What's your Fantasy?.... football that is!
By Kimmy P.
Happy Sunday my Wicked Pissahh friends! We’re pumped that it's one of the last few Sundays without football!!!! In the meantime, most of us here at Wicked Pissahh are getting ready for our Fantasy Football draft this week and I thought I'd take a look at the history of where it all started!
Did you know that fantasy football can be traced all the way back to 1962?! Wilfred "Bill the Gill" Winkenbach who was a limited partner in the Oakland Raiders and Bill Tunnel the Raiders Public Relations man came up with the original idea and had their first draft with six other league members in 1963. Each team in the The Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League or GOPPPL consisted of two quarterbacks, four halfbacks, two fullbacks, four offensive ends, two kick/punt returners, two field goal kickers, two defensive backs/linebackers and two defensive linemen. Over the years bar leagues popped up and news about this thing called “fantasy football” started to spread slowly. In the 1980’s we had the birth of the modern internet and in 1985 we saw the first nationally available fantasy football leagues online through America Online (you know that thing all of our parents yelled at us to get off so they could make a phone call?!). In 1997 CBS launched their first publicly available fantasy football website and within a few years every other major sports media website joined in on the fun.
Nowadays there are all different types of leagues. From head to head, to salary cap, to keeper leagues and many more. Each league has it's own rules as to how many players at each position you can start as well as different point systems. There is something for everyone! There are full season leagues as well as weekly leagues for those of you who might want to just test the waters before you get too involved.
I don’t know about everyone else, but in my family, Fantasy football is a way of life come the Fall. The week before Labor Day, all talk turns to fantasy football and we are no longer parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles or cousins. We are all rivals playing against each other for that championship trophy. When asked who you plan on drafting in the first round, a common response is “I’m not telling you sh*t!”, in hopes of guarding your top picks and trying to get the upper hand for the season. We all put a lot of time into our research and figure out which players we want and when we want to draft them, or which players we hope to steal from someone else if we can squeeze any information out of them and we have a better draft pick. As soon as the draft is done the trash talk starts! And it doesn't really matter how good or bad your team is, there will always be insults and jokes hurled around the group chats from just about everyone (except maybe that quiet uncle who picks his team randomly with no prior research and always seems to have a good season). Teams will form alliances to share information or make inside trades and band together to talk trash to the other teams until the last one standing is crowned King of the league…. Until next season anyway!
So whether you play through CBS, Yahoo, the NFL Network or one of the many other competitors of the game it all started back with two cool dudes just looking to add a little bit of fun to the football world.The rules and types of leagues have grown and changed over the years but the basis is the same. You get a bunch of your football loving friends together, come up with your team names, draft your team and talk all the trash you can as the season unfolds. So good luck to all you Fantasy football players this year! And if you already had your draft and picked the Colts QB.... well Better Luck next year!
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