Name: Mead Loop
Nickname: Prof Loop
Job title(s): Associate Professor (journalism) at Ithaca College
Age: 43
Education: master’s, Mizzou; bachelor’s, Ithaca College
Family status: outnumbered — married with three daughters
Favorite fantasy sport to play: baseball
Favorite sport to watch: football
Favorite team (any sport): Oakland Raiders
All-time favorite athlete: Kenny Stabler
Years playing fantasy: a decade plus

Three questions

1. You’ve spent the past two years as part of the final judgment panel for the Fantasy Sports Writers Association awards. How did that relationship come about, and what makes your role important?

Mike Beacom, president of FSWA, graciously allowed me to survey FSWA’s membership about journalistic practices, particularly in comparison to traditional sportswriting. As a fan and participant of fantasy sports, I’ve tried to return the favor with judging. Insightful analysis and clever writing make for useful information; that’s what all audiences seek. This summer, I will be surveying fantasy writers again.

2. Can you explain to us a bit about your research in the area of fantasy sports journalism? What got you looking in this direction?

The rise of fantasy sports has produced increasing career opportunities for journalists. Although the business side of fantasy has been explored, little had been done about best journalistic practices. My hope is to promote best journalistic practices among fantasy writers, which will increase credibility and participation. Specifically, I looked at attribution practices in The International Journal of Sport & Society (Volume 1, 2010). www.sportandsocietyjournal.com

3. As a veteran of the newspaper industry and someone who both tracks and teaches journalism professionally, what do you see for the future of print media? Will we see a day in which magazines (such as the various fantasy preview guides) simply don’t exist in paper form?

Journalism in general and fantasy sports journalism in particular are evolving to a revenue model in which most audience members consume information for free but a small percentage will pay for valuable content. About 30 million citizens play fantasy sports in the United States. We might envision printed preview guides as an example of a minority of that 30 million willing to pay for the gathering and organization of that information. And historically, old media adapt when new media form. Magazines will always have a role.

Bonus: In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll let our audience know that you were my college adviser (and I still turned out all right) and remain the commissioner of the two longest-running fantasy leagues (baseball and football) in which I compete. Now, I’ll let you compare us as fantasy players. Be honest.

In the interest of more disclosure than this audience cares about, I also served as best man in your wedding to keep the peace among your brothers. In fantasy sports, unfortunately, the student became the teacher in our relationship as your fantasy football expertise far outpaces mine.

(In fairness, though, Tha Professa has fared much better than I in baseball.)

Name: Dan and Kelly Grogan
Nickname: Dan and Kelly
Job title(s): TBD
Full-time in fantasy? Until recently leaving Athlon Sports (March 2010), had been full-time in fantasy football since 1995
Age: Dan 57; Kelly 53
Education: Dan — MBA, Univ. of Colorado; Kelly — B.S. Marketing, Colorado State University
Family status: Both married; each with 2 girls
Favorite fantasy sport to play: Unquestionably, football
Favorite sport to watch: NFL football
Favorite team (any sport): Dan — Broncos/Rockies/Nuggets; Kelly — Broncos/Rockies
All-time favorite athlete: Dan — Pete Maravich; Kelly — Willie Mays. Strange but true, neither one of us has a football hero — Steve Grogan comes close, though!
Years playing fantasy: Since 1985, so that would make it 25 years

We got our start in the fantasy industry when: We have a relatively unknown wide receiver named Paul Johns to thanks for our start in fantasy. We drafted Johns — a seemingly promising Seattle wide receiver — in our first fantasy league in 1985. For having played in just seven games in 1984, Johns had fairly impressive stats. I think he had four TDs. Well, we though we had drafted an “up and comer” only to learn when we announced the pick (I think we took him in the 4th round) that the reason Mr. Johns had played in just seven games the previous season was because he suffered a broken neck and had subsequently retired from the NFL. After the ridiculing from our fellow competitors died down, we vowed never to make the same mistake again.

