2008 Woodie Awards
Daydream believers
Paul McNeill
Issue date: 10/2/07 Section: Sports
It's no coincidence that the first three letters in fantasy are F-A-N.
Sports are the ultimate fantasy, allowing fans to live their dreams through the athletes they admire. True fans cheer for their teams, cry with their teams, and indeed live and die with every win and loss.
But a new type of fanaticism thrives today: fantasy sports leagues, the ultimate fantasy within a fantasy. Although the leagues are phony, their impact is very real.
Fantasy league web sites pull in millions of dollars a year from adults obsessed with make-believe. Sixteen million U.S. adults "compete" in fantasy leagues, leaving a multibillion-dollar annual impact on the sports industry. With those kinds of profits, it's no wonder real sports leagues and news outlets commit valuable television time, web space, print magazines, and newspaper articles to the art of crafting the finest fake teams. A whole field of fantasy journalism has emerged. There's an entire organization, the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, dedicated to imaginary leagues. The association even gives out awards, holds trade conferences, and has a board of directors. Who knew something so made up could be taken so seriously?
Fantasy leagues don't leave a lot of room for middle ground; either you get it or you don't. For fans who must hustle just to budget enough time to watch the actual games, assigning time to run an entire pretend league seems frivolous, and watching fantasy league coverage eat into precious time that could be spent covering the actual games is infuriating to more traditional fans. For members of fantasy leagues; however, the dreamworld can be more exciting than the games themselves.
Fantasy leagues aren't just a new fad invented by a few computer geeks sipping soda and surfing the Internet in their parents' basements. Fantasy teams have been around much longer than many would believe. The first fantasy leagues began shortly after World War II and slowly grew in popularity throughout colleges and newspaper sports departments. But without the instant gratification of blogs, message boards, and e-mail, older leagues look like obsolete forms of some distant, ancient technology, like holding up a telegraph next to an iPhone. The rise of the Internet during the 1990s impacted the industry forever, changing it from an insider pastime to an American, indeed a world, passion and turning everyday fans into general managers almost overnight.
Sports are the ultimate fantasy, allowing fans to live their dreams through the athletes they admire. True fans cheer for their teams, cry with their teams, and indeed live and die with every win and loss.
But a new type of fanaticism thrives today: fantasy sports leagues, the ultimate fantasy within a fantasy. Although the leagues are phony, their impact is very real.
Fantasy league web sites pull in millions of dollars a year from adults obsessed with make-believe. Sixteen million U.S. adults "compete" in fantasy leagues, leaving a multibillion-dollar annual impact on the sports industry. With those kinds of profits, it's no wonder real sports leagues and news outlets commit valuable television time, web space, print magazines, and newspaper articles to the art of crafting the finest fake teams. A whole field of fantasy journalism has emerged. There's an entire organization, the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, dedicated to imaginary leagues. The association even gives out awards, holds trade conferences, and has a board of directors. Who knew something so made up could be taken so seriously?
Fantasy leagues don't leave a lot of room for middle ground; either you get it or you don't. For fans who must hustle just to budget enough time to watch the actual games, assigning time to run an entire pretend league seems frivolous, and watching fantasy league coverage eat into precious time that could be spent covering the actual games is infuriating to more traditional fans. For members of fantasy leagues; however, the dreamworld can be more exciting than the games themselves.
Fantasy leagues aren't just a new fad invented by a few computer geeks sipping soda and surfing the Internet in their parents' basements. Fantasy teams have been around much longer than many would believe. The first fantasy leagues began shortly after World War II and slowly grew in popularity throughout colleges and newspaper sports departments. But without the instant gratification of blogs, message boards, and e-mail, older leagues look like obsolete forms of some distant, ancient technology, like holding up a telegraph next to an iPhone. The rise of the Internet during the 1990s impacted the industry forever, changing it from an insider pastime to an American, indeed a world, passion and turning everyday fans into general managers almost overnight.
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