What's Your Fantasy Football Origin Story?

Whether your journey started in 1962 or a few minutes ago, you have a fantasy football origin story. Your moment might be similar to others', but it's almost magical to you.

In an instant, your life was altered. From the added friendships to the joy and agony of last-minute scores, fantasy football changed you.

Email your fantasy football origin story to gray@footballguys.com.

This will be a weekly feature through the 2026 season. If you'd like to share your story with everyone, please send it to me and let me know if it's okay to share. And if you don't want it shared here, that's cool too. I'd still like to read it. I'll only repost if you give me permission.

Note: If you have already sent in your story but haven't heard back from me, please be patient. We've gotten over 200 stories (and more every day). I promise I'll get back to you, but I'm actually reading everything you send, so it takes time. No ChatGPT here!

Today's Storytellers

Here are this week's narrators:

And here are their stories. Whether short and to the point or long yarns, each story is special. Each tale is what brought them here.

Michael Broderick's Fantasy Football Origin Story

Our league began in 1987 in Orange County when two close-knit groups of fraternity brothers—one from San Diego State and one from Cal State Fullerton—came together to form a fantasy football league. Many of us had already been friends since high school, and in some cases, since middle school.

Nearly 40 years later, ten of the twelve original owners are still in the league, and we haven't had a single owner turnover in more than 15 years.

When our league began in 1987, fantasy football wasn't automated. Each "home" team used the Los Angeles Times to score its matchup through Sunday's games, then called our commissioner Monday morning with the results. After watching Monday Night Football, our commissioner used Tuesday's Los Angeles Times to complete the scoring and determine the week's winners. Then came the part we all looked forward to: he typed a weekly newsletter complete with standings, scores, and plenty of witty commentary at the expense of whoever had the worst week. We couldn't wait for Thursday, when that letter would arrive in the mail. As technology evolved (from letter to FAX to league website), so did the way we ran our league—but the camaraderie remained exactly the same.

As you pointed out in your article, fantasy football eventually becomes about far more than football. For us, it has become the connective tissue that keeps lifelong friendships alive. Our year-round group text has become our version of Facebook. It's where we share life's biggest moments—both joyful and difficult. We celebrate promotions, retirements, weddings, births, and other milestones. The conversation naturally becomes more active during football season, but it never really stops.

It's also where we lean on one another during life's hardest moments. Over the years, we've rallied around friends battling cancer, supported one another through difficult divorces, mourned with a league mate who lost his wife to cancer far too young, and stood beside another living with Parkinson's disease. One moment I'll never forget was when a longtime friend in our league came out as gay in his 30s. We were a group of very competitive, hyper-masculine fraternity guys, so I honestly wondered whether it might change the dynamic of our league. Instead, he was met with unconditional love and support. That told me everything I needed to know about the character of this group.

This year's draft will include two memorable milestones. After 39 seasons of near misses, one of our original members finally won his first league championship last year. We'll spend the upcoming draft weekend celebrating him and the beginning of our league's 40th season. But even more importantly, we'll be honoring a league that has never been just about fantasy football. In the end, our passion for fantasy football has always been surpassed only by the brotherhood it created.

Mike Horsman's Fantasy Football Origin Story

I read an article in a newspaper in 1978 about a game these guys in Oakland had come up with called fantasy football, and about all the detail the article had was that you got the points scored by a player you picked. Armed with that scant information, I formed a league at work for the 1978 playoffs. Ten of us got in a room and did a draft over lunch hour at work.

One of the players I picked was Keith Krepfle, the tight end for the Philadelphia Eagles that year. He was from Iowa State, and one of our group said he was his college roommate. He said he would call him and let him know what we had done. Krepfle had never heard of fantasy football, but told his old roommate to let me know he would do his best for me.

I liked this game already.

Back then, there was no internet, and I told everyone that I would compile the scores on Tuesday when I got the Sporting News, and send a memo on how we had all done. I think we each put up $10 for the contest.

We all loved it, and nobody minded the wait because that was how everything was back then. I wanted a trophy for the league, not for who won, but for who finished last. I found a statue of the back end of a horse and composed this for the front of the trophy. "I joined the [company name] football pool; I tried but finished last. Next year I hope some other fool will win this horse's ass." The loser had to leave the trophy on his desk for the entire year, and believe me, we all checked on him regularly.

