Fantasy Football - Then and Now

[McBoog]

I am in the midst of my 14th FF campaign now.

 

I used to be addicted to the point that my wife would not even bother talking to me on Sunday. We had no children back then and had plenty of other time together so she just “rode with it” and watched the Charger game when it came on (if we weren’t actually at the game).

 

This too was pre-NFL Sunday Ticket or any semblance of Internet live stats. As a matter of fact, it was pretty much pre-software for league management (I designed a really cool spreadsheet for my league in an old DOS program ). The biggest commish revelation happened when you could download the official NFL stats Tuesday morning into you league management software, generate the final scores and either fax or e-Mail a report to your managers.

 

These were the days where the “Ten Minute Ticker” had actual meaning! I remember jumping up and screaming in joy when I saw a Faulk TD role across the bottom of the screen putting me up (I thought and was later right) in a game for the division crown and moving me into the playoffs. This scared the SH!T out of my wife and guests who were watching the game on TV with me. None of them were FF Players and since the Chargers were in a huddle, they had no idea what my outburst was all about! That sound they would play before brining up "The Ticker" was Pavlovian and you would come running from wherever you were (usually getting a beer and another slice) to see if one of your guys is reported for something .

 

These too were the days of getting up early and sitting on “the throne” with the sports section, trying to figure out how your team did. If you were a commissioner and did not have (which is where us old timers started) or had not bought league management software, then your legs would be pretty much numb by the time you got off the pot after figuring out the scores. As you stagger out of the bathroom with crippled wheels you would be greeted by your wife with something like, “You were in there so long I was about to call the paramedics! ”

 

Fervent, addicted and consumed by rituals, but even more so by trying to listen to and watch 2,493 different pre-game shows simultaneously on the TV and radio since there was no one place a FF player could reliably go to for daily inactives! I swear there was a power drain in the area I lived with all of the TVS and radios on all at the same time before kick-off. This was IF you were or had a Commish that was willing to take phone calls up to ten minutes before kick-off for roster changes. Most leagues had a reporting deadline of late Friday night or Saturday Morning before noon! These were the times when you would curse having to watch the Falcons/Saints game just because all the teams HAD to have a national broadcast game at least once a year.

 

It was a lot harder to play FF and manage teams back then, not just the league. Those who put the time into really researching what was going on usually would win. There was a lot more skill to the game back then. Now, the Rosie O'Donnell complain if you have a web-site that doesn't have 189 different free links to information right at their disposal!

 

The amount of work that it required actually would cause burn-out and a lack of desire to continue playing. The number of posts on these boards about burn-out and a lack of desire to play anymore (I even posted one once!) are not as frequent. In a weird way, I miss that time of FF. It was certainly more rewarding to the people who took it seriously. Casual players used to be referred to as "contributors to the pot", 'cause they were not winnin' sh!t!

 

NOW…

 

Everything is sooooooo much easier. You throw down your $20 bucks and get The Huddle. Everything you need to be competitive is in one place. The effort required to run 1 or 2 teams (which used to be like a part-time job), is now ¼ the effort to run 20 teams. Purchase two sites to compare info if you want. Still about the same price for the four or five FF mags we used to buy, plus subscriptions to the local rag and the multi-colored fish wrap. Not to mention figuring out a way to meet and befriend guys that work for the local NFL team (assuming there was one. My hook in law enforcement was to use that as a pretext to hook up with the team security guys) for "inside information" .

 

Not only that, but I have the chillens now. No way I am going to steal an entire weekend day from spending time with them. It has been a bit easier here this year on the East coast (I have lived in Kalifornica most of my life) since the games start later and I can get a day trip to a park or an early movie in with the kids before the games start. I get up too early to watch the entire late game though (Unless my Bolts are playing, then I have pretty much all day to spend with the family).

 

Currently, I get up, make breakfast for the family while the laptop is humming on the counter . Make my final roster adjustments and then set the thing in the corner of the room. Once the games start, if I am not watching the games (which is the norm now), I will check in about every 20 to 30 minutes to see how I am doing (unless of course I throw on a back pack and take the family on an exploration to a D.C. museum or go check out a Civil War battle field or build snow forts and go sledding or just cuddle up and read my kids a story). I also check the NFL.COM site to see how all the REAL NFL games are going to see if I should be watching one that looks particularly good (even if I have no FF players involved in the game ).

