Episode 07: Some fantasy football history.

Steve and Tom join Shon to learn the history of fantasy football and reminisce over their own experiences with this multi-billion dollar industry that GenX and Boomers brought to the masses.

Credits:
Haylee Wolf: narration.
Mason Enis: theme music.

Copyright @ PineStreetProductions 2024. Any illegal reproduction of this content will result in immediate legal action.

Transcript

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xers yep all right in episode seven we're

going to talk about fantasy football with Steve and Tom and I've got a question for you guys right off the bat

because it's trivia that I didn't know which do you think came first rotisserie baseball or fantasy

football it's rotisserie baseball wasn't it I mean I think that would be the logical answer but I'm thinking it's a

trick question you'd be you'd be correct sir um of course you know how internet

research is no I didn't go to the library for you guys but the uh I I did try to check multiple sources I thought

rotisserie baseball probably went back to the Civil War or something I had no idea you know rotis B baseball according

to everything I found didn't start until 1980 and why is it called rotisserie

baseball I did I had no idea I'm not I'm not picking on y'all for not knowing this because I didn't it start in San

Diego or something and there was something with about chickens or something you're close it started in a

restaurant in New York and the name of the restaurant was latiss or la la

rotisserie and uh that's where the guys who started it got together and played

so I don't know what rotisserie means other than for you and me chicken it sounds like but the you're right I mean

I think you're on the right track that these these journalists got together in 1980 in New York and their favorite

restaurant was the LA rotisserie and that's where they met uh and played and

what they did was they drafted active major league baseball players obviously and they tracked their stats over us

over the course of the whole season so the way I understood it from reading about it was it it was not a weekly by-weekly

thing uh it was like Steve you draft the lineup Tom you draft a lineup I'm on a

draft a lineup at the end of the year who had the best batting averages who had the best pitching and that kind of thing they didn't care what happened

week to week it was accumulative over the course now I don't know what happened when they had injuries and so forth but that's what I read it was

scored by hand obviously from a newspaper from the box scores and weekly

from the USA today so that goes back at least to them um um they said that they got so much press for the the league

that they started that every time those same journalists went to a new Major League ballpark within just a couple of

years all the journalists at those ballparks were playing rotisserie baseball of their own um and then in

1981 when the major league baseball strike hit the writers had nothing to write about because there was no

baseball so they started writing about their fantasy teams and their fantasy leagues and their that and so it got in

these National and Regional newspapers and um pic picked up um by people all

over the country now my experience with rotisserie baseball was this in around 91 92 somewhere in there I had a friend

from high school we were both in college and he told me that he was running a rotisserie baseball league and I said

what is that and he said well it's a way for me to make some money and I said well how does that work and what he

basically he described this but he was by then they' figured out to score it weekly somehow you kept I guess there

was a cut off Friday or Saturday and then the stats for that week compiled into it but he got a cut of the pot to

run the league because it had to be scored by hand out of the baseball weekly newspaper and that's how I knew what

rotis baseball was but since baseball is so old I assumed it came first but it did not apparently so somebody will tell

me I'm wrong I'm sure but all right so let's talk about that's the background for what I thought was going to be the origins of fantasy football and it turns

out it's not so um we all started playing fantasy football we think around

1997 right Y and we just had our draft in 2024 so ever how many years that is

that's how many years we've been playing in the exact same league together and we are the last three members three we

started with 10 or 12 and it's down to us three and pretty much now everybody in our leagues can to each other

basically very very inbred very inbred League um so steeve you started this

crap because you got Tom and I involved Tom was we were huge football fans if we

as we've already established um you you came to us with this idea in 97 or so

when we started working together how did you get involved in fantasy football I originally

um it was through newspapers you know it was uh the USA Today I was working at a

a savings and loan which not in existence anymore in downtown Little Rock did a good yeah we ran it right into the ground uh

and uh but you know you can't lob them in

there like that on this in my in my downtime when I wasn't running the the SNL into the ground I was looking for

other things to do and I read the USA Today every day and you know obviously you start with the sports section and

you know you read the other crap later but you know they started doing these these cont weekly contest or I don't

remember being weekly in the USA to day but it was it was fantasy football and

you would go in every week and you know they'd have you'd have a a um they'd

give you a a salary cap you know a fictional salary cap they'd have all the

players listed with a a a a salary beside themed assigned value and you'd

have to pick out your lineup for the week and then mail it into USA Today and

then they publish their results then in you know on Monday day of or Tuesday of the next week and so I did that for for

three or four years and um you know and that was fun and I thought it was what it was and then I moved my wife and I

moved to Norman Oklahoma and I was working for a bank there and there were some guys there that had a league and

this was in 1990 and um if memory serves correct I

remember the first draft and and the guy I really wanted and went one pick before

