And yet, my league will not take off this fall. The problem seems to be inherent in a conflict between the social nature of Facebook and the social nature of fantasy football. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me, either, so let me try to explain.
From the outside, fantasy football probably seems like a totally loser thing to do. Team "owners" draft real players into a faux team, manage a lineup every week, keep track of the stats throughout the year, and determine a league winner from a playoff that ends before the regular NFL season comes to a close. Only a certain subset of NFL fans and geeks could possibly get into playing a game like this (see figure below). And before the internet came along, it was a really small subset of uber geeks getting together in their basements and tracking stats on spreadsheets, a la rotisserie baseball. Especially if there is no money involved, what's the point, right? Fantasy football is basically legalized gambling outside of Vegas and Atlantic City. Each owner is betting that his players will perform better on a given week than the opponent's players. Money doesn't have to be involved; plenty of fantasy enthusiasts play only for bragging rights. However, bragging rights are only valuable for a group of friends (trying not to be sexist here; women have been known to play fantasy football, too) who know each other and can give each other grief on a regular basis.
But there is still a social aspect to the game. As Bender might say, "...demented and sad, but social." If you have a group of guys who have grown up together, you're much more likely to care about who beats whom on a given week. The live draft is more enjoyable, because you can talk smack on almost every pick. "LT at number one? Norv Turner is killing his value!" For me, I started playing with a free Yahoo! league back in 1998. I was active on the waiver wire, and picked up players like Randy Moss, Randall Cunningham, and Fred Taylor as they exploded during that season. I won my league with 13 straight victories, but because it was a free league against people I didn't know, the victory was hollow. Plus, in free leagues, you almost always have at least one or two "dead" teams, where the owner has lost interest and simply stops setting his lineup or trying to improve his team every week.
In 1999, I played in a free league, but this time it was a private one with guys I knew at Dyess AFB, TX. We had the requisite 10 guys who stayed active, made roster moves, and generally had a great time playing against each other for that year and the next. We even played head-to-head and salary cap leagues at the same time for a change of pace. It was fun, and even though I didn't win, it thoroughly increased the value of the competition to play against people I knew.
Before the 2001 NFL season, I had moved away from Dyess and lost touch with the guys running that fantasy league. At my new base, I couldn't find another group of guys to play against, so I quit playing for the next five years. It was funny, walking away from a near obsession like that. I didn't miss it much, and figured I'd never really play fantasy football competitively again. Without the camaraderie of playing against people I knew, it wasn't worth the time and effort to be an active owner. But then I moved for work during the 2005 season to an office with a well-established fantasy league. I was unable to join them in mid-season, but the next year, I was one of 10 team owners competing once again for both cash and bragging rights.
I tell you all of this because I am no longer eligible to play in that league. They wanted to keep the league all under the same roof, and I understand that. Every week, they had two traveling trophies: a Nerf football for high score of the week, and a doormat for low score of the week. Even though I'm still in the local area, it wouldn't make any sense to try to rotate those trophies around to my new office since I no longer work for the same company.
Which brings me back to setting up my own league on Facebook. There are over 24,000 fantasy football leagues currently set up on Facebook, so you would think this would be a natural fit, right? Again, fantasy football is social, and Facebook is social, so what could go wrong? At first, I set up my league to be a private league with 10 owners, and I sent out only 9 invites to people I thought would want to play. Silence. I sent out a few more invites, plus a reminder or two. More silence. I sent out a few more invites, and finally got one of my old high school friends to join my league, even though he said he didn't know anything about how to play (see graph above). I made it so that anyone in the league could invite their friends to play, since friends of friends would make for a better social dynamic than playing against strangers. Still only two owners in the league. I flipped my league over to a public league, eventually got one more person to join, and then I discovered something.
Searching through all the public leagues on Facebook this fall, I saw a damning statistic: in almost every single public league, there were 1 or 2 of X teams in the league. I would say in about 95% of the leagues, only one or two teams had joined, like my own league. People on Facebook must either want to play just with their friends, or they want to run their own league. It's different from the public leagues on Yahoo!, ESPN, or NFL.com. Even when those leagues are public and free, there are usually enough players to fill up an open league. Not so on Facebook.
So, I will be deleting the teams and closing down my league on Facebook. I do have one team over on NFL.com's free public leagues this fall, and I'm in a 12-team league with guys who are mostly from Chicago, I think. Our "live" draft was interesting, and that's what I'll describe in a later post. I'll turn it into a strategy guide for other players, and I'll explain why in that post, too. Needless to say, I'm not happy to be playing against a bunch of guys I don't know, but I will still do my best to own this league.
The bottom line is that fantasy football can be a lot of fun, if you can find a group of 9 or 11 other like-minded souls who are active team owners throughout the season. I sincerely hope the SI and Citizen Sports guys do well with their application. There is too much money to be made on fantasy sports to not give it a try. The social dynamic of Facebook just seems to be a little off when it comes to fantasy football.
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