Drafting your dream team

VAIL — Quicker than Peyton Manning can lead a drive into the opponents red zone, the NFL Football season has returned, to the delight of millions of fans. But while linebackers and tight ends are padding up in preparation for bone-crushing clashes at the line of scrimmage, average men and women are getting ready for a less violent clash of their own. Unlike the pros in the NFL, theirs is a battle of statistics and points rather than tackles and touchdowns. It’s fantasy football, the armchair quarterback’s dream come true.

Fantasy football has been around in some form since 1962. The concept started when former Oakland Raiders’ limited owner Bill Winkenbach and several other associates involved with the team dreamed up the idea out of thin air while on a three-week road trip with the team to the East Coast. While fantasy football’s followers grew slowly throughout the ensuing decades, the speedy progression of the Internet fueled a popularity explosion in the late ’90s: A throwaway idea by a handful of guys trying to combat boredom during a cross-country road-trip spawned an army of football fanatics no longer content with watching from the sidelines.

An estimated 15 million people are now immersed in the world of fantasy football thanks to online hubs such as NFL.com and ESPN.com, and likely many hours of productivity in the work place and billions of dollars in revenue are lost each week to the enterprise. So just what is the appeal of a solitary game that involves tracking stats and eying injury lists? Local player Joey Tipton has a simple explanation.

“I’ve played just because I’m a big fan of football and it’s kind of exciting to follow all the stats, and if your friends are playing it’s fun talking smack and things like that,” Tipton said.

This year he plays in two fantasy football leagues at the same time, and he said his knowledge of the entire game of football has grown immensely from spending approximately an hour a week on his computer fine-tuning his fantasy team.

“I always used to think my friends were nerds for playing, but now I’m the same nerd that they were. You have to know your football, you can’t know nothing at all and do well. ”

Understanding the mindset of a fantasy football-obsessed male may be nearly impossible without playing yourself, so some women have given up complaining about how much time their significant other spends in front of the TV and computer and opted instead to join a league themselves. Although still a man’s world, growing ranks of female fans are getting into the action of fantasy football, bringing new elements and sensibilities to the game.

“I don’t think it affects me very much being the only girl [in my league],” said St. Louis resident Sarah Bland. “I didn’t follow football at all before this year, but now I find myself watching some games and at the very least keeping an eye on what the players on my team have been up to.”

Bland got involved with fantasy football through her boyfriend, and while she says she’s not exactly as enthusiastic about it as he is, she does enjoy being involved.

“We played each other last week, neither of our teams did well, we joked about it, he won,” she said. “He wouldn’t have been annoyed if I had won, I’m sure.”

How it’s done

Almost any fantasy football player will tell you that the most important day of the season is draft day. All of the “real” players are chosen on this day by the members of each fantasy league, and just like in real life, the pros you pick determine how successful your fantasy team will be. Unlike the NFL, however, players on a fantasy team can be traded, dropped, or picked up every week based on factors like gridiron performance or injuries. Every league has its own rules and regulations, so new players need to pay attention.

Most leagues will charge $50- $150 to join, with a cash prize going to the season’s best teams.

“We have an entry fee, and then we give out prize money at the end of the season,” said Jack Swedlund, who acts as commissioner of his own league when he’s not doing property maintenance for River Run Apartments. He came in last place in his fantasy league last year but remains in first so far this year. Swedlund has been involved with fantasy football for over five years now, with his only goal being a championship victory — and maybe a little extra pocket change.

The impact that fantasy football leagues has had on the real-life sport is enormous: Merchandising revenues are soaring, television ratings are up, and the NFL enjoys a popularity rivaling every other sport in America. With so many people connected so deeply through fantasy, it only makes sense that some things would change for fans and players alike.

“I grew up a Broncos fan, and I still am a die-hard Broncos fan, but now I actually will be rooting for players that the Broncos are playing against,” Swedlund said. “It used to be that on Sundays the only game I would watch would be the Broncos game, now it’s like I have a vested interest in all the teams.”

Not everybody feels that it has changed the game for the better, though: Retired Quarterback Jake Plummer once stated, “I think it’s ruined the game,” implying that fan’s habits and wishes often got muddled by their individual quests for fantasy points.

Matthew Berry, senior editor of Fantasy Sports at ESPN, disagrees.

“How can anything that increases your interest in the sport be bad for the sport?” Berry said. “it gives [the fans] a rooting interest in every other game. It gives you a way to identify with the sport.”

Wanna play? Here’s a short list of websites that offer fantasy football leagues to get started with: www.espn.com www.nfl.com www.yahoo.com www.fantasyfootball.com

Fantasy’s future

Regardless of personal feelings, the growing popularity of fantasy football means the sport won’t likely get benched any time soon. America’s thirst for professional and college football grows each season, and with 24-hour updated stats and information available online, fantasy players can easily stay ahead of the curve in a game where what you know and your opponent doesn’t could mean the difference between a win or a loss.

“Do I think it continues to grow? Absolutely,” Berry said. “You’re seeing fantasy (football) becoming much more a part of mainstream culture. A couple of years ago I had to explain what I did for a living — now people just know.”

For some, fantasy football is the perfect outlet for a football passion that runs much deeper than just a Sunday and Monday night pasttime. For others, it’s just a way to pass the time in between games or relate to a rabidly fanatical significant other. It might even just be a way to have total control over one aspect of a world that can seem totally out of control. But more than anything else, fantasy football affords average joes and janes the chance to share in the glory of the game — even if you’re in no shape to be playing “for real.”

Charlie Owen can be reached for comment at cowen@vaildaily.com.