 

Yes, I do have “The Ticket” but that is my season ticket to the Charger games (which I have trouble even watching them in their entirety ). It does give me the luxury of watching any game I want, if I want to. I see the current add-ons that let you watch 8 games at once and laugh, realizing that if I had that 10 or 11 years ago, my head would have exploded .

 

Fantasy Football has made me more of a fan of the NFL in general. I am not as passionate about FF as I was, but a better, more knowledgable fan of the NFL because of FF. Actually, I could give up FF any time and actually had this year until a friend of mine needed a last minute manager for his league. I like it, but am no longer "passionate" about it. To me it is no longer a hobby, but a game for us big boys. Too much of what made it hard and challenging is gone, and I think overcoming that is what took it into the realm of being a hobby. I still would have paid for The Huddle even if I hadn't played this year, just for all the great football info and talk!

 

Earlier in the week I made a post about how I used to try to make the Leagues I Commish as close to “real” football as possible. Once I realized that you can’t and that the word “FANTASY” should be the first clue to that fact, FF became less stressful and the NFL became more fun. I stopped playing in big money leagues because the luck factor is greater now than at any time in the earlier days of FF. A lazy POS manager has all the info the best managers do with minimal effort. As the skill level required to win dropped, the frustration level rose, until I realized many of the issues I have discussed here. I find the most fun I have had in this, my 14th season of FF is playing in bragging rights leagues with people I know. Everyone pays enough for the website and the Commish plays for free for the effort.

 

Looking back on it, it has been an interesting ride!

[The Wolf]

McBoog, this is a great read...I'll post better comments when I have more time. it does make me get a bit nostalgic about those early days (1995 was my first season) of sitting down with the NY Post on Monday mornings and figuring out the totals...

[darin3]

McBoog, this is a great read...I'll post better comments when I have more time. it does make me get a bit nostalgic about those early days (1995 was my first season) of sitting down with the NY Post on Monday mornings and figuring out the totals...

+1

 

My member # may be four digits, but I've been around here - and in fantasy football - since '97ish. First league - and still in it - used phone/fax to get lineups in. We're still not "online", but trade lineups/scores via email.

 

Duh-duh-duh-duh-DUH-DUH!

[Yukon Cornelius]

87 was the start for me and yah it was kinda fun reading the scores in the am trying to figure out what u and others had

[Copeman]

This is my 19th year. I remember doing scoring using the Monday (and Tuesday for MNF) newspaper. League news and standings etc...were written on paper (or typed if I felt like it) and mailed to everyone. They'd get it by Thursday or Friday and everyone would call their lineups in. Using a phone *gasp*!

At the draft we would use magazines purchased many months in advance.

 

And yes, the ten minute ticker ruled.

[doobwaa]

Great post Mc B , thanks for bringing back some memories.

 

I started back sometime in the 80's and remember selecting Curt Warner with one of my early picks....thats right youngin's

 

Curt with a C and he was a RB....not a QB

 

Yeah thats only 20-odd years ago

 

Newspapers and roll paper fax machines... not to mention the magazines whose information

was usually already out of date when you got the mag.

 

Oh well times have sure changed but if you are in a good league with a good group of people

nothin beats it.

Edited October 10, 2007 by doobwaa

[Easy n Dirty]

Great post McBoog!!!

 

I started playing in 1994 when I formed a league for myself and a bunch of buddies. My first draft pick ever was Jerome Bettis coming off a solid rookie season, his sophomore season was a disappointment. Took him just ahead of Barry Foster and Dan Marino.

 

For the first couple of seasons, one of the things you had to bring to the draft was a pile of stamped, self-addressed enevelopes, so I could mail out weekly newsletters, which I put together painstakingly every Monday and Tuesday. Used to take lineups by phone. This post just made me go and look at a couple of those manual newsletters from our first season - good times.

