With the NFL season underway, football fans can once again look forward to Sundays – but some fans may seem extra enthusiastic for kickoff. The reason is simple: fantasy football.
Fantasy football is an online game that allows fans around the country to create a team of their favorite football stars and gain points based on those players’ performances in games. Fans can either play in public leagues or a private league with friends. Yahoo.com and ESPN.com are two popular websites that offer fantasy football.
The popularity of fantasy sports has exploded so much that there are now 41 million users in the U.S. and Canada, according to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association. Football is the favorite fantasy sport among players, making up 69.4 percent users.
It has become so widespread that NFL Chief Marketing Officer Mark Waller had the idea to push for fantasy football to be in elementary school curriculums. I wanted to see if the fever reached the Quinnipiac campus. It did. Senior Anthony Lancia says the days seem to go faster because all he can think about are NFL Sundays and fantasy football.
“I can’t get enough of it,” Lancia said. “I’m in three different leagues this year with friends from QU, high school and family. It gets very intense. Everyone’s yelling at the TV all day, cheering for teams we normally don’t care about.”
Junior Nick Raphael is also a fantasy football fanatic, and admits at times he spends more time looking at his lineup and matchup rather than getting his work done.
“All that matters is that my work is done before kickoff on Sundays,” he said. “If I still have work to do when the games start, the work won’t get done until about 11 at night.” On his predictions for the season: “No question, I’m going undefeated. My team is unfairly good.”
There is certainly no question that this fantasy football fever has spread to the Quinnipiac campus. It’s also not too late to sign up for a fantasy football league. Second-chance leagues are available on almost every website that offers fantasy football, so get some friends together, draft your team, and get ready for Sunday.
