Bill O’Boyle

Beyond the Byline: Fantasy Football time is almost here

WILKES-BARRE — Now that the Kielbasa Festival and Tomato Festival and Pierogi Festival are all over, it’s time to get serious about Fantasy Football.

In a week or two, Fantasy Football leagues will be holding their draft days — sometimes held in a bar/restaurant and appropriately called “Draught Days.”

Friends and others gather in backrooms, armed with electronic devices and more ancient sources of information called magazines, or they bring printouts of rankings done by esteemed scholars of the Fantasy Football world.

And shortly after all lunch orders are taken, the madness begins.

The American tradition — Fantasy Football — has become a multi-billion dollar industry. There are online leagues everywhere, where complete strangers enroll and draft team after team to test their knowledge of who will perform best in 2022.

But the most fun leagues are those neighborhood groups, where a group gathers — perhaps in a garage — and they draft their teams amid a flurry of insults and ridicule until the 12 rosters are filled.

These leagues take a much thicker skin to endure and there is no “auto-selection” done when you can’t decide who to take in the seventh round.

Every year, millions of people play fantasy football — football fanatics buy up all the magazines, check out the online cheat sheets and analyses and compile their lists of players they absolutely must select.

And these fantasy players could care less if their favorite NFL team is represented on their fantasy teams and even worse, they are not at all concerned if their favorite NFL teams win a game. It’s all about their fantasy team and players.

The phenomenon is so popular, people have actually selected players for their teams with total disregard for what teams the players play for — even if they play for the most bitter of NFL rivals.

For instance, there are fantasy owners who put winning at all costs. So if they are, say a New York Giants fan, they will select players from the Dallas Cowboys. Unbelievable, right?

People who have been bitten by the fantasy football bug can’t help themselves. They want to win. It’s a matter of bragging rights.

Most league rosters consist of two quarterbacks, two running backs, three wide receivers, a tight end, a kicker, two defenses and substitutes. Each week they must submit a lineup and play against another team in the league.

So over the next couple of weeks, fantasy players will be trying to come up with a strategy of which players to choose, based on which teams they feel will put up big numbers this year.

Who will score the most TDs? What QBs will run scores in? What kickers have the highest percentage of success beyond 50 yards? Should you take more than one or two players from the same NFL team? What rookies will have immediate impact? Is Todd Gurley still playing? Whatever happened to Michael Turner? Do the Seahawks even have a quarterback?

And you never want to have to say:

What do you mean he retired? Or, Wait? What? He’s out for the year?

If you choose right, you could have a great fantasy year. If you rely more on your heart than your brain, you will be in for an extremely long fantasy season.

In this pandemic world we have been living in, we need distractions. We need fun. We need something to give us a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Fantasy football provides all that for many people.

And soon we will hear those first words at fantasy football drafts across the land:

“With the first pick in the Neighborhood Franchise Football League, I select (fill in the blank)!

Maybe it will be a top running back, or a high performing receiver, or an elite tight end, or one of the top five quarterbacks.

As is usually the case, the team you draft will not look the same by Week 6. There will be injuries, flops, unexpected high-performing rookies or previously unknowns that will command attention.

And a lot has to do with your team’s name. Well, not really.

One league I’m in meets weekly to make roster changes and bust chops. That’s the fun of it.

But as Al Davis, owner of the Oakland Raiders back in the day, said, the main objective is to “Just win, baby.”

But win or lose, the fun week after week can not be overstated.

My advice is to prepare before you head to your draft. Knowledge really is everything.

And don’t order anything too spicy for your Draft Day lunch — you don’t need any distractions.

Good luck!