Every year hundreds of thousands of people partake in a bizarre form of gaming called Fantasy Football. For three years now I’m one of them even with my nigh-total disinterest in the National Football League.

Fantasy football is a game played using the statistics generated by the players in the NFL. Each category is assigned a point value. Each player drafts a team of players to track and pits them up against the others. Those with the best records after the first 14 weeks of the NFL season get to play in the playoffs. Over the last three weeks of the NFL regular season they eliminate each other till there is only one left. In leagues where players buy in there is a cash prize for the winner. I’ve heard of leagues where there is a $200 to $300 buy in. Yikes! I’m quite happy to play for free and just have the bragging rights if I win.

As you might expect, those with an encyclopedic knowledge of sports and a fanatical devotion to the NFL will rule these games. That brings up the question: What the frell am I doing playing? I only have passing interest in football. I don’t even know all the players on my hometown Buffalo Bills. I don’t keep track of football stats at all. To play this game well I have to immerse myself in a sea of information desperately trying to keep up with the other players. During our draft I had no less than fourteen web pages tabbed and 3 documents of stats open. In-between picks I would frantically switch between these trying to figure out my next pick. I happened to draft first this year, which added an additional wrinkle in that in the serpentine draft format, after my first pick, I would be picking 2 players each time my turn came around. Sometimes I was forced to not pick the guy I knew I wanted until the clock was almost out, just to buy me time to figure out my second pick. I’m just lucky I didn’t pick someone injured or in jail. Now I can look forward to a weekly nightmare of trying to figure out who to play each week.

Why do I do it? Three words: I am a gamer. It’s all about the game. I could care less that it is football. Just cause I play Puerto Rico doesn’t mean I’m interested in farming in the Caribbean. I enjoy matching my team to my opponent’s, looking for hidden gems in the free agency pool, and the thrill of waiting for Monday night to see if I can pull ahead of the competition at the last moment. I do not enjoy tracking statistics. Fortunately the folks at Yahoo! and my computer do all the hard parts. If not for that I would not play the game. The football games are just incidental. Oh, sure, it’s nice to watch the games my guys are playing in and pretend I really care in the outcome. In truth, to me football players are just pseudo random number generators. Each week I try to figure out who has a statistically better chance to produce a higher number. Sometimes I gamble on a long shot with a huge potential. Sometimes I play weaker players because whomever I am playing against has people on the same team. Not much point in hoping my wide receiver pays off big if my opponent has his quarterback. A friend of mine was telling me about the influences of the teams’ coaches on his choice of players. This is a level of complexity that is far beyond me. I just work with tangible stats. Performance, Schedule, Depth Charts, Injuries, these are what I look at. Mostly I use the Yahoo! stats because I’m playing in a Yahoo! league. There are plenty of good places to look for more info. I got a lot of help for the draft from NFLFreaks.com.

The unusual thing about our league, and one of the reasons I like it, is that we are what is called an IDP (Individual Defensive Player) league. Most leagues use a team defense system where each player chooses a whole team’s defense to represent them. In our league we get to pick individual players. I much prefer this not only because I get to pick some Buffalo Bills for my team (no point in taking their offense this year *sigh*), but also because I like the defensive aspect of the game more. Back when the Bills were a scary team I got a lot of joy out of watching Bruce Smith sack quarterbacks. One of the ways I keep up in this league is to have over performing defense to compensate for the underwhelming performance of my offense.

It took a weird convergence of technology, sports culture, and gaming to create fantasy football, and I for one am delighted. Even with all the work those of us who don’t know football have to put in, it’s still a lot of fun. I recommend it to anyone, not just football fans. Just do your research and don’t be afraid to make mistakes. My first year playing I drafted a Wide Receiver on the IR (injured for the whole year) and then in the first week my 3 other WRs got injured. I still managed to win that year. (With a lot of luck at the end of the year.)