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 well 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:
Andy Pepper's Fantasy Football Origin Story
Let me set the stage for you: the year was 1992. I was an overachieving 5th-year bookworm at Lock Haven University in Pennsylvania (or, as many know it, *The* Lock Haven University), a small D-2 school about 25 minutes west of Williamsport, where they hold some kind of small-child baseball tournament every year.
It was a Friday evening, and I was at a fine dining establishment called ‘JB Crackers'. A little townie bar that featured 29-cent draft beers during Friday Happy Hour. God, I miss 1992.
It was still very early in the night, and some guys I knew on the wrestling team were trying to convince me to be the 8th member of something called a “Fantasy Football League”. Now, I loved me some sports, but I had never even heard of Fantasy Football. And to be honest...I was irritated that they were badgering me to join, thus interfering with my grand plan to get drunk and perhaps meet a lady friend. The singlet wearers asked me to come to their Sunday Draft, and I may or may not have agreed. That part is hazy.
Fast forward to late Sunday morning. I am leaving the dorms in shame, because I had – after about 3 semesters apart – somewhat shockingly hooked up with my witch of an ex-girlfriend the night before. Now, as I am driving back to my fraternity house, I suddenly realized two things. The first is that we had a car wash fundraiser going on that I was expected to attend. The second thing I remembered is…wait a minute…isn't that dork FFB thing going on right about now? In fact…doesn't it start in about 8 minutes?!?
I. am. not. exaggerating. one. bit. I was driving down the road at 11:52 - and was just a few blocks away from the house – when I realized that the wrestler's Draft was scheduled to start at noon. It was at that point that I made a decision that altered the destiny of my closest friends for the next 35 years: I literally went to the Draft because I had no desire to go to the stupid car wash and catch sh*t for hooking up with the antichrist whose name - appropriately enough - rhymes with the Disaster Relief Agency known as "FEMA".
So I quite literally made an abrupt right turn and went to the Draft. I had no magazines, no lists, no pen or paper, and frankly…no clue. I don't remember my draft position or my first-round pick, but weirdly remember that I drafted Falcons QB Chris Miller in the middle rounds. And perhaps Chip Lohmiller. Who knows.
Now, at some point in the next week or so, I started to grasp what this silly little game was all about, and I began to get *really* excited about it. So I gathered my closest friends at the house and explained the concept to them. I knew you needed at least 8 guys to play, so that's what I got. One guy decided he couldn't afford the dues and quit at the last minute, so we played our first season with just 7 owners.
We held our first draft the night before Week 3 of the '92 season. I won a random lottery and picked first. Our very first league selection? Thurman Thomas, who had scored 6 TD's in the first two weeks. (As an aside, he didn't score 6 more Touchdowns the rest of the season, and I lost our points league by 7 points. Yes, I am still bitter ) I don't have the complete draft list for that first season, but I have kept every single one since.
And that was it. We were hooked. I was the commissioner, and I jotted down the touchdowns on a pad as I saw them come across the TV. I bought the Monday and Wednesday USA Today (for the late MNF game) and tabulated all the scores. After we all graduated, I would take lineup calls on Sunday mornings from 11-1 and also write down the pickups and drops. I would then go to the library on Wednesdays and make copies of the weekly and overall scores and mail them out to the guys in the stamped envelopes they provided at the draft. We joined a cbssports.com league in 2000, and have been on it ever since.
We are now a 10-team league with 6 original members. Another owner joined after year #7 and has been with us for 28 years. We had another close friend quit in the early years, and then return to the league 20 years later. It's been a hell of a ride, and there is nothing like playing fantasy against your closest friends.
I am 57 years old, and most of the other guys are a year or two younger, so I am hoping – knock on wood – that we make a run at 50 years of playing together. I met Matthew Berry about 10 years ago at an event, and he estimated our league was in the 90th percentile as far as longevity. I know there are older leagues, but I have yet to meet anyone - or hear of anyone personally - who has been playing longer than us.
Gene Watkinson's Fantasy Football Origin Story
It was the summer of 1974, and I saw an ad in the local paper for fantasy football rules for $ 1.00. When I received them, I showed them to my best friend and next-door neighbor and said, "What do you think?" We kicked it around and decided to go for it. What do we have to lose? We solicited the local neighborhood and came up with 10 other guys. I remember the first draft took hours because no time limit was set.
We fixed that problem the next year. The entry fee was minimal, and my buddy and I did stats out of the local Tuesday morning paper, double-checking for errors. When the internet came around, we thought we died and went to heaven. Stats went from hours to minutes to complete. Entries were submitted on a sheet of paper and had to be turned in before the first kickoff of the week in a grocery bag hung on my front porch door. A few weeks into the season, someone came up with the idea of having a party every Monday night to watch the game and smack talk, with a different house and food and drinks each week. I would walk around the neighborhood on Wednesday, passing out results and a summary of the highlights from the weekly games.
