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Inside Fantasy Football: America's Favorite Non-Contact Sport

Our American Stories / Lee Habeeb
The Truth Network Radio
October 13, 2024 12:50 pm

Inside Fantasy Football: America's Favorite Non-Contact Sport

Our American Stories / Lee Habeeb

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October 13, 2024 12:50 pm

On this episode of Our American Stories, Peter Funt shares the enthralling growth of a billion-dollar business. Hear the journey from the early GOPPPL days to an integral part of the NFL marketing plan. Peter's book is Inside Fantasy Football: America's Favorite Non-Contact Sport

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Find a shoe for every you at your DSW store or DSW.com. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. Up next, a story about one of America's favorite ass times. And I'm not just talking about football, which it is. It's the preeminent sport. Like it or not, it's the number one sport in this country.

By the way, it's our own sport, not the European kind. And there's a book called Inside Fantasy Football, America's favorite non-contact sport. That's what we're talking about for the next hour with author Peter Funt. He's the host of TV's Candid Camera.

His father was Alan Funt. He has also written tremendous stories for the Wall Street Journal and others about American pastimes and hobbies. But today we're here to talk about fantasy football. Talk about how you came to follow this sport. Most times you indicated it comes from a father introducing it to his son to keep the relationship going in the end.

Like fishing or hunting or golf. Talk about how you caught on to fantasy football. It was exactly the opposite with me. My son Danny and a few of his friends were just out of college and they got into fantasy football. And for a couple of years, I had no idea what they're even talking about. They were using a language that I was not familiar with. And I'm quite a sports fan, but this fantasy stuff has its own lexicon and I really didn't understand it. They persuaded me to jump in and give it a try and I became immediately hooked.

I won't say addicted, but close to being a fanatic. And after roughly 10 years of that, I thought, you know, there might be a book in here somewhere. And maybe there are folks who know a little bit of this and a little bit of that, but they don't know how this whole thing got started.

They don't know the back story. So what the heck? Well, you know, it's interesting you write in the book about the fact that we've all played fantasy sports in some way or another. I was a point guard on my high school basketball team and Walt Clyde Frazier was the person I was always pretending to be or Jerry West, which, of course, dates me. Talk about that aspect of sports and the American public, because in many ways, we're all athletes. Even celebrities want to be athletes. Everybody in the end wants to be an athlete. Talk about sports and American culture, because this is a book about that. So many of us at the earliest age, I think it does begin with a fantasy.

Why wouldn't we project a fantasy in which we are on the field? I must have been three years old, possibly even younger, when I watched my dad watching sports on TV. And honestly, my fondest memory of that is that it was arguably the one or very few times during the week when I saw him genuinely happy and detached from what was going on around him.

My dad was a great guy, but he worked very hard and it wore him out and sometimes, to be honest, made him a bit grouchy. But when he was watching sports, he was in another world, and I got so much joy out of watching him smile. And I began, like he, to project myself into the game and this wonderful thing that he was so happy about.

I would place myself in front of the bedroom mirror with a baseball bat and pretend I was Mickey Mantle. It was genuinely fantasizing about being on the field. Most of us, I don't know the percentage, but let's guess it's 99 point something percent, never make it onto a professional field or court or gridiron. And so somewhere along the lines are fantasy shifts, and it's no longer realistic to say I could someday play shortstop for the New York Yankees. So I have to shift it into, well, I could create this team, this dream team of fantasy players and have fun with that and project things in a different way.

And that's actually how the guys who invented fantasy football came at it initially. Let's talk about the league a bit and its growth. We've done a couple of stories on the early NFL and its rise, also the early NBA.

We take for granted now that the Super Bowl is well attended and 130 million people watch it. The first Super Bowl wasn't a sellout, and the athletes who played in the NFL in the 1950s needed part-time jobs on top of playing in the NFL. So talk about the league and talk about the one gentleman who is a part-time owner of the Oakland Raiders.

