Imagine a football dream team, complete and equipped with the best and most skilled players in the world, competing with many other tough teams for a championship. This is a possibility in the wonderful realm of fantasy football.
All the craze about fantasy football may leave those on the outside completely confused. What is fantasy football, exactly? Fantasy football is an online game where participants select and draft actual NFL players to assemble their own teams and play against their friends for bragging rights. Based on the statistics that one’s players accumulate each Sunday, points are awarded to each participant’s team, as if two fantasy teams are really battling it out on the field.
Fantasy football players also have the opportunity to make trades with other players, release and add free agents, and control the entire fate of their teams. Tarun Puppala ’17 states that “It’s like being the owner or the general manager of an NFL franchise. That kind of power and control is just very attractive to players.” Clearly, fantasy football is like something straight out of a video game, an extremely appealing aspect to those who play it.
Another very attractive facet of fantasy football is the sheer strategy and calculation that goes into each team’s lineup and game plan. Some may see it as insanity, but the copious number of statistics and matchups that go into finalizing each week’s lineup are seen by many as sheer beauty. So many things are considered before making the final cuts to determine a team’s final roster. Some of these include defensive and offensive matchups, projected point totals, and position rankings.
Sam Paniccia ’16 comments, “I do not think that people give enough credit to the thought that actually goes into fantasy football. It involves real math, real statistics, and is a very legitimate test of strategy and planning.” In this regard, fantasy football truly is a chess match, as there is strategy, risk, and eventual triumph or failure involved in each and every move. Every decision is prefaced with anxiety and consternation, as fantasy football does turn out to be quite a suspenseful game. All of this strategy and calculated decision-making creates the excitement and suspense that so many fantasy players love.
Fantasy football is evidently an extremely popular game amongst sports fans. This is primarily due to the fact that it gives fantasy players the opportunity to completely control and pilot their teams to victory. Additionally, it is an exciting test of strategy, involving risk, reward, and suspense. All in all, players develop an arsenal of the best players in the world – an idea that would be just an abstract concept, if not for fantasy football.