I was hooked, but unfortunately the company got wind of it and told us gambling on company property was forbidden and if we did it again there would be consequences, so that was the end of that experiment, but it gave me my love of fantasy football which has persisted for decades and on through my retirement years, where I now think of it as my senior brain work. It sure beats crossword puzzles!

Stan Booth's Fantasy Football Origin Story

Our league (WIAFL - West Island Armchair Football League) is in its 42nd year, after kicking off in 1985 (Jerry Rice's rookie year!) when three other high school buddies from the suburbs of Montreal (the West Island) and I decided to start a FF league.

The league quickly expanded from 4 to 8 teams, then 10, and we capped it at 12, which is where we've been for the past 35 years.

We developed our own scoring system (designed to make each offensive position of roughly equal value), and we've always included individual defensive players and kickers.

Unlike today's "instant scoring updates", for several years we had to wait until Monday afternoon around 3 pm, when we could get the USA Today at the local magazine store, to start calculating everyone's points! The local Montréal paper only included game stats from offensive players, so we could only find the tackle/sack/int info in the USA Today for the individual defensive player scoring.

I was Commish for the first 18 years of the league, which included me tabulating the scores from Monday and Tuesday's USA Today (and sometimes Wednesday's paper if the MNF game went too late). Then I'd publish our weekly newsletter with that week's scores, our current standings, and some editorial comments (e.g., high scorer, giving someone grief for a close loss, or for leaving a standout player on the bench, a big Monday night comeback, etc.). Then I'd drive to each of the coaches' houses to drop off that week's newsletter. Luckily, those hand deliveries only lasted a few seasons, as email and the internet made things a lot easier over time!

We've held our in-person drafts in different people's basements, kitchens, patios, as well as hotel meeting rooms, bars, and even the local Legion. Like most leagues, these drafts included a ton of great memories and a few iconic moments that we'll be talking/laughing about for years!

The league is still going strong despite many of us moving away from Montreal. At various points, we've had coaches living across Canada, in Illinois, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and even in France!

We're looking forward to our 42nd season!

RJ Price's Fantasy Football Origin Story

In 1989, as high school freshmen, my best friend and I were invited to join a 10-team fantasy football league made up of grown-ass men (but not in a weird predatory sense). The commissioner was the mother of one of the team managers, and she was also the city's parks and recreation director.

Of course, the draft was held in person. Of course, scores were done by hand. And of course, we wouldn't know the final results of any given contest until Wednesday of the following week because the Monday Night games would never conclude in time to make the Tuesday newspaper.

Waivers were a weekly three-ring circus. Managers were instructed to write the names of their add/drops on an index card and place the card in Animal Ann's mailbox. She would then call you (sometimes not until Sunday morning) to let you know whether or not your claim was successful. As you might imagine, tampering was widespread.

The closest thing we had to "live scoring" updates was NFL Primetime.

It was a glorious time, and I'm still playing fantasy football at age 52.

Steve Haynes' Fantasy Football Origin Story

My wife and I were hosting our church's youth group at our home during the summer of 2000. Several of the student fathers were discussing the upcoming NFL season and talking about fantasy football. I had never heard of it. The more they talked, the better it sounded. I have always loved sports, and my gift, if I have one at all, is math. It was all so out of the blue, but they had an opening, and I signed up.

I was doing a lot of traveling for my job back then and had a lot of alone time on workday evenings, and I started absorbing NFL news. My first season was rough. My first draft pick was Kurt Warner because he was the best QB, and QBs obviously scored the most points. Of course I had no clue about Value-Based Drafting, but I was hooked on fantasy football.

My first season was way worse than poor. I was given the 7th of 10 drafting slots, so I named my team Seventh Heaven. I drafted poorly, had a few injuries, and, at one point, set a league record with seven straight losses. Needless to say, I won the Toilet Bowl Trophy that year. But as the season progressed, I found the Footbalguys website, and even in the midst of that terrible first season, I became an addicted Shark Pool lurker. And as time passed, I began to chip in opinions and learn even more.

During the first offseason, I discovered VBD and the Draft Dominator and improved my preparation for the draft. Even though I moved out of state, I continued with the same league for 25 seasons and still have friendships today with the guys who brought me into this hobby.

Jack Arnold's Fantasy Football Origin Story

I started using the precursor to Footballguys in the mid-to-late 90s, when it was a Yahoo message board, if I remember correctly. I remember getting a value-based drafting spreadsheet, where I had to manually fill in all of my league details and then press a button to activate a macro, I think, and it would give me a cheat sheet.

So I've been using Footballguys or related sites for approximately thirty years.