Describe the league for folks, because I think it's going to be hard for them to believe that the modern NFL was nothing like the NFL when fantasy football got its start in 1962. Yeah, the turning point really was in 1960 when the AFL was formed, and this was a rival to the NFL as we know it now. And some of the teams in the AFL were owned by guys who tried hard to get an NFL franchise and were, for one reason or another, rejected.

So there were these wealthy individuals who wanted to invest in football. The NFL wouldn't let them in, and so they formed the AFL. Originally, in 1960, there were eight teams in the AFL, and one of them, in fact the last to join the list, was the Oakland Raiders.

They were last because they weren't even supposed to be in. That spot was intended for the Minnesota Vikings. But at the last minute, the Vikings jumped into the NFL, and these AFL upstarts had one vacancy, so they hurriedly formed the Oakland Raiders. And right from the start, it was a mess. And I don't want to insult Raider fans today.

It's a long time later. But back then in 1960, the Raiders were a mess. They won a few games their first year in 1960. They won, I believe, two in their second season.

And by the third season, the 1962 season, their pathetic record was 1-13. And you've been listening to Peter Front talking about the NFL and the birth of fantasy football. When we come back, we'll continue the story here on Our American Stories. This is Lee Habib, host of Our American Stories, the show where America is the star in the American people, and we do it all from the heart of the South, Oxford, Mississippi.

But we truly can't do this show without you. Consider making a tax-deductible donation to Our American Stories. Go to OurAmericanStories.com. Give a little, give a lot. That's OurAmericanStories.com.

Hi, this is Lee Habib here. Do you wake up every morning dreading that first step out of bed because of foot pain? I know I used to. Living with plantar fasciitis felt like a constant battle. Then I tried Power Step, the number one podiatrist recommended in soles clinically proven to relieve pain. I was skeptical at first, but from the moment I put them in my shoes and sneakers, I felt the difference. Support and comfort exactly where I needed it and when I needed it, especially those really long walks I take each day with my wife. My foot pain vanished, and even my back and knee pain was eased.

Now I can go through my day pain-free. Go to PowerStep.com slash OAS and use code OAS for 15% off your first order. That's PowerStep.com slash OAS and use code OAS for 15% off your first order. Get your first month free at Greenlight.com slash iHeart. That's Greenlight.com slash iHeart. The holidays are here and the Home Depot has everything you need to stay connected with smart home upgrades.

Whether you're keeping an eye out for the big guy or keeping an eye on your family. The Home Depot has you covered with great tech like the Ring Indoor Camera 2-pack with advanced motion detection, two-way talk and color night vision. Plus, get your smart home devices the smart way with free delivery. Get holiday ready with seasonal savings happening now at the Home Depot.

Subject to availability, see HomeDepot.com slash delivery for details. If you use paper, you're a human. But if you choose paper, you're a paper-terian.

Someone who lives a paper-based lifestyle because it has a positive impact on the planet. And also because it's the easiest choice you'll make all day. Seriously. It's as easy as reaching for boxed instead of bottled water. It's as easy as opting for beauty products that come in paper packaging. It's as easy as grabbing eggs in a cardboard container.

And that's all in one trip to the grocery store, which, if we're being honest, you were planning to go to anyway. But paper isn't just an easy choice. Paper-terians know that it's the smart choice too. Because paper comes from trees, a renewable and sustainably managed resource. And paper products are designed to be recycled. In fact, when you choose products that come in paper-based packaging, those fibers can go on to be recycled up to seven times. So why wouldn't you go paper-terian? I'll wait.

Learn more at howlifeunfolds.com slash paper-terian. And we return to our American stories and the story of how fantasy football came to be. When we last left off, we learned that the AFL, well, was just starting to compete with the NFL. And there was this team called the Oakland Raiders. Well, they had cobbled together a team and they were in a desperate situation. The team just kept losing. And there were a few co-owners.

Let's pick up now where we last left off. And a minority owner of this Oakland Raider franchise was a Bay Area resident named Bill Winkenbach. His friends called him Wink. He was a big sports fan. He was interested, like many of us, in playing sports but quickly found he wasn't good enough at it. What he was good at was business and he was in the ceramic tile business.