After a few years, word of mouth got around, and guys wanted to join. There are currently three 12-man leagues with a combined Super Bowl Championship. I believe a few of the original members are still in it, as I moved away in 1999 after running that league for 25 years. Thanks to the internet. I still participate in 3 different leagues. Every year I say I need to retire or at least cut back, but FFL is in my blood, and I guess until it stops flowing, I will be second-guessing why I wasted a draft pick on that player.
Dale Bertsch's Fantasy Football Origin Story
Fall of 1981. A friend of mine called me. Said a mutual acquaintance played fantasy football in Colorado. He moved to Pierre, SD. He wanted to know if we were interested in playing. We were immediately intrigued.
With little preparation, we had our draft on Wednesday or Thursday night before the season started the next Sunday. It was a superflex league.
First draft, we drew #9. I remember that Brian Sipe and Earl Campbell went 1-2 overall. Our first pick, Pat Hayden (ouch). Tony Dorsett was next. He didn't get the goal-line carries. Our best picks were Joe Montana, Bert Jones, and Doug Williams. The rest pretty much sucked.
We are still very much in existence today. Most of the original owners are gone. But the core remains.
Randy Calahan's Fantasy Football Origin Story
Well, it all started in 1995. I was in the Air Force and joined a group of 12 teams with friends. It was the basic 7 starters: QB, RB, 2 WR's, TE, K, Def. We used the sports section of USA Today as the official publication to tally our points from our scoring system, then turned them over to the Commish, who double-checked. I am still playing today. It's an addiction.
Bob Augustyniak's Fantasy Football Origin Story
In 1991, a friend told me about fantasy football, but I wasn't sure about it. In 1992, I became his co-owner and became hooked. In 1993, I started my own league that is going into its 33rd year. I still have 5 of the original 8 owners.
There is something addicting about it. In the beginning, I used the USA Today sports section as my official scoring. I would handwrite the standings, scores, and schedule. Then make copies and mail them to the owners every week. Lineups had to be called into me on Saturday. AOL and stat services made it easier, and now websites make it a breeze.
I don't know how much longer I'll do this, being in my upper 50s, but for now, it's time to prepare for another live draft.
Craig Carbrey's Fantasy Football Origin Story
I was talking to a client in 1976 when we noticed an announcement on his desk. It was the rules of their inter-office fantasy football. Took a copy of the rules and started one with our own company, and later with another. Remember reading the paper to get results and put them in a Lotus 123 spreadsheet. The current FFL group has been together 32 years, plus or minus a few people.
Robert Brown's Fantasy Football Origin Story
It began with Jerry Rice. It was 1987, and the internet was not yet a resource. I was working overnight on a stock crew. A coworker and friend of mine and I would talk football all the time; then we heard about fantasy football and were curious to try it. We managed to wrangle ten other guys, some we worked with and others' friends, and start a league. We bought any fantasy mag we could find and dug in. The only way we had to score the games officially was with newspapers the next day, and sometimes the day after for late games. We had a live in-person draft that was half party, half draft, and it was a blast. My round one pick, Jerry Rice, was great, and I won the league in year one. I was hooked! We would go on to found a keeper league a few years after that, which is still going strong today. I'm no longer in it, but I have never missed a season since. I play in eight leagues every season: 4 public and 4 that only allow winners, and I have never failed to win at least one league in every season, and often more.
I was 22 years old when I began, and 23 when the Super Bowl was played that season, so as you can see, I've been doing this a while.
Steve Bodden's Fantasy Football Origin Story
It actually had its roots in a one-year fantasy baseball league in, I believe, 1989. Me, two of my brothers, and my friend Brian had a league. It was rotisserie style with 8 stats: 4 batting and 4 pitching. I want to say it was AVG, HRs, runs, RBIs, wins, K, era and saves. In other words, not the lame sabermetric stats of today! Since NL and AL were so separated, we actually had a league for each major league.
Anyway, we only did that for one year because my brother started college, but a few years passed, and my two brothers and I were watching preseason football and decided we should do a fantasy league. The year was 1992. We had a Sporting News Pro Football Annual for the season, and in the back were ads for fantasy football. These ads promoted league rules that included "all the stats you will need"! Which, for some reason, was only touchdowns!
