What is Fantasy Football?

Is it the thing invented to magically make girlfriends invisible all day Sunday and Monday night? Or the attempt by all football fans to live vicariously through various NFL all-stars while proving their infinite knowledge of football to their friends and their undying dedication to the channel, sportscenter…

I never thought of these questions until I started dating my boyfriend and was not able to understand his passion for watching every single football GAME and getting mad at different players that weren’t even on his FAVORITE team. Some of you may think I am a crazy woman because I did not know what my boyfriend’s actions were trying to say, but I guess in my own world football was just about my favorite team. I still remember what he said to me once, “How come you don’t know what fantasy football is? Are you crazy?” I know he did not mean to call me crazy in a bad way, but it was shocking for him to know that I had no idea of what fantasy football was. He tried to explain me several times, but I didn’t really pay much attention until I started this blog and I found myself forced to ask him once again the meaning of fantasy football. Moreover, his lectures about fantasy football extremely helped me; however, after putting my boyfriend through long hours of explanations I felt that I still needed to explore different points of view and definitions that would help me get a better picture of the whole game. Therefore, I decided to initiate my own research and I started asking co-workers (which was a HUGE help), friends (also a plus) and navigate online as well. When I found all the answers to my questions, I couldn’t believe how FUN and EASY this game was, therefore, I came up with a clear and easy explanation on how fantasy football works and what exactly it is.

Fantasy Football begins with either an online or live draft in which fantasy owners (people that select football players to create a team) take turns in selecting different players of various positions for their teams. The draft consists of 15 rounds including the following positions; a quarter back, two wide receivers, two running backs, one tide end, one defense, a kicker, and then you have an option to either put a wide receiver or running back. You also have six people who are your bench players that can be moved into one of the starting slots if an injury occurs or in the case of a bye week. Moreover, after all the owners got all their players they compete against each other week by week. NOW you may ask yourself “how the owner gain points or become a winner?” Well each position makes a certain amount of points by how many yards they run and if they score any touchdowns.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_football_positions

Furthermore, after a certain amount of games (about 13 to 14 regular season games) you get to the play offs. The play offs consists of anywhere from four to six of the best teams playing against each other. (Remember that this is the fantasy league play offs NOT the real football play offs). Finally, here is when elimination begins leading to a winner… During elimination only four teams fight for the first place and how this works it’s a simple process. First the best team out of the four teams plays the team that won the least games (if you think about it… the best team deserves some kind of benefit because is the team that won the most games. Therefore, this team gets to play the team that won the least games out of the four. In other words, this team gets to play the easiest team). Then the team that placed second plays the team that placed third. The winners of both games play each other and determine the winner….