subject: Nfl Tickets - The Golden Age Of Fantasy Football [print this page] Fantasy football is a tricky topicFantasy football is a tricky topic. On one hand, the NFL has been turned into a league in which players are looked at like stock options and called bums if they struggle to meet weekly projections as they recover from nagging hamstring injuries. But if fantasy football has turned the league into a bit of a meat market, which it has, it's also opened up the league to a level of popularity that no sport ever has been able to reach. When housewives with three kids start regularly checking the Detroit Lions' depth chart and stock brokers break into unexplainable ecstasy over touchdown runs by Cadillac Williams, you know that football has risen to another level. The NFL largely has fantasy football to thank for that.
Not long ago - just five to six years on the NFL timeline - fantasy football was Dungeons and Dragons for football nerds and sports-obsessed maniacs. It was for guys with potato chip stains on their sweatpants who haven't been on a date in eons, possibly not ever. At that time, the idea of watching the box score of a late-season game between the St. Louis Rams and the Buffalo Bills was inconceivable, if not downright unconscionable.
But everything changed when it started to break into the mainstream. As most people know, baseball is no longer America's game; it's football, and it isn't close. Fantasy football suddenly became a way from fans of all ages and backgrounds to follow the game at a new level of scrutiny. While fantasy baseball will likely never cross over to reach both genders, women have embraced fantasy football with open arms. Sundays are no longer days of isolation for men as even their wives, daughters and sisters have joined in the melee.
The real winners, of course, are the players and the NFL as a whole. Previously, games late in the season between teams out playoff competition were doomed to die a slow death as fans avoided them like the plague, but now it's made seemingly insignificant teams completely relevant on a weekly basis. Not only has this helped sell NFL tickets but it's made the NFL a must-see television product as well.
Though players may lament that they are treated more like assets by their fans than anything else, this has also opened up an unbelievable stream of revenue and fame previously unseen by past generations of NFL players. If the average fan today was asked who posted the most receiving yards in a season between Andre Johnson, Jimmy Smith and Randy Moss, the answers would be completely split between Johnson and Moss due to their current prowess as dominant fantasy players. The answer, however, would be Jimmy Smith, a receiver who had 112 catches or more two times in his career and broke 1,000 yards each of his last 12 complete seasons.
The problem for players like Jimmy Smith, though, is that they put together Hall-of-Fame caliber careers just before fantasy football really took hold. Even in Smith's final season in the NFL he had 70 catches for 1,023 yards, though the average fantasy player today may not even be able to name the team he played for. Today, with the type of numbers he put up consistently from 1996 to 2005, Smith would be nothing short of a fantasy football legend. Also certainly in that category would be players like Marvin Harrison, who once put up a season of 143 catches, 1,722 yards and 11 touchdowns. This year's consensus number one wideout, Andre Johnson, had 101 catches, 1,569 yards and nine touchdowns in 2009. Current NFL players have the advantage of having their performances amplified in the consciousness of fans in ways never previously imagined.
Fantasy football is also flourishing for the same main reasons that the NFL as a whole is. Despite the tradition of baseball backing it up, there are simply too many games for most people to follow. With the NFL, however, everyone can follow along for one day a week, making each NFL game an event all to itself. If you have Jamaal Charles on your fantasy team, you only have to check in him 16 times a year, not 162.
And what also seems to be clear is that fantasy football isn't going anywhere. Satellite TV providers have even adapted to the prominence of fantasy football by adding redzone channels, which allows fantasy enthusiasts to catch the redzone possessions for every single game on Sundays. 10 years ago, hearing a Dolphins fan scream at the top of his or her lungs when Jason Campbell finds Zach Miller at the back of the endzone would be mindboggling and bizarre. Now such a reaction is greeted with subtle smirks of understanding as we move deeper into the golden age of not only fantasy football but football as a whole. Of course, if the same Dolphins fan starts jumping for joy when Tom Brady finds Randy Moss, a different discussion will need to be had.