My league started in 1993. I joined it in 1994. League scoring started on Monday morning, with a newspaper and a pen, manually calculated all scores for all teams every week.

Herb Fischer's Fantasy Football Origin Story

Our league was founded in 1991: 8 players, non-PPR. All scoring was taken off the USA Today sports page following games. Our commissioner hand-typed a weekly newsletter that showed the lineups and who was playing who. He always included a very witty comedy paragraph. This was hand-delivered to all league members in two adjacent towns by him or by one of the other members. On Tuesday nights, he would call us all one at a time to inquire about waivers.

Of course, this was an agonizing evening as each phone call lasted longer than it had to, and some guys wanted a second or third call. We're talking hours. We've kept five of the original eight guys to the present day. We had a couple move on, and one passed (my Pop at 90); he lived for our fantasy season. We always have a live draft, and the smack talk flows all night. We're all late-60s, early-70s guys who could probably do a YouTube cast. Everyone in our league is a force. We've introduced the son of a member to fill a vacancy.

We live for draft night being our first yearly get-together. Fantasy football has ballooned nowadays into one of America's favorite pastimes. I'm getting ready to start my yearly knowledge quest, hoping I get it right once again. Our League has some real sharks in it, and it's difficult to outdraft them. Wishing you all a good season and, hopefully, you enjoyed our story.

Andy Flore's Fantasy Football Origin Story

We started in 1997, so this is our 30th year. We started with a 10-team league. Immediately went to 12. For a couple of years, we had 20 teams and did two leagues that ran individually and faced each other at the end of the year.

We have had a lot of teams come and go but have built a solid group the last eight years. No turnover. No issues. It's a Commish's dream.

We have two people who have been in the league for the entire 30 years who have never won. Our founding father who developed the spreadsheets and scoring system (an accountant) brags about the year he drafted Fred Taylor and rookie Randy Moss and only lost one game all year. Which, coincidentally, was to his pigeon, a random dude he invited to the league who only won two games all year. One of them was to break up the perfect season.

I have been the Commish for 27 of our 30 years. People have come and gone, but I consider them all friends. Most of the people we all worked together or with at some point in time and now have entirely different careers. I love everyone in my league and look forward to many years to go.

John Merlino's Fantasy Football Origin Story

We started in 1992 with a 12-team league, all friends from the same company (the videogame company "Mindscape"). 

We decided from the beginning to be different and pretty complicated. Here was our setup from the first year:

• PPR
• IDP
• A bench of three players, where at least one had to be a defensive player.
• A Dynasty system where you can keep anywhere between 3-5 players, and if you keep four you lose your 1st round pick, and if you keep five you lose both your 1st and 2nd round picks.
• Our playoffs mimicked the NFL playoffs, such that our Championship game was the actual Super Bowl.
• We also started out with a fee system where the initial buy-in was $60, and you had to pay $3 per transaction. That was abandoned about 15 years ago.

I had the second pick in our first draft. I took Steve Young and got laughed at pretty harshly, but I had the last laugh.

The next year we grew to 16 teams, and we've been that way ever since. Six of the original twelve managers are still participating. Sadly, three of the other six original managers have passed. I have been the Commissioner since 1993, except for taking a 3-year hiatus from 2016-2018.

I suppose we're nothing special, but we love it and look forward to it every year. We're all reasonably nice guys and keep the trash-talking to a minimum....usually.... :-)

Steve Ritter's Fantasy Football Origin Story

Fantasy football started with me back in 1981. Back then, we only had the daily newspapers and magazines printed before the summer started to base our selections on. Now, 45 years later, times have changed, with information from fantasy football sites helping with my selections, allowing me to win numerous championships and top placements at the end of the seasons. Obviously, as I get older, I still look forward to the start of each new season.

Jimmy Wrona's Fantasy Football Origin Story

In 1983, my Dad was promoted to a position with IBM that moved our family from Western Massachusetts to Delray Beach, Florida.

It was the following year, in 1984, that my passion for Fantasy Football began. Boca Raton had become the hub of IBM's fledgling personal computer design and manufacturing industry, and, as such, many a great mind had recently been relocated to the area. Maybe it was just an attempt to bond with others, possibly a networking event, but that was the year my Dad was invited to join the Boca Raton Fantasy Football League (BRFFL). It was a 14-Team league made up of fellow IBMers, with some teams having 4-6 members, some solo, and ALWAYS a team made up entirely of members' wives and girlfriends (and yes, they did win it all one year!).

