On any given football week, NFL stadiums are filled with about 1 million combined fans, almost all of whom are partisan to the home team.
Back home, computers across North America are downloading up-to-the-minute box scores for some 15 million fans, many of whom root for, on any given weekend, players on both teams.
Not to suggest fantasy football is threatening to become bigger than the sport itself, but the biggest question entering the 2007 NFL season may not be whether the Indianapolis Colts can repeat as Super Bowl champions, but whether Reggie Wayne is ready to replace Marvin Harrison as Peyton Manning’s favorite receiver.
The football fantasy has become so ridiculous, people no longer get mad at Broncos coach Mike Shanahan just for losing anymore. That two-back system of Mike Anderson and Tatum Bell might have helped carry the Broncos to the AFC championship game in 2005, but for fantasy players, the rotation was a weekly nightmare.
“I know from talking to people the last couple years, everybody’s hoping that one person gets the carries,” Shanahan said. “People will say, ‘Hey, give the ball to one guy instead of two guys.”‘
Shanahan may not realize just how popular he became this offseason when he signed Travis Henry to be his featured back. Henry may be a Bronco. But if a Bronco fan has J.P. Losman as his fantasy quarterback in Week 1? Better believe said Bronco fan will be rooting for a high-scoring win.
In recent years, Henry has rarely been greeted in the public without hearing about his fantasy impact.
“Stuff I hear is, ‘Hey, you helped me out last week, appreciate that,”‘ Henry said. “Or, ‘Hey, need you to do good this week.”‘
Kim Beason, a fantasy sports researcher, estimates 13 million to 15 million of 19.5 million fantasy players in the United States and Canada are hooked up to football leagues. Roughly 20 percent are college aged; 7 percent are 18 and younger – there are even math classes incorporating football fantasy stats – and up to 10 percent are women.
Fantasy football grosses more than $1 billion a year, and that doesn’t include the private pots accumulated from the 4 million players in the free league.
As it’s known today, fantasy football was spawned from the baseball rotisserie leagues of the 1980s that were invented by Dan Okrent and Glen Waggoner.
“So, really, the credit to fantasy football goes to the baseball guys,” said Greg Ambrosius, editor of Fantasy Magazine.
By 1989, when Fantasy Magazine was first published, Ambrosius said no pages were allocated to football. That all changed when a labor dispute led to the cancellation of the World Series.
“The baseball strike of ’94 is when football overtook baseball in fantasy popularity, and it’s just doubled each year,” Ambrosius said.
Another factor occurred in 1997, with the explosion of the Internet. Today, families and relatives who haven’t spoken in decades are now on the family league message boards.
Staff writer Mike Klis can be reached at 303-954-1055 or mklis@denverpost.com.