We thought this was ridiculous and decided to resurrect our format from our 1989 baseball league, using the rotisserie format and all stats, including defensive stats. Yes, we drafted IDP in 1992! Though we didn't refer to them as IDP; they were just players like anyone else. Why wouldn't we draft them?!? We kept the other aspects of our baseball league and drafted by position and by conference, so we drafted QB, then RB, WR, TE, K, DL, LB, DB, and KR. Yes, we also included kick returners in 1992. In our first year, it was just the three of us, but we expanded the next year to 5 by bringing my friend Brian back and adding another brother. By 1997, we expanded to 7, adding our 2 college roommates, and by 2002 we expanded to 8 teams when the NFL went to 32 teams.
Our rotisserie format has stayed the same since the beginning (I despise head-to-head leagues, though I am in one, and team defense is the lamest aspect of fantasy football), and our roster and league rules are, I'm sure, unlike any other league. In fact, we have a rule book that is edited as needed for rule changes, of which there have been numerous. Each team has 48 players. There are no starters. All stats count for the entire season, and moves are limited throughout the season. We still draft each position separately and by conference. We are having our 35th season this year, and I am the only remaining founding member.
We have had a physical Hall of Fame in my condo since 2002 and a traveling trophy, The Golden Griffin, since 1995. Why we are still seeking a new 8th owner for this season: the current roster of owners includes me, one brother, my three college roommates from UW Whitewater, and two of those roommates' brothers. We have all known each other since the 80s and 90s.
We are proud of our unique league and longevity, and that is our story!
And oh yeah, I still have every NFL and fantasy magazine I bought since 1991!
Bill Meyer's Fantasy Football Origin Story
I got started in fantasy football in 1995. It was Curtis Martin's rookie year with the Pats. My wife (now ex) and a friend of hers went to the friend's husband's draft to help out, serve drinks, etc.
One of the league members didn't show up, so the two ladies drafted a team. Neither one of them knew what they were doing, and I think the Commissioner helped them out some (they drafted Martin, for example; I have no idea when).
Anyway, I took over week-to-week management of their team and did pretty well that first year. I think I made the playoffs. After that I was hooked. Started a league at work about 17 years ago and have been commissioner for at least 15 years.
No one still works at the company, and people have come and gone, but there are 4 out of the original 10 OGs still in the league, including me.
Dean Hillegass' Fantasy Football Origin Story
I'm a die-hard Atlanta Falcons fan (saw one of their very first season home games when home from college). Season ticket holder until a year before I moved to the Dallas area in 1993. So I had been going through a divorce, then a new city, a new job, and a new wife in Dallas. Hated the Cowboys since the 1981 playoff debacle, so I disengaged from football for several years.
In 1996, a company I worked for padlocked the doors, and within a week I found another job. A family-owned large-label printing firm - I had an office job. Seven of the guys had started a fantasy league a couple of years back and pressured me into considering joining. I settled on the first year co-owning a team with a work buddy. After a few games of figuring it out, we won 8 straight. The guy who won, I had noticed mid-season, was getting faxes from a "fantasy service". At the same time frame, sports bars were showing all NFL Sunday games, and I was back on the Falcons bandwagon. Got the Sunday Ticket when we built a new home in 1998.
So I joined online leagues on ESPN, started studying, and commissioned the local leagues. I won some championships - most people back then didn't have many clues, and the webpages were not self-help yet. I was selling new homes and had free time now and then to go online and chat about football. I can't remember exactly, but around 2000-2001 I was tuning into Footballguys (it was free then). The week my daughter was born, I was number one in the nation out of 5,000 or so in the big-at-the-time USA Today Fantasy Football contest. (By the end of the year, I finished down in the pack with a little money- fatherhood had taken its toll.) And then NFL teams like the Falcons had infrastructure people trying to get a foothold in fantasy to grow their fanbase. I think Tony Romo was also spearheading it for the Cowboys. Within a year or so, the NFL said no to the sponsorship ideas, but we took our dynasty league on our own and now run it on an MFL platform as Falcons Dynasty D1 Football. Of the 12 guys, we're spread out all over North America. Canada, Los Angeles, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, South Carolina, rural Georgia, etc. We get together for a game every few years. The last one was when we played the Raiders in Las Vegas.
So I got the bug 30 years ago and still watch five NFL games a week, including all the Falcons.
Mark Mace's Fantasy Football Origin Story
Our league is getting ready for its 40th anniversary, having started in 1987. We were all shortly out of college, living in an apartment complex called Fox and Hounds. Yes, it was a lot of fun.
Our commissioner talked about starting a league in something called Fantasy Football, and our league, the U'Pickem Pickem Football League, was born. We've come a long way since our very first draft when kicker Tony Franklin was picked first. Our 14-team league has a traveling trophy named after the one owner who passed away, weekly newsletters, media guides, a postseason awards banquet, career and regular-season stats published, and a constitution that has not changed dramatically over the years. A couple of owners have been replaced, and a couple have moved out of town, but the group hangs together as old age and ailments consume more of the conversation each year. I'm the second-oldest at age 70 and enjoy the camaraderie, the bantering, and close friendships held together in part by the UPFL.