I got it was was EMT Smith as a rookie man yeah the guy's already

retired in the Hall of Fame yeah yeah so so I played a couple of years there and

then U didn't play for for no I think I after I left there it was back to the

USA Today and then when I got to uh where you guys were at you know I think

we started talking about NFL and how much we enjoy it and all that stuff and then the conversation just started let's

let's start a league well I was was aware of fantasy football but I'd never played because I didn't know anybody that was that knew how to run a league

and I didn't there was no way to research it you just knew somebody who and I didn't I was too lazy obviously for all that work it took to do the USA

Today one you hadn't played either had you Tom was Steve the first time you played with with Steve it it was the

first time that I had really like been in a legit league but uh my first exposure

to to Fantasy Football was I was working at a um

oh well it it was a it was youth home so it was like a facility for for kids and

so to keep the kids busy we did like a draft oh that's Co and so yeah and it took a long time and it like kept them

busy and Fus on something focus on something and uh so you know but we never played a game or anything we just

did the draft and then uh y'all brought it to me and I was like heck yeah I'm going to I'm going to draft two

quarterbacks right in a row yeah got to be if you got one that's good two would be better we going take the two best

quarterbacks let me let me ask two let me ask Steve for for uh clarification so

was that a weekly ordeal or you drafted a team at the beginning of the season and mailed it in I remember it a weekly

deal because the values changed you each week and you'd have to pick it was much more like uh DraftKings and those gam

today yeah and so that they would publish the result and you know they would just have guys ranked and if you

if you know this may I may be remembering this wrong but it seemed like if you finished if you finished in

the top you know whatever and so this was N na Nationwide but you finished in the top 100 I'm going to say you know

you got a little money or something but you know everybody that played they'd have them they'd have them listed and ranked how you finish Rock Arkansas or

whatever yeah exactly so you you literally like wrote out something on paper licked an

envelope put in the mail and it got there like in yeah and you you had to turn your if memory start is correct you

had to turn your line up in like on Wednesday you had to mail it by Wednesday or something for it to get to

New York where they were at for them to you know input it all yeah open it input it all all us thousands of suckers that

were doing it uh Nationwide and uh you know it was a lot of work for them I

don't remember it costing very much at the time good thing cuz I didn't have

have much money but uh but you know it was it was fun I mean it was the

for someone who really had a passion for for the NFL I mean that just for the

first time ever it gave you entree into you know having some control over the

game so to speak yeah and there may be people listening to this that don't know

what fantasy football is it's possible and so the whole concept is you get to be the general manager of a team and you

you draft a team you put them out there every week the best lineup that you can and they accumulate points for you and

you square off against someone else because you're in a league and you make a schedule and you play those other guys

and at the end of every week There's a winner there's a loser and at the end of the season there's enough guys to do a playoff and that's more or less how it

works and then some of the other stuff we'll get into as we go through this so

what uh year do y'all think fantasy football started cuz I had no idea if

it's older than 1980 so what year do you it is definitely older than rotis baseball so what year do y'all suspect

it must have started I had no clue so it's it's not a bad thing to not know for

sure3 I was going to say probably after the merger the merger has something to do with it it was

1962 and the Raiders were in that Outlaw League called the AFL there was a guy named Bill wikin boach who was an

executive with Oakland Steve all roads lead through Oakland tonight there we go Bill wikin Bach an Oakland executive and

an Oakland uh PR man named Bill tunnel and an Oakland reporter named Scotty St

Sterling they were sitting around in New York City at a hotel and they they came

up with the concept of and but it had something to do with them second guessing the draft and they came up with

the concept of how would every man out there every every fan every every person

who cares how would they draft their own team and and do any better kind of things so they kind of set some loose

rules and in 1963 the go ppppl was formed which was

the greater Oakland Pro pigskin procrastinate prognosticators league and

they met in this uh willach or Wiccan Bach guy's house and it had eight eight members the first year and they were

mostly people associated with the American Football League journalists uh Executives on the clubs

and even some Raiders season ticket holders wow and so they did their first draft in 1963 so they got ahead of us a

little bit but that led to all this other craziness that that Steve is kind of mentioned and some of the other stuff

