Fantasy Football is a fantasy sports
game in which participants (called "owners"),
arranged into a league, each draft or acquire via auction
a team of real-life American football players and then
score points based on those players' statistical performance
on the field. A typical fantasy league will employ players
from a single football league, such as the NFL or an
NCAA division. Leagues can be arranged in which the
winner is the team with the most total points at the
end of the season, or in a head-to-head format (which
mirrors the actual NFL) in which each team plays against
a single opponent each week, and at the end of the year
the team with the best win-loss record wins the league.
Most leagues set aside the last weeks of the regular
season for their own playoffs.
The game originated in 1962 from an idea of Bill Winkenbach,
then a Raiders limited partner, with assistance from
Bill Tunnell, the Raiders' public relations man, Scotty
Stirling, the beat writer from the Oakland Tribune,
and George Ross, the Tribune's sports editor, as well
as Philip Carmona, Winkenbach's friend. The idea emerged
from a three-week road trip the Raiders took to the
East Coast. Winkenbach and the others fleshed out the
idea during the trip, and upon their return, formed
the first fantasy football league, the GOPPPL (Greater
Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League)
