WILKES-BARRE — Fantasy football has allowed me to endure being a New York Football Giants fan.
Since the real Giants have been less than competitive for years, I’ve managed to be pretty formidable in the fantasy football world.
The key here is I refrain from selecting members of my beloved New York Giants.
Now, some will say that fantasy football has eroded the true meaning of being a football fan. I disagree. The fantasy game has been a fun way to enjoy the NFL season without the heartache of season after disappointing season of rooting for a real NFL team.
The key is to separate the two — the real team from your fantasy football teams. Being a Giants fan, it’s quite simple and, frankly, a lot of fun.
In the coming weeks, fantasy football leagues will be gathering to conduct their player drafts and that process is always a fun-filled couple of hours filled with intense analyses and cutting comments.
I now belong to just three fantasy leagues — and that is enough. They each provide lots of management and strategy, but there is one that is a bit different.
Every year, it’s another tension-filled draft for the Colonel’s Fantasy Football League in my hometown of Plymouth.
All 12 franchise holders are in attendance and ready to select their teams for the season.
This can be a trying experience, since most of these fantasy players know their stuff. Well, most bring the same cheat-sheets to the draft and go by the “experts’ rankings.”
But there are a few mavericks who like to buck the trend and select players they think will have better seasons than all those experts predict.
The mavericks are willing to change nearly all of their players in one fell swoop almost every week — they like to play the averages. They check things like schedules, weather and injury reports.
These are the scholars of the fantasy football world. If they dolled out degrees for such study, the mavericks would have a Ph.D.
The Colonel’s league is a quarterback-dominant league due to the unique scoring system devised by the Colonel himself. If he wasn’t already a colonel, he would be a doctor of fantasy studies. He has managed to come up with a system that probably only he totally understands. Most of us franchise holders are at the mercy of The Colonel in tabulating our weekly scores.
But we know The Colonel would never manipulate the numbers to anyone’s advantage. So we travel to the Plymouth VFW Post 1425 every Thursday to review the standings, the results and to make changes, if we so desire. The mavericks are guaranteed to make at least one change, but more likely two or three.
There are three divisions — teams drafting first through fourth; then teams 5th through 8th, and then teams 9th through 12th.
As expected, quarterbacks fly off the board in the first round and most of the second round. Some mavericks get a solid QB, then go for points-producers at running back or wide receiver. Kickers are also coveted because a 50-yard field goal is worth 10 points. That’s a lot to get every week.
When the dust settles, all fantasy rosters look formidable — on paper, anyway. Once the season begins, the real test of our wisdom begins.
The truth is, we never really know who will perform well and who won’t.
Or who will get hurt.
Or who will end up in the coach’s doghouse.
It’s pretty much a crap shoot.
But for these 12 fantasy team owners, The Colonel’s league is the ultimate battlefield. It’s each team against the world. We all want to win, and we want it bad.
But we laugh through it all. We accept the humbling embarrassments that happen every week when our sleeper picks and “monster” picks fail us.
But sometimes it all falls together. Sometimes our team performs the way we expected. Sometimes the mavericks stand pat with their rosters, but not often.
Fantasy Football is just that — a fantasy that creates a reality only the 12 franchise holders live in and where they control their individual teams.
According to legend and numerous reports, fantasy football was invented in 1962 by Wilfred “Bill” Winkenbach, a part-owner of the Oakland Raiders, along with Raiders PR director Bill Tunnell and Oakland Tribune reporter Scotty Stirling.
During a late-night meeting in a Manhattan hotel room, they drafted the core rules for the very first league: the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League (GOPPPL). The league held its inaugural draft in August 1963, selecting Oakland Raiders quarterback/kicker George Blanda as the historic number-one overall pick.
Over the following 63 years, fantasy football has grown to more than 35 million participants annually, making it a multi-billion-dollar enterprise.
That is some fantasy.