The BRFFL met every Thursday night for drinks, food, fun, and of course, our Waiver Wire Pickups and Drops at whichever local watering-hole had agreed to let us confiscate a big section of their establishment every week that year. See, this league was already a couple of years young in 1984, but this group's enthusiasts continued their weekly gatherings until I believe at least 2005, when so many of the original members had moved on or passed away, my Dad included.

I was Dad's partner for many more years after 1984, and for those who can't imagine how such a league worked in those pre-internet days, I'll tell you now, it was A LOT of WORK. I'd visit my Dad on Gameday, and he'd already be prepped with his yellow legal pad of paper and a couple of pencils with fresh erasers ready to scribble down whoever, however and just how many points any given player may have scored throughout the league, when it was mentioned on-air, by the scrolling ticker at the bottom of the screen, or in half-time or post-game updates. EVERY PLAYER that is! He wasn't just keeping track of his own players but those of the other BRFFL teams as well, to get a sense of how he was faring not only in that weekly match-up but also in his side-bets with other members.

All this was just preparation, and fun too, but the true tally of the Sunday games wouldn't be known until, get this, the next morning when the local newspaper was delivered! Although the Point Scoring totals were a bit more modest back in this era compared to today's never-ending edits & versions, it was still one of my most memorable times I ever had with my Dad. I miss him dearly, so now come every Gameday, I grab my yellow legal pad and a couple of pencils with fresh erasers, and set them reverently down on my desk while I fire up my laptop. Hey, I think my Dad would agree; Fantasy Football is a Lot of Work, but it's still a Heckuva Lot of Fun too!

Fondest Memory: Rushing to a BRFFL Thursday gathering, my work-buddy and I still in our business suits and wearing our dark sunglasses since the last table available to us had the setting Florida sun blazing through the window, and having to handle the week's waiver wire on my own as Dad was out of town. Though still early in the year, I remember that week was a Must-Win, and we had an early waiver pick based on our team's current standing. I can still picture the spit drinks, hear the guffaws of astonishment and cries of "wait'll your Dad hears of this", when I announced my 1st waiver pic.  That pick-up was Deion Sanders as wide receiver! I don't recall his scoring that week, but I do know we won the head-to-head and Deion definitely had an impact. Also, legend has it that the other guy I was with that day, in a dark suit and dark sunglasses, was a bookie from Vegas; he wasn't, though... he was a bookie from Boca.

David Fetzer's Fantasy Football Origin Story

About 18 years ago, I got sick of hearing about fantasy football without experiencing it. So I recruited my last nine friends and started a ten-team custom-scoring league on NFL.com.  I named the league You Can't Be Serious. It's still around, and most of us still aren't serious, at least before Week 10. 

My original owners included three women, who joined because they do everything I say. One of them won the league by two games our sophomore year. She repeated three years later. 

COVID took its toll in 2020, when I lost two players. It stabilized at eight and remains there because I'm too old and lazy to put much energy into recruiting. 

IMO, the league's longevity depends on scoring rules that more closely mirror on-field numbers (e.g., all TDs are worth six points, and every yard is worth a yard). Watching a game on your computer screen is very close to watching it on TV.  Does that "overvalue fantasy QBs?"  No more than the Bears over or undervalue Caleb Williams versus the rest of that team. Another reason for its longevity is that there's never been a fee to play, nor prize money. I point back to the league's name. 

Every new season could be the last, but we'll party on until the next player quits.

Rick Maricle's Fantasy Football Origin Story

There was a fantasy league at the Mobil Oil refinery in Ferndale, Washington, where I worked. After the first year of the league, one of the team owners transferred, and I was asked to join in its second year.  That was in 1981.

Back then, there were no fantasy football publications, no websites (Al Gore hadn't invented the internet yet), no fantasy networks.  The only reference we had to work with for drafting was a magazine published by Street and Smith that gave a summary and some stats for the previous NFL season.  Games had to be scored by hand using box scores published in the local newspaper. Very primitive compared to what's available today.

This August, the Gambler Football League will hold its 47th annual draft, and my 46th (I smile when I consider the fact that I've been playing fantasy football for longer than a fair number of fantasy analysts have been alive).  The league still retains its original basic structure as a touchdown-only league, a format forced by the paucity of football stats available when the league was founded.  We have had a lot of fun over the years.

