Many in this country are down on the sport of football. The concussion crisis is just that – a bona fide crisis, and the back and forth with President Trump over kneeling during the National Anthem has become a tiresome sideshow.
That said, pro football remains the most watched sport in this country by an incredibly wide margin. In 2017, four of the top five most watched TV events/shows of the year were NFL games – garnering 62 million viewers on average.
A giant reason for the NFL’s steady popularity is due to fantasy football, which consumes the lives of many Americans on Sunday afternoons in the fall and early winter. According to Fantasy Sports Trade Association, 59.3 million people played fantasy sports in North America last year. Football is the easiest fantasy sport to play, and number of users are continuing to rise.
How do you play?
Most people start online fantasy football leagues with friends and/or family members. Most leagues usually have 10-14 people who compete on a weekly basis.
Many leagues collect a pool of money at the beginning of the season and dish out the pot to the winner of the league at the end of the season.
The most common way to play is a “head to head” format where you play someone else’s team each week.
At the beginning of the season you draft 10-16 players to your team. Here is an example of a typical fantasy lineup:
QB1: Cam Newton, Panthers
RB1: Devonta Freeman, Falcons
RB2: LeSean McCoy, Bills
WR1: TY Hilton, Colts
WR2: Emmanuel Sanders, Broncos
WR3: Cooper Kupp, Rams
TE: Delanie Walker, Titans
K: Justin Tucker, Ravens
DEF: Seattle
You also can swap in players from your bench before the games start and pick up and drop players from the free agent waiver wire.
Quarterbacks score points by completing passes. Yards matter. Touchdown passes matter. And interceptions and fumbles hurt you.
Running backs and wide receivers score points by total number of catches in a game. Yards matter through rushing and receiving, and touchdowns most definitely matter.
Whichever team owner has the most points at the end of the week gets the win.
Best platforms to play fantasy FB
Your Uncle Fred might be the only one who still uses a Yahoo email address, but in the fantasy sports world Yahoo is still the gold standard. ESPN.com and NFL.com also have popular platforms but Yahoo remains the most popular.
“Yahoo is so much easier to navigate,” said Metro New York Sports Editor Joe Pantorno. “The layout is better to read. Maybe ESPN should spend more time making the user experience better instead of bleeding money into asinine commercials.”
