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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Tuesday, September 9, 2003

BYTE MARKS
Fantasy football explained

By Burt Lum

There's a phenomenon that occurs at the start of every major sporting season. I am talking about fantasy sports leagues and the overabundance of information available online.

To get an insight into the world of fantasy football, I consulted my friend John Pescador and his buddy David Takashima. They tell me it's more than friendly trash-talking and one-upmanship. It's also about keeping in touch with friends and finding a common bond among people.

In the pre-Internet days, friends would get together with their stat sheets and form teams. Now, with the Internet, your friends can be scattered around the globe.

For starters, I spent some time on the CBS Sportsline site, at football.sportsline.com. This site contains a thorough write-up on fantasy football.

In a nutshell, you can join a public league, or you and your buddies can form a private league. Each league typically consists of 12 teams with 14 players. Once formed, the players draft up their teams with NFL players.

These teams are then set in motion when the NFL season starts. The performance of the fantasy team is tied directly to the performance of the real-life NFL player as he plays out the season.

This link to reality is key. Scoring is based on a pre-set point system. Team owners are not only glued to their sets watching football, but they are also watching their fantasy team scoring results and player stats on sites such as www.fftoday.com.

Sim City and EverQuest are popular, but add the role-playing and real-time performance of football, not to mention potential prize winnings, bragging rights and an occasion side bet. That is community- building in very big way. ;-)

Reach Burt Lum at www.brouhaha.net.