As the National Football League (NFL) nears the end of its regular season, many students and faculty at Lick-Wilmerding High School are in the midst of competition within their fantasy football leagues. This widespread trend, which has seen a noticeable uptick in recent years, raises the question: Why is fantasy football so popular within LWHS and beyond?
This year’s football season, which began on September 7, 2023 and will conclude on January 7, 2024, consists of 18 weeks and 272 total games. For many sports fans around the world, the start of the football season is synonymous to the start of the fantasy football season.
Fantasy football is a simulative game based off of the weekly performances of football players in the NFL. Players form leagues, which typically consist of eight to 18 people, and draft their own fantasy teams of players on the NFL roster.
Each week during the football season, fantasy teams are paired off in a head-to-head competition for the most points. A player’s performance on the field is converted into points, and the points are tallied up at the end of the week. The point spread varies from league to league and position to position. Traditionally, each team in a league rosters one “starting lineup” per week and the teams are ranked based on their points. In the final few weeks of the season, the players who have the best head to head records earn a spot in the fantasy football playoffs and compete against each other for the ultimate title of fantasy football champion.
photo by Olivia Bye
The origins of fantasy football can be traced back to Oakland in the early 1960s when a group of friends, including previous part owner of the then-Oakland Raiders, Bill Winkenbach, started the first league by drafting players and tracking their stats to determine a winner. The concept soon caught on, and by the late 1970s, fantasy football had spread across cities and was being played by thousands of people.
However, fantasy football’s true leap in popularity occurred in the late 1990s and early 2000s with the introduction of the internet. Online fantasy football platforms made the game more accessible than ever and allowed leagues to be formed with participants from around the world.
According to the Fantasy Sports and Gaming Association, between one and three million people participated in fantasy sports between 1991 and 1994, a figure that rose to 15.2 million by 2003. As of 2022, an estimated 29.2 million people play fantasy football in the U.S., making it the most popular fantasy sport in the country by a significant margin.
At LWHS, the fantasy football season is in full swing. Many students, teachers and faculty are participating in leagues both within and outside of the community. For some, fantasy football is simply a fun activity to connect with friends over. But for others, fantasy football equates to intense, intricate gameplay complete with high stakes and punishments.
Eli Rangarajan ’24 is part of a 14-team fantasy football league with other LWHS students that was formed in his junior year. For Rangarajan, one of the most appealing aspects of fantasy sports is the ingrained community-building. “We have so many people who have never watched five games in their life, and all of a sudden, they get put in this community just by joining the league,” he said.
Thorne Wyman ’27 started a fantasy football league within his grade at the start of the year. “[Fantasy football] is how I met some people here in my first few weeks,” he said. “A lot of them were talking about stats and which players they wanted to draft. Fantasy football definitely creates relationships and friendships.”
Theresa Pham ’24 started a fantasy basketball league within her ninth-grade class during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Pham, fantasy sports were a great way of meeting and connecting with her grade when LWHS students were distance-learning. “[Fantasy sports] definitely gave us things to talk about, especially during freshman year when we didn’t know that much about each other. It kept people in touch that you wouldn’t normally expect to interact or be friends,” she said.
LWHS math teacher Ernie Chen was introduced to fantasy football through LWHS and has been playing since 2019. This season, he is part of the 16-person faculty and staff league at LWHS. Chen also believes that connection is at the core of fantasy football’s appeal. “[Fantasy Football] gives a really great entry into talking to people who I would generally not see. I can say, ‘I’m playing you this week, you’re going down,’ and we’ll trash talk. It’s fun because it gives us something other than school to talk about,” he said. “There’s absolutely no status to be gained by winning, or anything to be lost by losing.”
However, for some LWHS students, a fantasy football loss could result in a predetermined punishment. Punishments have become a staple in fantasy football culture in recent years, particularly amongst young people with the rise of social media. As of December 2023, the TikTok channel “Best Fantasy Football Punishments” has 12.2 million views. Some of the most popular punishments include hot wings challenges, getting a tattoo of the other league members’ choosing or performing a stand-up comedy routine in a public setting.
Last spring, Rangarajan and Isaac Anwar ’24 were subjected to a widely popular punishment of spending 24 hours in an IHOP, with each pancake eaten shaving an hour off the time. According to Rangarajan, other players in his league visited him and Anwar in the IHOP over the nine-hour period they stayed. “I don’t know where the time went because we had visitors coming in the whole time. They really wanted to see what was going on. Max [Webb] and his dad came, Garrett [Jensen] came along, Nikolai [Varnovski] came…everyone wanted to see this happening,” he said.
photo by Eli Rangarajan
Other punishments at LWHS have ranged in extremity. Examples include Tessa Fastiff ’24, who had her pencil case stolen and all of her stationery supplies suspended in Jell-O, and Sebastian Lopez ’24, who wore a T-shirt of rapper Ice Spice for a week.
photo by Olivia Bye
In recent years, fantasy football has noticeably risen in popularity amongst young people. According to Statista, 71% of fantasy football players in 2021 were between the ages of 18 and 39. NFL viewership amongst young people has also seen a noticeable increase, a trend that can be linked to the growing popularity of fantasy football. Viewers between the ages of 18 to 34 increased by 11% during the 2022 season, despite NFL viewership declining by 3% overall.
Elita Paquin-Askew ’24 started managing a league at LWHS for the first time this season. According to her, fantasy football has been a big factor in her increased viewing of football games. “I always watch the Superbowl and I always watch the Niners games. But it’s only a little bit more recently that I started really watching football and completely understanding it and liking it. Now in fantasy season, I watch every single game,” she said.
photo courtesy of the Fantasy Sports and Gaming Association
As of 2023, fantasy football is more widespread than ever. This year, ESPN fantasy football set a record with over 12 million people playing for the first time. Chen believes that this can be attributed to the accessibility of the game. “It’s a low barrier to entry. You just have to sign up for a website and an account and then you’re playing. I love the fact that all of the calculations are done by somebody else and I just look at the score at the end,” he said.
Paquin-Askew also noted the importance of the game’s accessibility, regardless of knowledge or experience. “[Our league is] all girls and that’s really cool. Half of us don’t actually know what we’re doing, and half of us do. That makes it really fun because it’s learning experiences all around,” she said.
Many students, such as Rangarajan, Wyman and Paquin-Askew also participate in leagues outside of LWHS, with family and friends. Rangarajan says fantasy sports allow him to stay in touch with people he doesn’t see regularly. “Some [people from my middle school] I would never have talked to if it weren’t for fantasy [sports]. I wasn’t close to them. But now we hang out and do watch parties, so it really keeps us together. Same with family,” he said, “Even if we’re not around each other on a regular basis, like if they live across the country, I’m still in communication with them in some way because we’re doing something together.”
Rangarajan believes that the LWHS fantasy football culture is unique because of how inclusive it is. “Our league is completely open, anybody can join. If we knew everybody who wanted to join we’d have 100 people and we’d be totally fine with that. We want everyone to join, we want to build community,” he said.
2023 marks fantasy football’s 61st anniversary of creating community and connection amongst its players, both those who are new to football and those who are not.
