Wondering who’s going to win the Super Bowl? Don’t. His name is Shane Schroeder.
Schroeder, a 31-year-old youth corrections officer from Fort Collins, recently won the Super Bowl of fantasy football, the Fantasy Football Open Championship. In the process, he became the first fantasy-football millionaire.
And to think, he barely cracked the top five in his own fantasy league, the one whose virtual general managers draft their teams at his house amid pizza boxes and beer cans.
“I think I finished fourth or fifth,” Schroeder said.
Not to worry. He couldn’t win his “little garage league,” as he calls it, but Schroeder managed to beat out more than 6,600 contestants nationwide to pocket the $1 million FFOC first prize. In Las Vegas. With Jerry Rice standing beside him, no less.
Forget the Steelers and Cardinals. All hail the fighting Xfactor!
That was the name of Schroeder’s 20-player team, the one that survived the cut every week and carried home the cash in late December.
He paid about $300 for three teams. And no, he didn’t take a highly scientific approach to picking them.
“I’ll get a couple of magazines every year, check out the websites, things like that,” he said. “I watch a lot of football on my own, so every year I kind of feel like I know what people are going to do.”
And so it was that he selected Joseph Addai with Xfactor’s first pick. Addai had a washout year, as did Schroeder’s second-rounder, Larry Johnson. But then Schroeder rallied, selecting Philip Rivers, Aaron Rodgers, Michael Turner, Andre Johnson and Anquan Boldin.
Oh, and DeAngelo Williams. If there’s one player Schroeder owes his good fortune to, it’s the Panthers running back. Xfactor was hovering among the top five teams on the final weekend of the FFOC season, only to have Williams rack up 108 yards and four touchdowns against the Giants.
“He had a huge game,” Schroeder said. “He didn’t have that big a year because he was splitting time with (Jonathan) Stewart. But Stewart happened to get hurt for a while in that game.”
The four touchdowns moved Xfactor into the lead and its owner into a new tax bracket.
“It’s been pretty crazy,” Schroeder said. “When it got to the finals, I was just happy to be there. But to win it, it’s pretty exciting.”
Jim Armstrong: 303-954-1269 or jmarmstrong@denverpost.com