I've got some good stats on it um and so the people listening that

don't know uh the the you have to create a roster of course and so listen to what the original roster rules said you had

to have two quarterbacks now listen to the terminology here because it's important you had to have

two quarterbacks four halfbacks two fullbacks four wide receivers SL tight

ends two kick returner or punt returners two kickers two defensive

backs uh two linebackers two defensive linemen or the the DBS and the lbs could

be the same but so so two backs on defense and two linemen which there are some leagues now you can still draft

individual defensive players and score for sacks and all that we just draft teams um say there's not four fullbacks

in the league now yeah exactly you had to yeah four League four four halfbacks

and two fullbacks yeah and so this league this go ppppl was active at least

as late as 2015 really wow so it uh I think they have us beat by a little by

the way I'm not as Cutting Edge as I thought no how many people do y'all know that have played fantasy football longer

than we have I know one who was in our league originally that played longer than I have Russell Russell had played

before he joined our league remember he he and his buddies would go to tuna

spend a weekend and draft their team did you know I mean obviously you did the draft but as far as a dude being in a

league did you know anybody that's been at it longer than us I don't I just know the one guy and now everybody I know

that never played before is in like five leagues and I'm you know down to one

basically okay so that tells you how the game has changed when you look at the roster requiring fullbacks and halfbacks

because no one uses those fullbacks anymore and halfback terminology is 40

years old now uh and so if this little league in 1963 is doing it just

independently how did it get out there to the masses and the answer to that is in 1969 one of the members owned a bar

an Oakland sports bar called the Kings X and he brought the concept to his bar

and created a public league of the bar patrons in 1969 so whoever was hanging

around the bar they formed a league drafted and started their own um

Independent League of this original one and then what really kicked it off was in the 70s it hit college campuses and

like everything seems to do that that kind of throws fuel on the fire I'm going to stop right there with the

history and just ask you guys a couple what is it y'all think we like so much about it uh cuz we were obviously way

ahead of the curve why is it the phenomenon that it is now do you think CU you know we enjoyed the heck out of

it I don't know if we ever saw it being what it is now but I mean we knew we were on to something clearly but um why

do y'all think it's so popular or what what is it about it for y'all that you like just what we've said that you get

to draft and make your own decisions or I mean I know what I would say but y y'all go ahead yeah I don't know I mean

I like I hate to say this but it gives me a reason to watch that's what I that's

exactly games that I'm not interested in it makes me watch the games that's what I was going to say it it forces you to

watch a Browns game because you got a receiver going yeah that somebody that you never watch and it makes it interesting even though we like football

and would watch most likely anyway it gives you a little bit of an interest in the game itself that's what I was going

to say is it really if nothing else it's changed the way I watch football yeah

you know cuz forever you know and and I've been getting the Sunday NFL ticket

for long time yeah you were like the first person I knew that bought yeah and and you know and I got it so I could

watch the Raiders games but we were playing fantasy then too so you know Tom and I were talking about this earlier is

it really gave me an opportunity to you know when the Raiders game was on a commercial or whatever well I can flip

over to the Steelers game because I got Cordell Stewart going or you know or or you know whoever uh Big Ben probably

better but uh you know it's just really changed the way I consume the game yeah

and for once again even if you play Fantasy Football now and you're listening to this you may not realize

but mechanically the way this happened I can still see this in my mind Monday morning Steve rolls in with a USA Today

Was it under his arm and you would get the stats on Monday morning out of the

paper and there would be all games considered accept obviously the Monday night game and so Tuesday Steve would

roll in with yet another paper and Steve would hand score we call it meaning look

at the rules and say a catch is worth three this guy had 10 that's 30 points or whatever and he would Square all that

up on a notepad or something hand handwritten notepad out of the newspaper

and score our league and keep up with the standings and everything and someone's listening thinking why didn't

you idiots just use the internet and then the answer to that is It Was 1980 uh

1997 and according to my notes it wasn't on the internet until barely until 97 so

we didn't know about it there were and and think about the what would you say the the D the the the slow speed in

which you got your information these kids now see a scroll going by they know every catch every we had no idea until

Monday even if you read an article about the game you might you know who scored but you didn't necessarily know he had

24 Carri for 150 yards until the next day probably you know you're I I hand

scored it for years yes but I do distinctly remember you know when when

when the internet became much more readily available because I I can remember then going being able to Sunday

night get on the internet after you know the games the three the the 3:00 games

finished and be able to start pulling some stats from the the afternoon game

and scoring so I could come in to work Monday morning with with scores versus

waiting till later in the day when when I'm able to pull them all out of the paper and I remember that I remember

like the preliminary results yeah getting that Monday and excuse me yep

you wouldn't have a clue what I mean you know what was you just even when it

started online you didn't get real time stats that was a big deal too yeah uh

well so speaking of that in 1990 the first Fantasy games really started appearing in several newspapers around

the country and listen to this Steve's out there mailing stuff with a stamp uhuh not these Advanced newspapers you

called a 1 1800 number and you entered numbers on the key bad a keypad to draft

and put in lineups weekly that's that that technology was too advanced you know those all that sque squealing and

squawking that yeah this says an 85 AOL offered an online League I don't know

who would have played in it cuz I didn't know a soul with internet in 1985 but somebody had it um in 1987 Tom this will