 

I remember the pain we used to go through when a player was listed as Questionable - when I had a player that I wasn't sure about, I used to call up the newspaper from that player's town and ask for the sports desk, then ask whoever picked up if so-and-so was expected to play that weekend. The people at the newspapers would recognize you right away as a fantasy footballer, even back then, and they were generally very helpful.

 

We were talking about this at this year's draft - the one thing that I really miss were those really really bad picks that popped up on draft night. Nowadays, with everyone having an updated cheat sheet from their favorite web site, and with everyone on a relatively even playing ground because information is so accessible, a bad pick might be when someone takes a WR who you have listed as the 6th best available on your sheet. Back in the mid-90s, you'd have guys picking WRs that were 20 or 30 down on your cheat sheet, and then everyone would have a good time razzing the guy who made the clunker of a pick. No more.

[TimC]

Great post. We started our league back in '89 and it WAS so much funner back then. I still miss the sound of the 10-minute ticker.

 

Everything is so spoon-fed now and no real work is needed. Definitely not as much skill needed today by far.

 

I used to charge a stamp fee to mail out the weekly stuff. No one had a computer.

[Bring Back Pat!!!]

My 1st year playing was 1989.

 

Who here remembers the short-lived all sports newspaper of which Frank Deford was the editor?? I used to love that thing!! Again, pre-internet for my leagues, and with so many different newspapers out there, you used to get differing or incomplete box scores. Not so with the National, and it was the Official stats source for my leagues, while it lasted.

 

Anyway, for those who don't remember, here ya go:

 

The National

[Big Ernie McCracken]

13th season. My first pick was Jerry Rice, Followed by Big Ben Coates. It was a 6 team draft and some nit wit traded Marshall Faulk for Kevin Greene(the Linebacker). It was TD and Curtis Martin's rookie season and both were picked up as free agents. The season was decided on the MNF were Rice caught 3TD's for almost 300 yds. and about a dozen catches and Chris Carter came close to outperforming him. USA today was where we got our stats and couldn't get the monday night numbers until Wednesday. I used to buy pro-football weekly and soak up as much sports radio as possible.

[#1 Niners Fan]

I am in a league that actually dates back to the mid-70's...I only joined three years ago, but its alot of fun....

 

Pretty much everyone except me and one other guy has been in it sinceat least the early '80's....very unconventional league rules and scoring compared to the standard ones of today...scoring done manually in excel (glad I am not in charge of that)..but overall, believe it or not, its the most fun league I am in...there are a few rule changes I would like to see that I think would make the league better, but I am the new guy, so I dont push too hard (although I do make my opinions known at the draft every year)

[McBoog]

Another thing I was thinking about was the evolution of scoring systems with all these on-line managers. Back then it was TDs, yardage, TDs, sacks, TDs, INTs, TDs, FGs TDs fumbles, TDs & extra points (actually scoring was a bigger factor back then if you didn't catch that subtle addition). Many were still TD only leagues! Scoring distance was also a big thing in some leagues as well (it was in the first one I played in). Basically, everything that was in the newspaper boxscore and ONLY in the newspaper boxscore. There was no decimal scoring, combined yardage, PPR, PPA etc. This way everyone could get an idea of how their teams were doing. I wonder what would happen to a local sewer system if all FF players coordinated a flush at the same time on an early Monday morning?

 

I would like to set up a mirror league putting in the old-timer scoring system and see just how different the actual outcomes of games would be. I would bet, just on gut feeling, that there would not be a lot of difference in weekly outcomes.

 

Part of the problem with today's game could be how hard it has become to vicerally get a feeling of how well your team was doing by the Ticker and then taping Sports Center (taping 'cause they used to go too fast to catch all the secondary players stats, and even then they might not be on the board). The technology has taken this away. There was always that nervous anticipation of getting the news paper to see what really happened. There was the unknown element of what was going on and it added emotion to the FF game. With live scoring, you know, all the time, what is happening!

 

Monday Night Football was better back then too. You would generally know what you needed and would be tracking your players as best you could on paper, hoping it was close to what was official on Tuesday morning.

