Chris Johnson: Dipping my little toe into the fantasy world
I got into fantasy football long before there was FanDuel or Draft Kings. In fact, it was before anyone even knew how to Google, and if they did they thought it was a dance.
I think it was about 1997 when several other guys and I assembled to hold a fantasy football draft the old-fashioned way — with notebook paper, magazines and a dry-erase board. Hey, a dry-erase board was considered pretty darn high-tech back then, thank you very much.
And we didn’t assemble virtually or in front of a computer. We met face-to-face. Our smack talk was done in person, so it was a little less edgy than today’s online anonymity now allows. Our draft headquarters was a room at the Burger King on Wynnton Road in Columbus — which is about as unique a Burger King as I’ve ever entered.
We kept score the old-fashioned way — by having some peon named Chris Johnson comb the sports wires at the newspaper office on Tuesdays and tallying up the scores for each player. There’s no telling how much money was lost due to my poor math skills.
Fantasy football, however, has blossomed into a multibillion-dollar business — especially through online sites like FanDuel and Draft Kings. While my gambling generally consists of little things like spending about $3 a year on the Georgia Lottery (please play responsibly) or eating a double-chili-cheeseburger at my advanced age and cholesterol level, I decided to give it a shot last weekend.
After all, this should be a piece of cake. It’s practically like insider trading on a legal basis. How’s that? Because the only people in the world who know more about sports than sportswriters are former sportswriters.
So, I dove into one of the sites on a leap of faith and practically my entire life savings. Yep, six dollars. I sank five bucks into one league with a $150,000 top payout and one dollar into a league with a $10,000 top payout. All I had to do was beat out about 405,000 people in one league and about 172,000 people in another.
The fact that I have a column this week and am not sitting on a beach in Hawaii should tell you I didn’t quite do that. However, I am proud to say that I did finish in the top 1 percent of each league, meaning I multiplied my life savings nearly tenfold, earning $58. Woohoo!
Playing fantasy football certainly changes the way you watch football games on Sunday. Not only do you flip from game to game, but you wind up rooting for players to do well against your favorite team, just not too well. For instance, I had Tampa Bay’s kicker on my team, so I wanted the Buccaneers to settle for a lot of field goals against my Falcons but not enough to win. Unfortunately for the Falcons, the Bucs had enough to win.
My wife is a football fan and was so excited by this new way of watching the game that she took a nap during the third quarter. Good thing she didn’t see that at one point during the third quarter, I was up to $500 in winnings and 14th out of 172,000 people. If she’d have seen that, she’d have hit Amazon or eBay and ordered some desperately needed home accessory such as a giant ceramic chicken. By the end of Sunday, I was back down to $22.
But I had a tight end playing Monday night, Greg Olsen of the Carolina Panthers, a rival of my Falcons. Yet, I was rooting for a Panther to do well. Sure enough, he caught a second-half touchdown that led me to shout from the couch, “YES! I just made $15!”
“That’s louder than you’ve yelled for the Falcons or the Dawgs all year,” my wife noted.
Of course, when I pointed out that another touchdown by that fellow could earn me a hundred or more dollars, she decided to watch the rest of the game with me. And after a few more catches, she decided I should risk a little more money this weekend.
So, I shall. I’m going in big this week, with $12. But I’m not going to risk my entire life savings again. That would be crazy.
Connect with Chris Johnson at Facebook.com/KudzuKidWriting, Twitter @kudzukid88 or kudzukid88@gmail.com.
This story was originally published November 7, 2015 at 10:18 PM with the headline "Chris Johnson: Dipping my little toe into the fantasy world."