I'm looking at three news uh three magazines that Tom brought he he keeps

his sports memorabilia squared away and he has news or he has fantasy

magazines there is Terry Allen on the cover he was my first running back I ever drafted in fantasy football this

says 1996 fantasy player of the year and I had him in 19 1997 so that's how old that magazine is

and this is Terell Davis and this is the 99 fantasy league football magazine and

I'm looking at Brett farre and that's the 1998 fantasy football magazine we had to go to the grocery store or news

stand or somewhere buy a magazine and look up the trends and heck you didn't even know who was on the roster much

less who no you really didn't CU those magazines came out so early oh they came out in April or May sometimes after the

draft you know what's funny is that I'm sorry I'm going to jump in here but I was thinking the other day like people

have asked me why do you why does your League Draft so late because Andrew and

because when we were doing it we didn't know we didn't have the information at our fingertips we might be drafting guy

you know guys that weren't on the roster they got cut they got hurt and so we traditionally drafted that night before

that Thursday game yeah because of that yeah this says in 1987 the fantasy

football index was the first magazine founded for Fantasy Football 1987 so

that sounds about right to me and then like I told you a minute ago 1990 is when Steve was still licking stamps but

everybody else was I was in a league in 1990 okay everybody else was using a

phone and I thought that was interesting that was 1990 was my EMT Smith heartbreak draft Yeah and after all of

that talk 20 minutes of that we just now get to where we all got together but it goes fast now 1997 CBS launched their

online fantasy football site I remember the SE BBS one in the late but saying it

launch doesn't mean that you know what kind of functionality it had at all cuz certainly didn't have real-time stats um

we started playing at that point and we like I said you were hand scor how do

you have any idea how many years we hand scored until I mean I know you went to excel at some point yeah I went to excel

at some point but but even with that I still had to go manually get the stats enter them into the Excel spreadsheet we

bought software around around 2000 maybe would you say it was when yeah it was

after it was when we transitioned to the league when we were all at axium and uh

so that was probably 9091 something like that yeah that sounds about right and um

or yeah and then like I said even though you had no 99 probably 99 yeah yeah even

though you had a tool to track at all what I'm I guess I'm I'm not explaining

this to the people who may not know very well even though you went on we went online the tool itself did not get the

stats until they dump late at night or whatever for Sunday's games and then

then you could see the scores it did not happen as it wasn't real real time at

all it was not real time at all and we just take that for granted now and if if

I remember my business stuff correctly one company figured out how to do that and I think it was CBS that kind of

invented how to track real time stats and they owned that software or whatever

that the ESPN and NFL Networks and all ended up you probably they all had to license it from them and probably not

anymore I'm sure they all have their own Tom I know you're wanting to say something jump in but you remember that

that tracks with you right the Steve and I remember him going to Excel and we're like wow this is what a Great Leap

Forward but he still but he still had to look over here and type it in and look over here and type it in and but I do

remember like putting my lineup up having a sheet of paper like yeah on a notepad and putting my lineup and who I

was playing and then at halftime whenever the halftime show came on trying to write down spats well you had

to know our rules were you had to have a print out of our own rules so you could know what okay he's got 25 yards what's

that worth yeah exactly that's one of my favorite memories of of all the years you know that we've played together was

the really the first couple of years when you know we would go in that conference room you know there'd be 10

of us in that conference room and we're trying to write rules you guys remember that and we were I mean we would have

just knock down drag outs of you know and in-depth discussions of of how these

rules should be structured and we need to make this as realistic to the game as possible and you know and and all these

different iterations and you know it seems like we were always changing rules you know Midway through the season or

whatever for the first several years and now we've had the same rules for the last 15 probably but I mean that was one

of my favorite memories was was just you know in there going back and forth and writing crap on the board and AG trying

to figured out we won't talk about the uh the twoe keeper Seasons we won't the twoe keeper debacle

a keeper is when you draft a team and your league decides you can keep one or two guys and enjoy retain their rights

we tried we we've done a individual keeper for a long time now but we tried to go ahead and keep two guys a couple

times yeah a couple years Tom a couple guys I guess that didn't end up healthy the next year perhaps oh I don't know I

just remember it was I had Marshall faul during those times and so I really enjoyed the keepers at that point I was

going to like I was going to say we should do it this year but you know I didn't think y'all would go for it well listen to these stats and I I'll start

