For many years, fantasy football has been a tradition among both athletes and fans during the NFL season as a way of competition between friends. This season the tradition has continued despite the coronavirus pandemic that unfortunately still rages through our country.
Fantasy football is a game where people first draft a team, a combination of players at all of the skill positions (quarterback, wide receiver, running back, and kickers) and an entire team’s defense (for example, the Chicago Bears defense). Each week, two people within each fantasy league are pitted against each other, and whichever person’s team gathers more points wins for the week. Points are scored for the offensive players by gaining yardage, scoring or throwing touchdowns, kicking field goals, and extra points. Points are scored by the defense for allowing fewer points, recovering fumbles, getting interceptions, and scoring defensive touchdowns (for example a pick-six, where a defensive player intercepts the ball and runs it all the way back for a touchdown).
Millions of people throughout America participate in fantasy football, and these people all have varying levels of knowledge about the game and a multitude of different reasons they started playing fantasy football.
Senior Chris Sienko has played fantasy football for four years now and has even invested himself in three different teams this year. “The main reason I play fantasy football is to allow me to do something that I find entertaining,” Sienko said. “Right now especially it really helps to distract me from my boredom and I thoroughly enjoy beating Hunter [Meshanic] in our head to heads.”
Sophomore Jacob Joseph started playing fantasy football for different reasons. “I started playing fantasy football when I was just eight years old because my family had a league, and it was a way to have healthy competition within our family,” Joseph said. “The reason I still play now is because it gives me a way to bond with people that I can’t really do anything else with, especially this year with the virus still going around.”
Alex Greb, a fantasy football specialist who currently attends the University of Connecticut as a freshman, talked about his experiences with fantasy and what adjustments he’s had to make this year. “This year it has been really hard to set my lineups with all of the players going in and out of the COVID list,” Greb said. Being a fantasy specialist comes with some challenges as Greb gives up some of his free time to know all that he can. He has to do his research on what players have better matchups and watching more sports news to keep up on the players who are injured or have COVID-19 to make sure his best possible team is put forth week in and week out. “I spend about an hour and a half per week on my fantasy teams, 30 minutes for each of my three teams,” Greb said.
Despite all of the changes this year, many people both within the Kingswood Oxford community and elsewhere in America are using fantasy football as a means of escaping the reality we now have to live in due to the coronavirus.