He made a lot of money and he decided to invest a chunk of it in this terrible Oakland Raider team. Now, the interesting thing about Winkenbach is that ten years earlier, in the mid-early 1950s, he actually invented an early form of fantasy sports. First, he did it with PGA Tour golf and he had this idea that if he and his friends each divided up the field at a PGA Tour event and then kept track of the individual scores of the players and translated it somehow into small monetary bets, they could make a game out of it. They never used the word fantasy sports. That came in way later, but they were playing essentially a form of the game. They became interested to the point where they tried it with baseball.

All they counted was home runs and certain pitching statistics. But that was in the back of his mind in 1962 when Winkenbach accompanied the Raiders on a road trip to the East Coast. By the time they landed in New York City, their record for the season was 0-7, and really, things were headed in the wrong direction. Winkenbach and his pals, who traveled with the team, and that included a writer for the Oakland Tribune, some members of the Raiders front office staff, they were all miserable, not only because the team was doing so poorly, but because as fans, they wished they had some superstars to root for. Don't forget the other league, the successful NFL, had big stars like Jim Brown and Mike Ditka and Frank Gifford, and they're kind of moaning over the fact that they don't have anybody in their league of that caliber, and they certainly don't have anybody that good on the Raiders. So here they are in New York, and they're going to play the team called the New York Titans, and they later became, as we know, the New York Jets. But this was the Titans in 1962. It was a rainy, miserable night when they showed up in New York in advance of the game.

They went to a hotel in mid-Manhattan and quickly made their way into the bar. And the more they drank, the more the idea for this game, this pretend football game, took shape. And by morning, they had essentially invented fantasy football. They flew home to Oakland, and it was too late in the season to start this game, and they waited until the following summer. And they had a draft in August in Winkenbach's basement, and there were eight guys, and they each had a helper.

So there was a grand total of 16 guys. And they formed this league, the very first fantasy football league in history, and they gave it a very unusual, cumbersome name. They called it the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League. And for short, or at least a little bit shorter, they called it GOPL, G-O-P-P-P-L. And that, folks, was the first fantasy football league. The interesting thing is, the rules that they came up with for the GOPL league were quite similar to what we play today, at least in so-called seasonal redraft, recreational fantasy football competition.

It's quite similar to what they did. But it was much, much more difficult for these guys, primarily because there were no computers. The only source of information about the football games was the box scores in newspapers.

And in order to keep track of the results for the fantasy football games, Winkenbach spent hours and hours each week, late into the night, looking at the box score in the early edition of the newspaper and carefully tabulating how everybody was doing. And I repeat, they did not use the term fantasy football. In fact, that term didn't even enter the lexicon until some decades later. What did they call it? Winkenbach called his game the draft. That's what he called it because they knew then, as many of us know now, that perhaps the most exciting part of a fantasy football competition is the draft, getting together, taking turns, picking players, forming relationships that in some cases carry on for decades.

And so they called it the draft, but the rules were similar to what we think of today. They played for pennies and they had a lot of fun. And let's talk about the fact that this founder, as fantasy football took hold, never actually made money from this. I mean, he didn't profit from it.

Talk about that. Yeah, Winkenbach had really a billion-dollar idea, but he never got a nickel from his idea, in part because he wasn't interested in the money. He was a wealthy man and he didn't need the money, but he also thought this was a fun enterprise, recreational, fraternal, but definitely not financial.

So he never tried to protect his idea. Decades later, his relatives told me how they tried, after Winkenbach's death, to see if there was some way they could back up and cash in on this fantasy football idea. And lawyers told them it's almost impossible. You can't protect something like that.

There's too many different forms, too many different applications, and so they gave up. So Winkenbach's billion-dollar idea, and I am using a B because this is a billion-dollar proposition. The NFL, as we know, is a multi, multi-billion-dollar sport. The worst NFL franchises, the least valuable, are now valued at over $5 billion each. And the most valuable NFL franchises are now over $10 billion in value. So fantasy football is a smaller but essential part of that, and today the giant companies like DraftKings and FanDuel, Underdog, and of course ESPN and Yahoo, they're all into fantasy gaming, and they're managing to conflate it with actual sports wagering, which is a separate but related enterprise. Some people, like myself, are not happy to see the way that's going.