 

Some of the age polls done here in The Huddle show we have young guys, 25 and younger, playing now. Many of the people that come in here have NO IDEA of what it was like to play back then or what we talk about by having to do your own research. I don't think as many people played because it was a harder hobby and required a lot of effort to be good. That is NOT the case today! I am sure that half as many (or less) would be playing if things were still the old way. FF has evolved almost into a video game, and I would not be suprised if eventually there will be an interface that will simulated an actual game based on the performance of your players dressed in team unis of your choosing. Sort of like Madden with a live NFLstats feed that controls the players.

 

For me, the technology has been great in terms of managing the leagues, but it has hurt worse by creating too level of a playing field by making the info too available. It has taken the elbow grease out of running a Fantasy Team and can take away from the real reason we play it, a love for the game of football!

[McBoog]

I am in a league that actually dates back to the mid-70's...I only joined three years ago, but its alot of fun...scoring done manually in excel (glad I am not in charge of that)..but overall, believe it or not, its the most fun league I am in...

 

I believe this completely!

 

Also, don't try to make too many changes. What you like about it is probably that it isn't like on-line FF at all!

[Caveman_Nick]

For me, the technology has been great in terms of managing the leagues, but it has hurt worse by creating too level of a playing field by making the info too available. It has taken the elbow grease out of running a Fantasy Team and can take away from the real reason we play it, a love for the game of football!

 

One thing I think is still true, and that is that elbow grease still pays off. There's a reason that BoTH leagues are the best leagues around, and that is that owners there take the time to know their football.

[The Misfit]

I think what makes it "easier" now is also what makes it less fun for me than I remember.

 

Not just that fantasy football information is ubiquitous, but there was no "stud RB theory" or anything that made a draft as predictable and programmed as they seem to be today. You took who you thought were the best players for your team; none of this "well, if I take Steve Young now, I'll have problems filling out my RB positions." I think this kind of microstrategy has taken some of the fun out of it (for me). People used to pick their "favorite" players; today, it's all about value picks.

 

The live scoring now is my favorite improvement -- no more waiting for the Tuesday morning USA Today to see who scored what on Monday night. I kinda liked adding up all the scores on Monday, though. I'd go to a restaurant, get some breakfast and a pot of coffee, spread out the box scores and add up the points. I liked that ritual -- great way to start the week.

 

The worst thing about reading the paper ... You find out your RB or WR had 99 yards. Not only were there no decimals (1 point per 10 yards) but it seems like the leagues I was in all had bonus points for hitting 100 yards rushing or receiving. Seeing that your guy got 99 yards was just crushing -- I'd get a sick feeling in my stomach, especially until I added up all the points to see if it made a difference in the outcome.

 

Good times, good times.

[Mark5]

AAAHHHH, The 10 minute sports ticker.. The room went silent and tunnel vision set in.. TD ONLY leagues (I had Barry Sanders with the 1st pick and he went 1500 yards and TWO TDs).. Writing out the weekly Swammi report and mailing them out.. All these things brings a tear to my eye now. Trying to get new rules each year to "keep up with the changing times" was hilarious. Good post McBoog.. and with only 5-6 magazines available there were ONLY 20 EXPERTS in the Fantasy field.. Hell, CBS has that many on staff as we speak

[bigmike4969]

Man this post does bring back memories.

 

I had to do some research, but I recall my first fantasy football league was in 1994. It was a TD only league. I remember my two RBs were Barry Sanders and Barry Foster (would have been nice if it was a yardage league).

 

I also recall the #1 pick being Emmitt Smith, followed by Steve Young.

 

There was one person who could not make the draft, so his brother drafted for him, and he chose Dan Marino for his QB. He got laughed at cause this was the year Marino was coming off that achilles injury, and no one was sure how well he would do coming back, and in his first game he threw 5 TDs.

 

I remember the following year one of the guys was away on business for the draft so he had to call in and draft via phone. That was fun.

 

I recall getting those lineups in by phone (and I do recall the commish's wife having to take some of those calls and jotting down our lineup when he was not there, those were always fun cause we weren't sure if he would get the msg) and getting the recaps via mail each week.

 

That league is still in existence but I have since moved and am no longer in it, but I was offered a chance to get back in it a couple of years ago.

