The player he chose — the great George Blanda, who later went on to quarterback for the Raiders — was a bit of a bust compared to the incomparable Jim Brown, who went second. Andy still laments the pick, decades later. It was so well known that when it finally closed in , Bay Area newspapers lamented its passing. It quickly became known as the spot for bar activities. That move got him excommunicated from the GOPPPL, although it almost certainly hastened the spread of fantasy football.
The biggest one was that yardage now mattered, but Andy also replaced the usage of individual defensive and special team players with defensive and special teams themselves. Today, some 34 percent of fantasy football players are women. League teams had to submit their roster in person by PM on Friday nights, no faxing or phoning in allowed. Be thankful for NFL. Since Bay Area media outlets usually only reported on local teams, Andy had to call up newspapers and television stations in other cities and beg for results.
They often hung up on him, thinking that he was just some bookie. But despite all those hurdles, the public now had a taste for fantasy football. And why bother, anyway? It's a cult. And this stuff fantasy football is close to a cult. There's a lot of offshoots to fantasy football. Oh yeah, I'm surprised at how big it's gotten. Ross, a lifelong newspaperman, served as sports editor of the Tribune for more than a decade. Now 77, he is enjoying his retirement in rural Graeagle, California, in the northeastern part of the state.
Stirling, whose career has spanned sports journalism and sports management, now works as the Director of Scouting for the Sacramento Kings.
He describes his work with the Kings as "the best job of all. The creators of fantasy football never benefitted financially from their effort. Parker Brothers still makes a mint from Monopoly R , a game invented in the Great Depression, but our founding fathers get no royalties on the millions of dollars spent on fantasy football every year. That was the last time he ever spoke with Winkenbach.
Ross and Winkenbach didn't speak to each other for 15 years after the Tribune published a series of stories in the 's which questioned the propriety of some of the Raiders' financial dealings. The two never reconciled before Winkenbach died last year. An even greater irony involving two of the three creators of the game provides some much-needed perspective about how far fantasy football has, or hasn't, come since Though Winkenbach played GOPPPL almost until the end of his life, the two surviving founders of fantasy football walked away from the habit-forming game they brought into the world just a few years after its birth.
In a country filled with fantasy football junkies, the fathers of the game gave it up cold turkey. Ross has not played in more than a quarter-century, and it's been 30 years since Stirling played. Ross stuck with the game for six or seven years, Stirling played for only two. I still have some interest. It's just not nearly as great as it was. Basketball is by far the better game. Stirling became infatuated with basketball both personally and professionally years ago, though he has never played or been asked to play fantasy basketball.
As the Kings' director of scouting, he conducts real drafts for a living. Though Ross hasn't been asked to play recently, he says he'd be willing to give the old game another shot. Ross and Stirling long ago moved on, and so did fantasy football. Though the founding fathers abandoned their child, it did not become an orphan.
Instead it gained a whole nation of mothers and fathers. My dad and I have subscribed since I was 10 years old and I am 38 now. You guys are great - if you look at my account, I believe I have been a subscriber for around 20 years! I have purchased your magazine since my first fantasy football season ever 12 season ago and love the insight you offer.
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I've been using your products since , and you've always been a cut above the rest. Thank you for all you do and what your team does. That includes 54 million in the United States, nearly two-thirds of whom play Fantasy football. We'll be focusing on the history and the best players of the online Fantasy era, although that obviously leaves out some of the biggest stars in NFL history — Jerry Rice's massive Still, there's so much for us to talk about, you'll want to subscribe and check out the Fantasy Football Today podcast all week long, plus tune in to our hour-long live specials on CBS Sports HQ at noon every day this week to follow along with everything we're talking about.
It'll be a trip down memory lane for all of us. By Chris Towers. May 11, at am ET 3 min read. Watch Now:. Instead of cigars, the group was sharing stiff cocktails throughout the night.
Winkenbach, a businessman from Oakland, California, was on an east coast road trip to watch his awful Oakland Raiders. Winkenbach, who actually owned a stake in the team, developed the idea from a game he invented in the s involving golf. He and some friends would select a fantasy team of golfers, add up their scores at the end of the tournament, and whoever had the best-combined score won.
They applied these same principles to football. Instead of golfers, they chose skill position players from the AFL. When their player scored in the actual game, their team scored on their imaginary team as well. I was right about one thing, however, as the three of them stayed up all night developing the very first rule book, excited to challenge each other in a unique game of knowledge and statistics. I was also right about them being mostly bald.
Pro football journalists, employees of the AFL, and Raider season tickets holders filled the room for the inaugural draft that August. Despite knowing they had created something special, they mostly kept the game to themselves as they believed the game required a vast knowledge of football.
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