– The crew for the upcoming ESPN documentary “Silly Little Game” on the history and growth of the fantasy sports industry will be filming at the FSTA conference in Chicago next week. (Obviously, they heard that FSB.com will be there.)
– The International Cricket Council announced a deal by which STATS becomes the “official data partner” for the governing body of cricket.
– This writeup in The New York Times tells us not only that participants in fantasy golf leagues spend just as much time yelling at the TV and lamenting bad streaks as those who play other fantasy sports, but also that there’s a whole set of frustrations specific to the links.
– New Jersey governor Jon Corzine says he doesn’t think it’s fair that the federal ban on sports gambling applies to some states and not others. His state, of course, appears on the “not” list.
– The new fantasy college football season is also in full swing over at FantasyCollegeBlitz.com.
Professional football wasn’t always an exciting, high-scoring, unpredictable game. (Somewhere, a Lions fan asks, “It is now?”)
Back in 1937, they didn’t even have quarterbacks. There were wings and backs and a bunch of guys who played on both sides of the ball, and a game that wouldn’t have been a whole lot of fun for statheads. Then there was Sammy Baugh.
Baugh — who died Wednesday at 94 — was the NFL’s first star passer. As a rookie “tailback” in 1937, he led the league in completions (81), attempts (171), completion percentage (47.4), passing yards (1,127) and interceptions (14).
He led the league in passing yards four times, was chosen a first-team All-Pro on four occasions and three times threw at least 22 touchdown passes. That would have ranked him among the top 13 as recently as last season.
Baugh ushered the league from a molasses-paced era of running and more running to a style that has brought about today’s pass-first game. Though none of us has probably ever taken the time to really think about it, that introduction to the effectiveness of passing probably allowed for our prosperous game of fantasy football.
In 1936, the year before Baugh entered the league, the NFL leader in touchdowns was Green Bay’s Don Hutson with nine. Over the course of the 12-game season, exactly 11 guys scored more than three touchdowns. How much fun would it have been to gather with your buddies in August and battle for one of the few offensive studs who would find the end zone once a month?
Now, if there had been no “Slingin’” Sammy Baugh, would someone else have come along and put the ball in the air? Of course. But they didn’t attach “Slingin’” to the beginning of his name because he liked to toilet paper houses.
Thanks, Sammy, for helping to turn pro football into a game we love to follow.
– The Fantasy Football Librarian is taking an early peek at the accuracy of fantasy football site player rankings as part of her accuracy award project (in conjunction with the FSTA). The Fifth Down blog post gets into the top early performers in the running back category, but she promises to go deeper in her regular blog.
– Esquire columnist Peter Schrager says to shut up about your fantasy teams (and other things) if you’re watching football in public. Lower in the column, Darren Rovell says the tough economy is rendering all football players virtually unmarketable and threatening to wipe out lavish Super Bowl-week parties. The horror.
It can be very tough to get interested in politics.
There’s no doubt that elections and the elected officials that emerge from them carry great importance. After all, these are the people who create and modify policies that direct much of our daily lives.
Those policies, though, can be involved and confusing, and the partisan bluster blowing from both sides doesn’t make their real impact any easier to understand. Representatives who spend most of their time telling us what they think we want to hear afford us little opportunity to really learn much about them. Young people, in particular, who might be shy of voting age and more detached from the actual effects of government might look for a minute and think, “Why bother?”
Maybe the best way to get people to pay attention is to turn the whole thing into a game. As we head to the polls to select our 44th president — as well as a variety of other reps — there seems to be growing support for doing so.
We linked last week to a column by an Associated Press sports writer who conducted an auction draft with friends and colleagues for the electoral map, but there are websites out there that allow anyone to play along with the real elections.
Fantasy Politics USA is a blog that has offered a presidential game throughout this campaign season. There really doesn’t seem to be a lot to the game, other than a relatively arbitrary number of points assigned for various — sometimes entertaining — reasons. Barack Obama, for example, gained 4 points back in May “for saying ‘Lay Off My Wife’ on Good Morning America,” according to the site. (John McCain, meanwhile, picked up 4 of his own in July “for going to see the Yankees play.” I, quite frankly, would have taken away points … unless he rooted against them.)
The site also presents an American Idol-style polling contest that is down to its final three contestants. McCain, in case you’re wondering, is no longer in the field, which has been narrowed to Obama, Ron Paul and Chuck Hagel.
Real Clear Politics offers a stock market-style game, whereby users purchase virtual contracts on things such as Fred Thompson winning the Republican nomination (probably not a good idea to invest there at this point).
The site has been around since 2000 and also provides roundups of political coverage, commentary and poll data.
The most robust politics game site out there, though, has to be FantasyCongress.com. According to the site’s History page, it’s a concept that was driven by the attention-wrangling force of fantasy football.
“Impressed by the power of fantasy sports to engage and captivate their players, Andrew decided that someone needed to invent a fantasy sports game to challenge political junkies and to attract average people to the world of politics,” the site says, referring to Andrew Lee, who created Fantasy Congress while still in college.
The site launched in spring 2006 and has already been featured in The New York Times and on National Public Radio and CNN. It centers on a game that has you draft senators and house members and awards points based on their legislative success.
“If people cared about government as much as they cared about football, then we might have a better government,” Lee said during a 2006 interview on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation.”
In addition to offering a sheer opportunity for competition, the site touts its usefulness as a teaching tool. Indeed, social studies teachers would seem to have a much easier time engaging their students in learning about the process of turning a bill into law if the congresswoman sponsoring that bill is earning points for a student’s fantasy team.
Although it’s pretty much too late to get in on any presidential contests, a whole slate of new or renewed congress members could make the next few months a prime time to get in on Fantasy Congress. Even if you fall short of a championship, you might learn something along the way.
A roundup of recent posts on the FSB News page.
Professional football wasn’t always an exciting, high-scoring, unpredictable game. (Somewhere, a Lions fan asks, “It is now?”)
It can be very tough to get interested in politics.
