The start of football season also marks the start of another American pastime: fantasy football. With the NFL season finally here, most fantasy drafts have already come and gone. Many fans have live drafts and speculate whom they will pick in each and every round, hoping their buddy doesn’t snatch up the player he wants first. Then it’s all about adjusting your lineup and seeing who you can pick up that didn’t get drafted. Throughout the season fans add, drop and trade players in order to make their teams perfect. But do some fans tend to root more for their fantasy players than their actual hometown team?
A little more than 30 years ago, a man named Dan Okrent came up with the basic idea of fantasy sports. It started in a rotisserie shop with just him and 10 of his friends. The first person drafted was Mike Schmidt for $26. This group of Phillies fans would only draft National League players and the winner of the league would get Yoo-hoo chocolate milk poured on his head. Needless to say, the fantasy sports industry has grown considerably. It has grown across other continents and involves many more sports as well.
Today, the number of fantasy sports members has grown to about 30 million people worldwide and it now produces $3 to 4 billion annually. It has grown from a hobby between a few friends into a multi-billion dollar industry. All sorts of prizes are offered online for winners and fees for groups can be incredibly high. Anyone can play on a lot of different sites and play almost every sport. A person could potentially be busy with a different league for the entire year.
Although those Phillies fans were fairly loyal to their team, today most just go for the best available player. It’s not the worst strategy in the world either. As a participant of fantasy sports, I also pick the best player available to me. But this is where some have a problem. Although you may be a fan of one team, a fantasy player could be from a rival. Since it’s impossible to get every player from one team, this leads to many having mixed feelings come game day. Most want to root for their team, but there is a little part that wants their first round draft pick to carry their fantasy team to victory on for the week.
Deciding which team to root for in a given week is a moderately difficult decision. I remember many Sundays when the Chiefs were out of playoff contention and I was actually rooting for LaDainian Tomlinson to have a good game. Plus many people have to pay money to get into their fantasy league and want to win the pot. I think it does give fans of worse teams a reason to watch late in the season.
Some might find fantasy sports are detrimental to fan loyalty, but I don’t think that’s constantly the case. It’s always nice to have something to root for at the end of the year, even if it’s just a fantasy league.