kind of wrapping up with this in 2019 this was A7 billion doll industry in the

US and Canada combined I don't know if anybody saw that coming we should have I mean we should have realized that of

course it's one of those things it's one of those Industries you can thank the internet and technology for creating

basically without hand scoring out of USA Today there's there's no DraftKings or I think the big the you know it was

growing obviously you know but I think the big change or what I remember the

big change in the much wider adoption and it really going you know like

wildfire was when the realtime stats became available definitely and you know across multiple platforms and you know

and it just seems like it exploded from there it became much easier to play and the the drafts where you you know you

could draft on Draft online and automatically or things like that and I think more casual players started

playing at that point I agree so in this7 billion doll industry 59.3 million

people play Fantasy Football in the United States and Canada 43 million of

those are American adults so most of of them and 45 million it's up to 45

million uh Now in America alone and uh what percentage do you think are male

female fantasy football player according to the I think there's more more women

than there's ever been so I I would think women probably are in the 30 percentile something like that it says

it's 81% male really which is a good guess I mean I didn't think it'd be 50

or anything but obviously there's more playing now than there were when we I mean started out least and I think

that's an accessibility thing yeah I mean I don't know how many women were would be willing at the time to to go

through the Hoops that you had to go through who had the time for that they you know that's why they picked on us

about it's like why are you going to buy a magazine and do all this number crunching stuff but now you can just uh

the the numbers are readily available for anybody at any time um it's it's a good way to keep up with the game that's

my opinion on it you can you can have a little interest in a game you would normally watch and um you know root for

I I will tell you this I we joke about our drafts and stuff and I I don't make a big deal out of this but I swear to

you I've not drafted a since I had Terry Allen because I ate the Redskins and I've only I can only

remember one eagle and that was du Staley that I've ever own I will not draft Eagles I don't even look at them

in our list I don't care how good they are so I limit myself in my abilities to

succeed I'm I'm kind of the opposite from you you where you're you're not drafting guys from from teams you hate

I've gotten to the point where I won't draft any Raiders cuz it's like if I do it's the kiss of death for That season

yeah we've got a lot of memories in fantasy football I mean from the first draft when a couple of guys drafted

quarterbacks back to back and we probably had we probably had kickers going in the third round kind of thing

and I remember a guy I won't mention his name that that was last week yeah I and

by the way was I think it was me yeah for the people listening who don't who know about fantasy football and they're

like oh yeah we just Draft online we still get together in a conference room and draft that's the best part most of

us um I will I do remember somebody drafting a quarterback and we all started making fun of him and he said

but he ran the option in college this was before dual quarterback

dual threat quarterbacks to you know took over the NFL and there was a running quarterback there was only one

at that time named Randle Cunningham and this guy drafted one and we picked on him about he said but he ran the option

in in college so well yeah that that didn't work out very well by the way no

what else about fantasy football guys well if you're old school like us you know you couldn't pick a guy if you

couldn't spell his name that's true so Tim Baka puka was always a tough pick

for anyone we we literally used to have uh not stickers but a whiteboard and you had to walk down front in front of

everybody and write your chosen play players name on the table and good luck with a bunch of guys in the room bunch

of project managers and Tech writers and whatever product managers trying to write Tim Baka batuka yeah and hushan

Zada or what what was his name TJ TJ yeah stuff like that so we had some

interesting uh uh abbreviations TJ hoos yeah kind of thing so yeah it's it's

it's a blast and that's about as far into gambling as I need to get um but I

do uh I do love fantasy football and obviously about 60 million other people

agree um anything else just how did we not end up making some of that money oh

I don't know how did we not have any of that foresight but you know what's hilar what's hilarious is we're at a software

manually scoring it for guys all guys we were at a software company surrounded by

uh programming Geeks and it never occurred to us to get one of them step off to the side and try to figure this

out for the my my brother and I used to joke with my dad about it and we were

exactly right we joked that we missed two billion dooll industries that were right in our face that we never

considered fantasy football being one and hunting being the other one that blew up around us multi-billions of

dollars well Tom thanks for bringing us the artifacts from the Campbell Museum of fantasy football there the Terell

Davis Brett Favre and uh Terry Allen man that's that was first three studs um

anything else guys about fantasy football we've hit the magic half hour mark and uh we can end it right here if

y'all are we we'll get back together I promise we we'll talk movie uh Sports movies and any other Gen X related

topics I've got a million topics and um we can drill into teams games athletes

whatever y'all want to do so we'll get back together in a few months and do it again sounds good all right thanks Fork

you guys thank you for joining us on Gen X classic Sports where Nostalgia makes the thrill of the game tune in next time

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