Dave McIlwain's Fantasy Football Origin Story

Back in the mid-90s, pre-internet, I used to stop in my watering hole on the way home from work. One day I overheard a couple of guys discussing football. Which, in fact, was my number one sport of choice. After some discussion, they mentioned a new league they were forming. It was called rotisserie football. Of course I was interested. Based on points, not head-to-head. The guy who ran it had to get the newspaper on Monday for stats and would print out the scores and post them at the bar. The second part of this story is that he bugged out a few months in. They were looking for someone to run it. Guess who took over?

Thus began many iterations of various leagues. The internet became a thing in the early 2000s. There was a time when it became so popular I had four leagues of 12 teams each. Too much. I was hosting draft parties (always live) and championship parties yearly. There were times when I would hand an individual winner a roll of cash I was afraid to carry. Then the madness peaked about a dozen years ago when I made some adjustments and several captains didn't agree with my decision and decided we should vote. I did my best to explain that the league wasn't a democracy, and that they joined because they wanted to play in my league... long story short, I resigned, and unfortunately for some, the party was over.

One of my closer friends decided to start one the following year and kept it to 10 teams. Incorporating all the rules I had designed. We're still at it, and it's been great. I have my own team and keep it simple. So 30-plus years of fantasy football for me. From my late 30s to just about 70. It's been good but, more importantly, fun. Never lose sight of the fun aspect. I've been using your daily emails for several years now to keep track of all the moving parts.

Bob Andrews' Fantasy Football Origin Story

In the summer of 1980, I took my usual vacation trip to Baltimore. As always, it consisted of a couple of weeks of Orioles games, crab feasts, and shuffleboard at the local corner bar. But on this trip, my uncle, Ralph Straley, asked me to make him a "cheat sheet" for his upcoming fantasy football draft. I was aware of the concept through some Sports Illustrated stories about the Raiders employee who is credited with inventing it. But I had never gotten involved with it until that afternoon.

I went to the nearby market, bought one of those "pulp" printed-in-June football magazines off the newsstand, and got to work. I was back in Houston before my uncle had his draft, but the idea had intrigued me. At our next softball game, I brought up putting together the draft list. It sounded interesting to several of the guys. One thing led to another, and we had a draft of our own scheduled. We were all University of Houston friends who had met in the dorms or playing intramural sports. The birth of the Hughes League sometimes feels like yesterday. At other times, it feels like a long time ago.

We started with 8 owners and drafted after a soggy city-league flag football game in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Danielle. A ninth owner joined the next day and put together a team of leftovers. We were a weekly winner-take-all league that first season, playing 16 weeks. In 1981, we began head-to-head competition with playoffs and a Super Bowl, soon to be renamed The Hughes Bowl. I began a sometimes handwritten, sometimes typed newsletter/results page using stationery at my job at the Houston Post. I was smart enough to preserve most of them, especially the very first one. With no internet, I relied on newspaper box scores to figure out the scores. 

We've evolved over the years, one keeper, multiple keepers, redraft, and back again. We remained a TD- and kicker-scoring league with TEs included with wide receivers long after most leagues had added yardage, etc. But eventually we dragged ourselves into the modern world of fantasy football with performance scoring, dedicated TE position, flex options, a Taxi Squad, and so forth. We also evolved in how we communicated and ran things. I went through word processors, database programs, publishing software, and some early Commish programs that downloaded stats over old 14k-baud modems and produced webpages. I've seen and tried it all!

Four of our 12 franchises remain in place, as they've been since 1980. Six other owners have been in the league, either as owners or, originally, as assistant/co-owners, for 44 years. Our two "new guys", both second-generation owners, have 9 and 14 years in the league, respectively. We have six owners based here in Houston and six who reside out of state. Two I've known since the early 80s, but have never met other than via draft-night Zoom chats. 

We're entering our 47th season. I maintain our "Hughes News blog" that is updated weekly during the season, and I publish a yearbook with updated historical records, trivia, and assorted foolishness every year when the season ends. MyFantasyLeague has been our host since 2003, and their system allowed me to create webpages with standings, facts, and sample News blog entries for all the years prior to '03. One of my favorite traditions is a Champion's Edition newsletter that I do in the style of our old physical newsletters. It is printed and framed for the champ. See them all here.

It's been a fun ride. My goal is to get us to a 50th season. If we make it, I plan to do an in-person draft somewhere central for all of us. Or maybe a trophy presentation with all in attendance.

Thanks for the chance to stroll down memory lane.

Thanks so much for reading these fantasy football origin stories.

If you'd like us to share yours, please let me know your story: gray@footballguys.com.

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