But monetarily, now the money is just pouring in, and it's feeding on each other. The organized legal betting is helping fantasy sports, and the popularity of fantasy sports is helping legal online betting. And you're listening to Peter Funt. He's the author of Inside Fantasy Football, America's favorite non-contact sport. And we find out who the originator of fantasy football was, and it was Bill Winkingback.

A lot of good ideas happened just like this one did, in a bar with some guys and gals drinking, more of this multi-billion-dollar idea on Our American Stories. Hi, this is Lee Habib here. Do you wake up every morning dreading that first step out of bed because of foot pain? I know I used to. Living with plantar fasciitis felt like a constant battle. Then I tried PowerStep, the number one podiatrist recommended in soles clinically proven to relieve pain. I was skeptical at first, but from the moment I put them in my shoes and sneakers, I felt the difference. Support and comfort exactly where I needed it and when I needed it, especially those really long walks I take each day with my wife. My foot pain vanished and even my back and knee pain was eased.

Now I can go through my day pain-free. Go to PowerStep.com slash OAS and use code OAS for 15% off your first order. That's PowerStep.com slash OAS and use code OAS for 15% off your first order. Get holiday ready with seasonal savings happening now at the Home Depot.

Subject to availability, see Home Depot dot com slash delivery for details. If you use paper, you're a human. But if you choose paper, you're a paper-terian.

Someone who lives a paper-based lifestyle because it has a positive impact on the planet. And also because it's the easiest choice you'll make all day. Seriously. It's as easy as reaching for boxed instead of bottled water. It's as easy as opting for beauty products that come in paper packaging. It's as easy as grabbing eggs in a cardboard container.

And that's all in one trip to the grocery store, which, if we're being honest, you were planning to go to anyway. But paper isn't just an easy choice. Paper-terians know that it's the smart choice too. Because paper comes from trees, a renewable and sustainably managed resource. And paper products are designed to be recycled. In fact, when you choose products that come in paper-based packaging, those fibers can go on to be recycled up to seven times. So why wouldn't you go paper-terian? I'll wait.

Learn more at howlifeunfolds.com slash paper-terian. Steve Kornacki is at the big board breaking down the races. Rachel Mano and our Decision 2024 team will provide insight as results come in. And the next day, Morning Joe will give you perspective on what it all means for the future of our country.

Watch coverage of the 2024 presidential election Tuesday, November 5th on MSNBC. And we continue with our American stories and the story of fantasy football, its origins to its present status. And we're talking to Peter Funt, the author of Inside Fantasy Football, America's favorite non-contact sport. We've just been talking about the integration or the merging of gambling, sports gambling, and fantasy football itself.

Let's pick up where we last left off. The professional sports leagues, certainly the NFL, NBA, MBL, were always very nervous about gambling. And as you say, in the earliest days with the Black Sox scandal or the Pete Rose incident and quite a few other examples of bad behavior, why would the leagues want to get anywhere near that?

And the big reason they didn't want to get near it was there was no way to monetize it. But of course, that changed in 2018 with the Supreme Court decision that essentially legalized gambling and allowed it to be outside of Nevada where it was legal and basically in any state in the union where local state government decided it was okay. Once those floodgates opened, not only did gambling spread to a much, much larger proportion of the population, but immediately the professional leagues recognized, now there's a lot of money to be made here. Almost overnight, they changed their entire position about gambling to the point where 28 of the 32 NFL teams are somehow contractually connected to fantasy football enterprises. Let's cover the NFL players, the actual players, not the fantasy players, the NFL players. You talked a little bit about Tony Romo, and I was stunned that he was one of the first pro athletes that far along with the knowledge of fantasy football to really put his arms around it.

Talk about that. And why Romo? You'd have to ask Tony Romo why Romo, except a lot of guys at the end of their playing career, and that's where he was, are starting to think about other ways to monetize their name and their connections.

