Playing Fantasy Football and Its History

Fantasy football all started in Oakland Raiders’ team trip to New York City in the Milford Plaza Hotel back in 1962. Winfred Winkenbach, together with the former Raiders Public Relations Manager, Bill Tunnel, and a former reporter Scotty Starling, created the rules of fantasy football. The first ever league was called the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Procrastinator League or GOPPPL. This first league was made up for eight members and the roster consisted of two of each: quarterbacks, halfbacks, fullbacks, offensive ends, kick returners, field goal kickers, defensive line backers, and defensive linemen.

In 1989, Fantasy Football turned into a national phenomenon when the Pigskin playoff reached over 100,000 participants winning thousands of fantasy football trophies. Twelve major newspapers sponsored this historical game. The rules and guidelines of the game were then developed by Robert Barbiere and Brad Wendkos.

The concept of the game is easy. Readers of the sponsoring newspapers are to create team of NFL players, earn stats on each player which is based on real performances, trade the players every week, and accumulate points to compete with one another and receive prizes such as fantasy football trophies.

Today, there are about 18 million participants of fantasy football both playing public and private leagues. This is because Fantasy football is easy and fun to play.

To start a game, a league manager must be chosen. The league manager is the one to make sure that all participants are playing the game the proper way. Next step is to recruit the players. The players are then required to create their own team consisting of real-life players. The game will be played by keeping track of the players’ statistics on actual games.

Leagues can be more interesting if great prizes await the game winners. Fantasy football awards are an example of a nice game prize.