Beginner’s Guide to Fantasy Football
If you are reading this, you are probably fairly new to fantasy football. You’re about to start one of the most exciting games on the internet. If you are a huge football fan, or just love to see some guys light up the box score, fantasy football is the game for you.
THE BASICS OF FANTASY FOOTBALL
To start off I will go into some detail about how fantasy football works. If you have read my General Fantasy Overview, you probably have some sort of idea of how the fantasy sports world works. I will reiterate those thoughts here, more specifically catered for football.
Fantasy football allows you to draft real NFL players from around the league, and form your own team. Just as NFL teams draft from the college ranks, you do the same with NFL players for your team. If you have ever played the Madden football games, it is essentially the same thing as their fantasy draft; you join a draft, draft players for your team, and play as those players. However, in fantasy football online, you draft players and use their real-life game stats. As your players go, so goes your team.
Let’s step aside and thrown an example at you. Let’s say you were able to draft Drew Brees as your quarterback. In week one, Brees goes 30-40, for 330 yards and 3 TDs. Drew would have just scored 29 points for your team with those stats (I will get into the scoring aspect a little later.) This score would be added to your team’s total score, along with the scores of your other players. In a nutshell, you just want to have the best players in the NFL, who will consistently score the most points for your team on a week-by-week basis.
Fantasy football is the most popular of all the fantasy sports online. It has gotten so big that businesses are losing out on billions (yes thats a B) of dollars during the NFL season. According to a November 2008 HR Magazine study, “Nearly 14 million workers likely are spending some company time huddling over their fantasy football teams. That diversion could cost employers around the nation an estimated $10.5 billion in lost productivity during the 17-week NFL season, according to some estimates. (Source)”
As you can imagine, fantasy football corresponds with the real NFL season. As such, it goes from mid August until late December. The regular season is the only time period covered by fantasy football, and fantasy sports in general. Once the NFL reaches the playoffs, fantasy football is over. There are different fantasy games that pop-up once the season is over, but they don’t correspond with the real season. Fantasy football, however, is virtually a year round game because of all the off-season happenings in the league. If you want to remain competitive, you have to follow NFL wheelings and dealings for much of the off-season.