Now, for many of them, Romo included, that ultimately turned out to be the broadcast booth, and that's where Tony Romo shines today. But back 10 years ago or more, he was looking for an angle, and fantasy football seemed like a good one, and he thought if he could just bring together a lot of his buddies from the NFL and call it a fantasy football conference or convention or exhibition or something like that, there'd be money to be made, and his guys would sign things and charge for it, and everybody would be happy. They tried to do it. They picked the wrong spot to do it. They tried to do it first in Las Vegas. And when the NFL learned of this plan, they forbid the players from taking part. He stuck with it, tried to do it the following year in Los Angeles, and that, too, didn't work out for different and complicated reasons. He had hooked up with Madden NFL football, the video game, to make money, but Madden games use a form of the NFL logo as their logo. When Romo brought this in to his exhibition, the NFL again jumped in and said, no, no, no, you can't use our logo, and they shut the thing down again. Now, the third year, he tried it in, I believe, the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and it did go off without much of a hitch.

It just wasn't very interesting. You basically had a lot of players charging exorbitant prices for autographs, and those who did attend didn't feel they were getting much out of it, and so that thing kind of flopped. A very, very nice man named Bob Lung started a competing annual event called the Fantasy Football Expo. Unlike Romo, I don't think Bob is in it for the money, and if he is, more power to him because it's a very homespun event. It's held in Canton, Ohio, each August, in connection or at least proximity to the induction ceremony for the NFL Hall of Fame in Canton, and so there's a perfect synergy there, and this Fantasy Football Expo has gotten bigger and bigger, and the people who go that include fans but also some players and a lot of so-called experts, analysts who write and report about fantasy football, all say this Fantasy Football Expo is a wonderful thing and a lot of fun, so that's good. As for the NFL players like Tony Romo, well, Romo has bigger fish to fry now as a broadcaster and I think a very good one. I love listening to Tony Romo, but the fantasy game is kind of a mixed blessing for current NFL players, the guys who are still active. Some of them embrace it, and in fact, the NFL allows them to play in recreational fantasy football leagues as long as the top prize is not more than $250.

So the NFL wants to be sure that it's not gambling and not high stakes, not enough money where any player would be inspired to throw a game or do something wrong on the field. That's crazy. That's good stuff. Let's talk about the richest 2%. That's the title of a chapter. Who's Michael Cohen? Well, Michael Cohen is among the richest 2%. The richest 2% refers to the fact that in daily fantasy sports, less than 2% of the players win more than 98% of the money, and that should be more frustrating to the general public than it is, and yet the general public keeps throwing their money at this because it's more like a lottery.

You buy a ticket, maybe 100 tickets, not really expecting to win but dreaming that you might and thinking that it would change your life. For the less than 2% who are good at this and more importantly have the computer power and proprietary software to help them be good at it, for those guys, it's a big, big business. Michael Cohen is one such person. By day, he's a stockbroker living in Texas. On weekends and evenings, he's a daily fantasy football player.

He goes with the handle 2gun, as in two firearms, 2gun, and he has won the million-dollar prize, at least that I know of, five different times. That's amazing considering that he's competing in fields where there's often 180,000 people in the field, and he's come out first for the million dollars more than five times, at least five times. So Michael Cohen, what do you do with all this money? And we're talking to Peter Funt. He's the author of Inside Fantasy Football.

What does Michael Cohen do with all this money? When we come back, more of the story of fantasy football, its origins, how it came to be, the 2% who wager fortunes to win fortunes back, and the rest of us who just like playing for the fun of it and maybe win a few bucks on the side. The story of fantasy football continues here on Our American Stories.

Hi, this is Lee Habib here. Do you wake up every morning dreading that first step out of bed because of foot pain? I know I used to. Living with plantar fasciitis felt like a constant battle. Then I tried Power Step, the number one podiatrist recommended in souls clinically proven to relieve pain. I was skeptical at first, but from the moment I put them in my shoes and sneakers, I felt the difference. Support and comfort exactly where I needed it and when I needed it, especially those really long walks I take each day with my wife. My foot pain vanished, and even my back and knee pain was eased.

