What Is Fantasy Football? — In Layman’s Terms
I’ve always wanted to use writing to break down barriers to understanding hobbies. Here I am starting with Fantasy Football.
So, your earliest experience of Fantasy was watching or being dragged to the football. Just over an hour before kick-off, when the pints are full and the conversation is still diverse. This is when you spy a mobile phone under the table, and the owner’s neck is bent at a problematic angle.
This person is doing last-minute fantasy changes. How can you tell? Well, if the game is at 12:30 and the time is 11:27? Yeah, they are absolutely scrambling to get this thing done in 3 minutes. Is it 11:30 or later? They’re honestly just looking at the announced line-ups to see how screwed they are.
Why this panic? Because as soon as the very first team is announced of the weekend, they are powerless. It is literally like being a manager, all you can do is watch, shout, cry or rejoice.
What have they done?
So in the build-up to a weekend they are looking at their team of 15 players and deciding who is stale, and who they just don’t expect to have an enriching game. So if I compared it to Strictly Come Dancing, if last week you saw that Rose and Giovanni missed a lot of steps, and subsequently got a weak score from the judges, you may feel a lack of confidence in them excelling in the competition in the coming weeks. You therefore (in this bonkers parallel) get rid of the couple from your team and bring in the couple that got a very high score and who you expect are very confident going forward.
If Tom Fletcher and Amy Dowden had a lull in their score, but you suspect they could do well in the future regardless, you may simply drop them to your bench. Where they are ineligible to earn you points, but they remain in your team for when they inevitably regain their potency. I don’t watch Strictly by the way.
So how do they earn points?
I think even those most alienated from football can guess that the main way to score has something to do with balls in goals. The other ways however include assists (the final touch or pass before a goal is scored) and clean sheets (being on the defending team and conceding precisely 0 goals). There are also bonus points for the best performers each game, “Oh so I assume these points go to the best performers outside of these superficial and overly simplistic numbers?”- no it’s actually not really like that, hopefully, they're working on that.
The short answer is, you pick a player, they perform well, you score points. Players who are expected to perform well cost more, players that are due to play a lot of bad teams temporarily increase in price. You may also captain one player that will have their usual points doubled.
Here are the non-Layman’s terms rules for the quick learners.
So… why??
I’ll skip past the obvious answers of:
- It’s fun
- It’s competitive
- It’s exciting
After playing for about 5 years and playing properly I can conclude the actual reasons are:
- It fulfils the innate human love for live gambling without the horrific financial toll
- It becomes enticing getting skilled at something when you realise there are actually professionals at it
- It’s a running theme of conversation among mates, and also a secondary source of excitement during already tense games
Betting can become a dangerous habit, the risk and reward rollercoaster has people on strings and Fantasy Football is the healthier alternative.