Edited October 10, 2007 by bigmike4969

[Gdawg]

The worst thing about reading the paper ... You find out your RB or WR had 99 yards. Not only were there no decimals (1 point per 10 yards) but it seems like the leagues I was in all had bonus points for hitting 100 yards rushing or receiving. Seeing that your guy got 99 yards was just crushing -- I'd get a sick feeling in my stomach, especially until I added up all the points to see if it made a difference in the outcome.

 

Ah, I remember these days well! I remember one week needing only FIVE points to win, my opponent was finished and I still had Napoleon Kauffman going on Monday Night. Towards the VERY end of the game, he eclipsed the 100 yard rushing mark! Hooray, my five points, my victory! His next, and last carry of the night goes for -2 yards, leaving him with 98 yards on the night. We Tied.

Edited October 10, 2007 by Gdawg

[#1 Niners Fan]

I believe this completely!

 

Also, don't try to make too many changes. What you like about it is probably that it isn't like on-line FF at all!

 

I wouldnt try to take it online for the reason you mentioned...I enjoy going through and scoring the league on SUnday night, and seeing how everyone did on all the teams...gives me a good indication on how all players are doing on all teams...besides, I dont think we would find a software that would take into account our scoring and lineup irregularities....believe me when I tell you its uncommon, but alot of fun!

 

Main thing I would change is the lineup deadlines...you have to have you lineup emailed to everyone else in the league by 5pm Friday (and they are sticklers on this). Then you get one lineup change between 5pm Friday and 10am Sunday (all times PST). So if you have a guy who is questionable in the afternnon, Sunday night, or Monday night games, you are pretty much taking a chance...I understand only having one lineup change after lineups are submitted because then people could change their whole lineup and that would be a pain for the scorer (like I said, I woudlnt want her job!), but I think if you have a player you want to sub in the MNF game with another player in the MNF game, you should have up until gametime Monday to do it....I bring that up every year, but they are resistant to change...

 

oh well, still a real fun league (even though I am getting killed this year!)

[Delicious_bass]

Ah, yes. The olden days. Back when we used to buy Charpentier's book and everyone brought a handfull of magazines to the draft. The only net we used was for walleyes. Good times...good times.

[Slugs]

1992 was my first year. We used the official scoring out of the USA Today as the official scoring for the league for many years. Could not tell what others scored as lineups were generally "faxed" and if I left the office early on Friday, I had no clue who everyone else was playing. I did become quite adept at doing my own scoring on the train on the way into work.

[Dont Rookie Me........]

I had to walk uphill to the fax machine both ways in the snow!

[Winoman]

Yeah - I'm still playing in my first league that I've been in since the early-mid 90s (and it had already been going for years prior) and it retains some of the vestiges of the old days even though we (finally) moved to myfantasyleague online- only about 5 years ago!!! really...commish still does not own a computer... . It was great fun - but of course more work - to total up scores from Mondays paper - often not knowing how it would turn out - or even what happened until reading the stats!

 

I used to know some guys back in the late 80s/early 90s who would compile a highlight video from Sportscenter or such for each team - lots of work - taking highlight clips from players and cobbling them together. This was my first exposure to FF- and I absolutly couldn't believe it - the fanatiscim of it all (and I imediatly wanted to play myself)...now I am in 5 head to head leagues and 3 total points salary cap leagues....

[panhead55]

My first fantasy league was in 1991, I believe. The highlight on Sunday was watching NFL Primetime which gave you an inkling of how well you did. You knew your opponents roster, but you didn't know who he played unless you called him. Otherwise you waited until Wednesday when the commissioner released the results. There was definately no instant gratification. Newspapers were your only source of information once the season started. There were a few preseason magazines, but after the start of the season you relied primarily on boxscores.

 

In regards to fantasy football, I don't really miss the good old days.

[Gunther]

I had to walk uphill to the fax machine USA Today box both ways in the snow!

Corrected for our situation, my local started in 1993 (we became ecstatic when a USA Today box appeared where we worked in time for the 1994 season). Kickers went like wild fire during the first round of our first draft.