Now I can go through my day pain-free. Go to PowerStep.com slash OAS and use code OAS for 15% off your first order. That's PowerStep.com slash OAS and use code OAS for 15% off your first order. The time for holiday hosting is upon us, so make your second bathroom second to none with HomeDepot.com's best savings of the season. Right now, enjoy up to 40% off select online bath. Find the latest on-trend styles of vanities, faucets, showers, tubs, toilets, and more, all at prices that will let your budget relax right along with you and your beautifully renovated bath. Get up to 40% off select online bath plus free delivery at the Home Depot.

Subject to availability, see HomeDepot.com slash delivery for details. If you use paper, you're a human, but if you choose paper, you're a paper-terian, someone who lives a paper-based lifestyle because it has a positive impact on the planet and also because it's the easiest choice you'll make all day. Seriously, it's as easy as reaching for boxed instead of bottled water. It's as easy as opting for beauty products that come in paper packaging. It's as easy as grabbing eggs in a cardboard container.

And that's all in one trip to the grocery store, which, if we're being honest, you were planning to go to anyway. But paper isn't just an easy choice. Paper-terians know that it's the smart choice too because paper comes from trees, a renewable and sustainably managed resource, and paper products are designed to be recycled. In fact, when you choose products that come in paper-based packaging, those fibers can go on to be recycled up to seven times. So why wouldn't you go paper-terian? I'll wait.

Learn more at howlifenfolds.com slash paper-terian. Steve Kornacki is at the big board breaking down the races. Rachel Maddow and our Decision 2024 team will provide insight as results come in. And the next day, Morning Joe will give you perspective on what it all means for the future of our country.

Watch coverage of the 2024 presidential election Tuesday, November 5th on MSNBC. And we continue with Our American Stories and with Peter Funt. His book is Inside Fantasy Football, America's favorite non-contact sport. And let's pick up where we last left off, talking about Michael Cohen, one of the members of the 2% of fantasy football daily betting. He already was doing well as a stockbroker.

Now he's got all this fantasy money. Well, the first thing he did was he bought the street in suburban Houston, Texas, where he lives. He actually bought the street. It has five or six homes on it. He decided he would live in one of them, but his friends and relatives would live in the other homes.

And he hired a lawyer and got the name of the street changed to Two Gun Way. And that's where Michael Cohen now lives, on the street that he literally made with his winnings from daily fantasy sports. But as I was researching my book, I became increasingly intrigued with the stories among these big winners.

There's not a lot of them, but there are several. And besides Michael Cohen, there is, for example, a professor at the University of Connecticut, a gentleman named David Bergman. He won't say exactly how much money he's won in daily fantasy, but I was able to do some back-of-the-envelope math, and I'm certain that he has won more than $20 million. Now, what I don't know for sure is how much he spent to enter these contests, but I'm confident in saying it's a big, big number. But the interesting thing about David Bergman is he continues to teach at UConn in the business department and one of his classes uses the concepts that he's employed in daily fantasy sports to teach business and economics to his students, and the payoff at the end of each semester is that the class gets to play against him in a daily fantasy competition. I just find that remarkable, but he's an example of a brainiac.

He's a guy who has figured this out and manages to win simply because he's so smart. Now, as I looked further, I thought, are there any women involved in this? Because we know, statistically, women are the fastest-growing segment of both NFL viewership and fantasy football participation. The figures now show that of the roughly 50 to 55 million Americans who play fantasy football, an estimated 25% of them, one out of every four, is a woman, and that's a remarkably big number.

So I tried to go looking for the big winners among women, and I finally found one. And her name is Alicia Hunt, and she lives in a suburb of Chicago. She's always been a football fan, and she plays daily fantasy on DraftKings, but she doesn't put in the maximum number of roster lineups the way the big guys do.

