Fantasy football gone wild

 

 

 

    Fantasy football has become a worldwide phenomenon. Fantasy football is usually a format where people choose a team or squad of players from their favorite league, and gain points every week or weekend depending on the player’s performance in real-life action over that period.

    Fantasy Football dates back to 1962, where it was developed by three males during an Oakland Raiders east coast trip. One was the Raiders PR guy, one was a reporter for the Oakland Tribune, and one was a partial owner of the team.

     Since then, the idea of fantasy football has grown in popularity.  Currently, over 74.7 million Americans were planning on participating in Fantasy football this year according online sources. In 2013, Brian Goff of Forbes.com estimated that fantasy football was worth around $11 billion in revenue. To put that into perspective, the NFL’s revenue for 2012 was $9.5 million. So, that means fantasy football makes more money than the actual NFL.

    A study prior to the 2012 season estimated fantasy football cost companies across the United States $6.5 billion in lost work, per Seana Smith of FoxBusiness.com. A firm more recently estimated that fantasy football could be costing employers double that, $13.4 billion, according to Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz of The Chicago Tribune.

    People enjoy playing fantasy football because it is a special feeling predicting the result of a match, and earning some extra cash from making bets. Senior Kyle Keating, like many others, is big into fantasy football. He has been playing for five years, and he also bets money on his games. Many fantasy football participants are known to bet hundreds of dollars on players and games, but Keating’s highest bet has only been 20 dollars. Some extreme fantasy football participants, like the ones in the “tattoo league”, get permanent shameful tattoos to show when they have lost.

    The top ten picks for 2015 are Le’Veon Bell, Adrian Peterson, Eddie Lacy, Jamaal Charles, Marshawn Lynch, Antonio Brown, C.J Anderson, Matt Forte, DeMarco Murray, and Demaryius Thomas. Keating’s most valuable players are Adrian Peterson and Antonio Brown. As all fantasy football participants hope, Keating expects to be undefeated, and fantasy champ.