(About 880 words)

Fantasy Football
By Wayne Steen, Contributing Editor, Q BITS
Copyright ©2005
Quad-Cities Computer Society, Iowa
Pythagoras78@hotmail.com

Playing Fantasy Football allows you the opportunity to manage your own team of professional football players.  You begin by drafting your own team of players from across the NFL (National Football League). Then you receive points based on your players’ actual performance in NFL games.

Have you ever thought that you could do a better job of running the Chicago Bears than the current management has been able to do?  Well, this is your opportunity to prove yourself capable of being an NFL owner (you will have to become a multimillionaire on your own).

There are many fantasy football leagues to choose from on the Internet.  For this article, I will be using the NFL’s official Fantasy Football League.  You can go to http://football.nfl.com to find out more about joining the Official Fantasy Football League.

You can choose between two playing options.  The Fantasy Football game is for one player.  After you sign up, you will name your team and you are arbitrarily assigned to play in a league by NFL.com.  The League Manager product allows you to manage your own league of friends or co-workers.

I strongly suggest you play a season as an individual player and then be a League Manager the second year.  Being a League Manager is a very time-consuming job and required experience playing Fantasy Football.

The X’s and O’s
First, you do not need to have been a football player to be successful playing Fantasy Football.  Plating Fantasy Football is a great way to learn about the great game of football.  If you have a friend or spouse who loves football, then ask him/her to help you with a Fantasy Football team.  It will help you understand their passion for the game.

Each league consists of 12 teams.  You will manage one of the teams.  You will play weekly against one of the other teams in your league.

You can sign up for Fantasy Football 2005 until 11:59:59 PM on October 8, 2005.  NFL.com.  Fantasy Football is free to play.

After signing up, you will then join a draft in which you will raft your team.  IF you are new to NFL football, then you may want to ask a friend/spouse who knows football to help you with the draft.  Last year I was very lucky and was able to draft Ben Roethlisberger as my quarterback.  Ben was the rookie quarterback of the year for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Each team has 14 playes; therefore, you will have a fourteen round draft.  Then each week during the season, you will select a starting lineup of eight players from the 14 players on your team.

The scoring system is too complicated to explain in the brief room I have for this article.  There is a detailed explanation of the scoring system on the NFL.com Web site. 

The twelve-team league is divided into three divisions.  The winner of each division plus a wild-card team will meet in the playoffs.

The division champion with the best win-loss record will play the wild card team.  The other two division champions will play each other.  Then the two winners meet for the championship.

If you win the championship of your league, the next season you will be eligible to play in a special winners’ league.  I lost in the playoffs last year, so I cannot tell you much about the winners’ league.

You can make weekly lineup changes and can trade players during the season.  This is where championships are won and lost in Fantasy Football!  Trading during the season is much more important in Fantasy Football than it is in the real game.  You do not have to worry about salary caps and the financial aspects of the game of pro football when playing Fantasy Football.

Conclusion
The grand prize is $5,000 and a free trip to Super Bowl XL in Detroit.  If you win the grand prize, you can take me along as your friend.

For the first time players, I recommend that you subscribe to Fantasy Football Extra.  You can subscribe to Fantasy Football Extra at the same Web site as NFL Fantasy Football.

The Extra e-mail subscription keeps you up to date on NFL statistics and injuries.  It also provides some useful tips on drafting and trading players.  At the time this article was written, the Fantasy Football extra e-mail subscription cost $34.95 for the football season.

Fantasy Football is a national craze and is much easer on your wallet than online poker.  It is a great way to learn about the game of football.

Once you et past your rookie year of Fantasy football, then I suggest you create your own league with friends or co-workers.  It is a great way to bring everyone together.

Be careful out there!  The children are back in school.  Watch out for them, because they may not be watching out for you!!

There is no restriction against any non-profit group using this article as long as it is kept in context with proper credit given the author.  The Editorial Committee of the Association of Personal Computer User Groups (APCUG), an international organization of which this group is a member, brings this article to you.