Guys like David Bergman and Michael Cohen play the max, which is 150 different lineups in each contest. One week, Alicia Hunt went with three, just three lineups, and she didn't use a computer or something she learned in a class at UConn to figure it out. She just went with her gut, and she came up with a lineup, and lo and behold, she won $1.1 million that afternoon on DraftKings, the so-called Millie Maker contest. And she quit her job. She was working at Amazon, and she decided to just invest her money and take it easy. She continues to play daily fantasy sports and does some blogging on websites about tips and tricks.

But as of today, Alicia Hunt is the only woman to have ever won a million-dollar prize in fantasy football. Well, more to come, I hope. That's all we can say. The growth is remarkable, as you said. Let's talk about AI, because it's affecting every part of our lives. I know a lot of people who write for a living. They're worried, but yet maybe it'll make their life easier. Maybe the good writers will thrive.

Maybe some of the poorer writers won't. Talk about how AI is going to affect fantasy football. For better and for worse, maybe a mix of both.

And make some predictions about it, too, if you wouldn't mind, after all the studying you've done. You know, AI is already a confusing term, because artificial intelligence really represents so many different things that a computer can or can't do. We sometimes look at simple word processing or spell check, and we leap to call it AI. Well, you can call it AI, but it's not what others think of when they use the term. And I say that because in fantasy sports, there's a wide range of computerization and computer tools that are unquestionably making the game easier for those who have mastered it, especially in daily fantasy sports, where computers are now a tremendous part of the game.

You could even say a requisite for winning. In a regular seasonal redraft, computerization and AI is a tiny, tiny part of it. I went and interviewed a number of people at ESPN, which is the largest platform for seasonal fantasy sports.

They have over 12 million players each season. And I also went to IBM because they have partnered with ESPN and put out press releases about how they are using AI to change the game and improve the game. And the more I talked to these folks, the more frustrated I became because they really haven't figured out very much at all. ESPN is working on an aspect of computerization that might help you know if a trade you were making in your league was a smart trade or perhaps a bad trade. There's nothing new about that, and you don't need a zillion-dollar IBM computer to figure that out. But for marketing purposes, it sounds good for ESPN to say, we're incorporating IBM AI into your fantasy experience. And similarly, at IBM, they're getting something from their relationship with ESPN.

They're certainly getting publicity. Don't forget, they were the people who many years ago built the computer that beat the champion chess player and really revolutionized chess by proving once and for all that no human could beat a computer at chess. And when I went to IBM, I expected them to say, and now we've figured out how to do that with fantasy football. We've got the machine over there that nobody can beat.

Well, either they don't have it, or if they do, they're still hiding it in the back room because nobody was willing to tell me about it, and I don't think they do have it. I think fantasy football in the seasonal league form is not really suited to playing against a computer. And may I say the fact that some of us are more interested in the fantasy aspect of this than the real game that's going on on the field and the fact that we now tend to follow players even more than we follow teams, it may not be exactly what the founders had in mind, but it's definitely what the NFL has in mind because for the NFL, fantasy football has become the glue that holds everything together, holds viewers' attention during, frankly, boring games, lopsided games, games with mismatched teams. And yet, if you're a fantasy player and you've got just one player in that game who you're really depending on, you're riveted to the screen, and you're not going away.

And that's what the NFL is counting on because it makes the entire game bigger than any one team, any one city, any one franchise. And we've been listening to Peter Funt, Inside Fantasy Football. America's favorite non-contact sport is the book Go to Amazon or The Usual Suspects and pick it up. We learned how Peter got interested in football, and, of course, that's because his dad Alan Funt, the famous Alan Funt, and that's how Peter Funt learned about fantasy football from his son. That's why so many Americans play it, some to gamble, but some to just enjoy the camaraderie.

The story of fantasy football is told by Peter Funt here on Our American Stories. With Amex Platinum, you can really be in the now. Access to Resi Priority Notify. Yes! 4 p.m. checkout with fine hotels and resorts. Book through Amex Travel. We needed this. And dedicated card member entrances at select events. Let's go!

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Whisper: medium.en / 2024-10-13 14:19:56 / 2024-10-13 14:37:08 / 17

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