By John McCarty
An obsession for some, and a pastime for others, fantasy sports are a multi-million dollar industry with a fan base growing on a yearly basis. After all, who wouldn't want to coach a team with all their favorite players?
"I didn't know about fantasy sports a few years ago, then I started a fantasy football team," freshman Jordan Lueras said. "It's a great way to get more involved with the sport."
Fantasy sports are not a new phenomenon. Harvard sociologist William Gamson is credited with forming the first fantasy baseball league in 1960. Players scored points based on a player's final standings in categories like wins and batting average.
Not long after fantasy baseball came fantasy football. The Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticator's League held its first draft in 1963 and is still operating today.
Enthusiasts will tell say drafts are a huge part of the fantasy sports experience.
"My friends had a big live draft party this year and I couldn't go," sophomore Zach McMullen said. "I ended up having to draft my players by text message and it sucked."
In 1980, fantasy sports took a new direction with Rotisserie League Baseball, founded by sportswriter/editor Daniel Okrent. The "owners" in the Rotisserie League draft current MLB players and follow their statistics throughout the season.
This means team owners have to make predictions about their players' expected performance and take factors such as playtime and health into account.
With the arrival of Rotisserie League Baseball, fantasy sports began to gain popularity among sports journalists and other members of the media.
With the Internet boom of the 1990s, fantasy sports became more mainstream, and fans began to see Web sites offering real time statistics, league message boards and automatic box scoring in return for a league fee. Major companies like Yahoo! and ESPN picked up on the trend, and began offering more sports free of charge. Fantasy sports now include soccer, golf, NASCAR and even cricket.
Lueras and other UP students are not the only ones caught up in the growing realm of fantasy sports. In 2008, more than 29.9 million people participated in fantasy sports in the U.S. and Canada and over $800 million was spent directly on fantasy sports products.
Twenty-two percent of males in the U.S. ages 18 to 49 with access to the Internet play fantasy sports.
Each "coach" often has a unique strategy.
"I'm not too avid when it comes to scouting, I tend to go with what I know about a player rather than expert predictions," freshman Austin Rakestraw said. Others are not so focused on their team.
"I never looked at my team last year," Lueras said with a laugh. "That was a mistake, I ended up in dead last."
Some fantasy leagues are free and offer t-shirts or banners to the winner.
Other leagues have a cash buy-in that the winner receives at then end of the year. Fantasy sports are one of the few types of online gambling allowed under the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006.
"I've played fantasy football and baseball for about five years now," Rakestraw said. "They are a fun way to compete with friends and they take a good combination of skill and luck."
