Fantasy sports are games where participants play the part of “team owners” to construct a team that competes against other fantasy “owners” based on the stats generated by the actual players or teams of a professional sport.  There are fantasy baseball leagues, fantasy basketball and hockey leagues, there is even a Barclays Premier Soccer fantasy league.  In the United States, fantasy football is the #1 fantasy sport played by millions of football fanatics across the country.  Sports networks devote entire shows to fantasy football.

Year after year , the number of fantasy football players has grown.  Today, according to Heather Brown of CBS News Minnesota, there are now more than 36 million people playing fantasy football, and this number is increasing by 2 million participants every year.  This is up from 9 million participants in 2005.  Fantasy football has become so popular because people “like being part of something that is bigger than themselves and having the chance to run your own team.”  This is what John Tauer has to say, a social psychologist from the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.

 Fantasy Football participants can be friends, or even strangers, from the neighborhood or around the country.  Fantasy Football gives participants a chance to take entire control of a dream team of top professional athletes, from selecting the week’s starters, picking up free agents, and dropping players who are playing poorly or are inactive for that week’s game.

One of the main reasons so many people play fantasy football is that it’s simply fun.   Nazareth Academy Junior Carl Robst, who is playing Fantasy Football for the first time this season, says, “It’s a lot of fun.”  Grant Pomatto, another Junior at Nazareth Academy who has been playing Fantasy Football for the last four years said “Fantasy Football keeps me in the loop of the games because I am looking at all of my players and seeing how they did.”  Right now he is 2-1 and looks for another win this upcoming weekend.

However, for some fantasy players, it’s not always about the camaraderie and fun.  John Sandstrom, a regular fantasy football participant, says that he can win up to $5,000.00 if his team wins the league he joined.  “I started by playing with family members, but I later joined a serious league with friends from work.  The first year I came in last, and lost my original buy-in of $250.00.  Last year I came in second and won $2,500.00.  As Ozzie Guillen said,’Winning is fun. Fun is winning.’”  Fantasy football is big business.  Consider this: Todd Kehoe of The Albany Business Review says, “the NFL is a 9.5 billion dollar business.  So, the revenues of the fake game are more than half of what the real thing is producing.”  This is incentive enough to join a league.

Joining a league is not complicated. The two most popular Fantasy Football sites are on ESPN and Yahoo.  A draft takes place and top players are selected.  Points are earned per week based on a players performance on game days. A good quarterback or running back is a good place to start.  Some leagues will even award points for the yards a kick returner earns – drafting the Bears’ Devin Hester would be a pretty good move this season.  In some fantasy leagues an entire team’s defense can be drafted, too.  Earning points is fairly simple: Quarterbacks earn points for passing yards and scoring plays.  Running backs earn points for total yardage and scoring.  Defenses earn points for turnovers and the fewest yards allowed per week.

OK, so your team is down by a touchdown.  The Broncos’ Peyton Manning calls the play at the goal line with eight seconds left in the fourth quarter.  Hike!  Peyton Manning then hands the ball off to your starting running back, the Vikings’ Adrian Peterson.  Peterson finds a hole in the defensive line and rushes towards it.  Just as Peterson is about to cross the plane of the goal line, the Texans’ J.J. Watt, the opposing team’s defensive end, delivers a crushing hit to Peterson.  Game over.  And a potential six points from the weekly total is lost.  Imagine if a team had all these superstars.  The owner of this squad  would no doubt be in a pretty good position to win their league.  If you like football, and want to try something new and have some fun, consider joining a Fantasy Football league as soon as possible. The Fantasy Football Super Bowl waits!