serpentine which means the person with first pick of the first round
has the last pick of the second round and this repeats until each team’s roster
is full. The draft is where everything begins. Some players make out like
bandits, (for example my sister who picked Peyton Manning in the THIRD ROUND)
and some go home losers (like myself who picked Trent Richardson in the second
round and he has been the season’s biggest bust). This event is where dreams
are either made or crushed.
One of, if not the,
most difficult decisions of the weekend is deciding which players I should
include in my starting lineup for Fantasy Football. Each roster has 16 spots
but only nine of the players count. Many users, including myself, research
players, statistics, opposing teams, and weather conditions to maximize scoring
totals. FSTA concludes that 30% of participants use more than 6 websites to
help them make weekly decisions. Fantasy
Football includes many challenging decisions that have to be made in order to
be successful. Being the champion at the end of the season is worth much more
than the prize money. The pride and bragging rights that accompany a championship
are admirable as well.
Works
Cited
"Central Intelligence Agency." The
World Factbook. N.p., n.d. Web.
15 Dec. 2013.
"Fantasy Sports Trade Association." Fantasy
Sports Trade Association. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2013.
<http://fsta.org/>.
I remember Fantasy Football before the internet and before institutionalized resources. That was a challenge. One season, I lined up Emmett Smith, Thurman Thomas, and Jerome Bettis as my running backs! All on the same team! I was unstoppable and won my league. Of course, as I got older, FF became too time consuming and I had to retire. My wife actually stuck with it longer than I did.
ReplyDeleteThanks for allowing me to recall my youth. Now we need to talk about your post. I like the topic. The explosion of Fantasy Football in American culture is a phenomenon very worth studying. At some point, it will make an interesting research paper topic for some student. The content, information, and research in your post is quite good. Unfortunately, there are numerous technical writing errors that make your post jarring to read. Unlike most of your writing lately, this post feels rushed. It reads like an informal blog post and not a polished piece of professional writing. Here are just a few examples:
"in created leagues in which people compete in" - so many prepositions
"Fantasy Football is to be played with" - unnecessarily passive
"make out like bandits" - Orwell would object
"This claim is actually the exact opposite reason that Fantasy Football is not illegal and not classified as online gambling." - I am not actually sure what this means.