Cynthia Tacheny's Fantasy Football Origin Story
I started in fantasy football just because I came to work here at MBC Retirement Services almost 26 years ago. By the time I hired on in late September 2000, the season was already underway, and I wasn't aware there was a league, or really even what fantasy football was, for that matter. My boss Scott runs it, and it's the WFFL (pronounced "wiffle") or Westgate Fantasy Football League.
Turns out a couple of the other ladies in the office had taken a team as the league was one short in 2000. They just got the leftover players after the draft, and Scott set their lineup each week. All they had to do was ante up the entry fee.
Then, they won! (With, I repeat, the leftover players.) They asked if I wanted to join their team in 2001, and I said yes.
We had a husband "helping" us at the draft. I don't remember what happened that season, but we didn't win. At some point within the next year or two, they lost interest, but I was hooked. One of my clients, who had also gone to Michigan State University, albeit 20 years or so before I did, joined me, and Green Machine was born. He's still my silent partner today. By that I mean he ponies up half the dough, and I do all the work. Then I send him half of what we win. Green Machine has won the league four times, which no other team has done so far, and some have been in longer than I have. The WFFL has an in-person draft with food and drinks, and we enjoy both supporting and ribbing each other.
It's such great fun. I'm also in a free league with some of my running group. That one's just for bragging rights. I won the first season (2024) in the Super Bowl against my son. Did pretty well last year too. As of right now, I have little pieces of paper all over my desk where I have been accumulating notes as I enjoy FBG emails over the summer. I've got my eye on some late rounders. I'll organize my full board right before the draft on September 2. I don't want summer to be over, but still I can't wait.
Brian Carter's Fantasy Football Origin Story
I was sitting at work back in 1989-90...maybe 91 at the latest. Me and some of the guys were talking about basketball, and one of them mentioned starting a fantasy league. We got it going - $10 buy-in at the time. I was named commish and had to pull stats from the newspaper. For the NBA. It was brutal. About four weeks in, we started talking about how we really liked football better anyway, and how it would be much easier to pull stats once a week (at the time). After one season of hoops, we switched to the NFL. Here, about 35-36 years later, we have three of us original guys still rolling. Only now, the league is filled in with four old friends who joined 29 years ago. The remainder is filled out by a couple of their sons. We still do it because we enjoy doing it with these same guys almost four decades later. Unfortunately, we are spread out across the country now, but we still get excited, talk trash, and get a little too competitive at times!
Brad Schuelke's Fantasy Football Origin Story
The league I'm in started in 1996, when a group of six massive sports fans who went to high school together in a small town in Wisconsin, about 30 minutes from my hometown, decided to play fantasy football. I wasn't one of them. I hadn't even heard of fantasy football at that point, but I was a huge fan of the Packers, the NFL, and the game of football. Fast forward a few years, and I met a couple of these guys at college. In 2001, they told me about this fantasy football league they were in and asked if I wanted to join. Of course I asked what it was first, but I immediately fell in love with the game.
As you know, back then was the time of in-person drafts, when everyone brought their Fantasy Football magazine or some cheat sheet they printed off ESPN. The league started out as a re-draft league, but grew over time into a keeper league, and is now full dynasty, and has been for a while. The number of owners also grew from 6 to 16. There was a time when this league was the hottest league around, and guys were on a waiting list to get in. Nobody wanted to leave. You basically had to wait til someone died to get a spot in this league, and sadly we did have one of the original owners pass away.
So we named the championship award after him: Long Live the Hoz Cup! As we've gotten older, we've had guys drop out here and there, but up to this point, we've been able to still find owners to take over the teams of those who've left. The HAFFL league now has owners from six different states, and as of this year, has gone international with a new owner who lives in Australia. All the owners have some connection to the original six. I am currently serving my second stint as commissioner of this great league and have put together a legit dynasty team that has won three of the last four championships. The Hoz Cup currently resides on a shelf in my home in Oklahoma.
Stan Pawlendzio's Fantasy Football Origin Story
Over 40 years ago, I read an article in a magazine out of Las Vegas called Gambling Times. There was an article titled Best Football Pool Ever. It talked about a group of guys who started a league. So that night, working 2nd shift, I got a bunch of guys together and used very basic scoring: all touchdowns 6 points, bonus 6 points for over 300 yards passing, 100 yards rushing, or receiving. Obvious way before the internet for the general population, and even fantasy football magazines wouldn't be around for many years. We usually couldn't verify points until Wednesday using newspaper box scores. My sleeper quarterbacks were Steve Bartkowski and Brian Sipe, lol. Still playing today, and there is nothing like it for fun. Thanks for rekindling the memories.
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.