We began compiling numbers and tracking players in preparation for the ‘86 draft, when a friend offered to buy our work. To make a long story short, that prompted us to start Grogan’s Fantasy Football, which we ran until 2006 before selling the company to Athlon.

Since then, my fantasy résumé includes: We operated Grogans from 1986 to 2005 then sold the company to Athlon Sports in 2006. We were both senior editors with Athlon from 2006 until 2010.

Three questions

1. Honestly, which brother knows more about football? Other sports?

As far as football goes, it’s pretty close as to who has the edge. Kelly holds a sizeable over me when it comes to golf, but I’ve got him by a mile when it comes to cycling!

2. What have been the pros and cons of being in business together?

Since we know each other so well, we instinctively know who should handle what. It’s rare that we have to delineate responsibilities for projects. I really can’t think of a negative in this relationship. Sure, we have our disagreements, but things always work out.

3. How much have you seen the print-media landscape change, and when did you begin to see a significant shift? What do you guys see for the future of fantasy magazines?

Dan: Having started in the print-publishing business in 1986, we’ve seen plenty of change most noticeably in the early to mid-’90s as people had greater access to and became more comfortable with the Internet. I used to think that the “convenience factor” and their portability would extend the life of printed magazines, but not so much now with devices like the iPad and Kindle. Costs (paper, distribution, etc.) have become horrendous for the print publishing business, and certainly advertisers have a lot more options these days. It’s tough to see the printed magazine business as a growth area. Fantasy sports has become a real time business and this doesn’t favor print either.

Kelly: I agree, it was in the mid-’90s when things started to shift more toward the Web. We began our website in 1991, but there were not a lot of people on the Web at that time. But, Dan and I knew it was important to have a website to be included as part of the magazine. Even though someone may have purchased the magazine months after it was written, our customers knew they could go to our site for free updated cheatsheets and revised articles. I think there will always be a demand for fantasy magazines as previews for the upcoming season, but the number may be dictated by the distributors and the bigger chains. The retail space for magazines is very competitive and will be even more so in the future.

Bonus: What’s the funniest publishable thing you can tell us about your brother that he probably wouldn’t want us to know?

Kelly: Well this may not be too funny now, but it was to us at the time. Early on when we were looking for outlets to distribute our magazine we would call on wholesalers, chains and the mom-and-pop bookstores to carry it (we didn’t realize how the distribution business worked). So I called the one store in San Francisco and left a message for the owner to call me back. When he did, I explained a little about fantasy football, but he was intrigued with the words “fantasy” and “football,” and he indicated that he was very anxious to see it and wanted to take 20 copies. I said great, but when he gave me the name of his store, I realized it was an adult bookstore. I never did send him the magazines. Probably wouldn’t have sold any anyway.

Name: John Diver (pronounced like “river”, not “diver”)
Nickname: “Div”
Job title: Director of Product Development, ESPN Fantasy Games
Full-time in fantasy: 15 years
Age: 40
Education: Washington ‘92 (English)
Family status: Married two kids (Ellie 6, Gavin 4)
Favorite fantasy sport to play: ESPN Fantasy Football
Favorite sport to watch: College Football
Favorite team (any sport): Washington Huskies
All-time favorite athlete: John McEnroe
Years playing fantasy: 20

I got my start in the fantasy industry when: Early in 1996 a friend who was working for a Paul Allen startup (Starwave) over the lake in Bellevue called and said they were looking to build online fantasy games. My interview consisted of showing the rules pages and spreadsheets from the “paper” leagues I’d been running. They explained how live stats, roster locking, standings, etc., could all be automated and managed real-time over the Web. I was hired and started the same day, writing the rules for what would be ESPN’s first fantasy baseball game.

Since then, my fantasy résumé includes: Almost every possible role other than writing software code. In all I’ve contributed to the launch of over 300 fantasy games titles for ESPN and probably won as many leagues. Here are the official job titles I’ve held:

Senior Director, Product Development - Digital Media
Director, Fantasy Games
Production Manager, Fantasy Games & Go Communities
Product Manager, Fantasy Games
Associate Producer, Starwave League Sites
Associate Editor, ESPNet SportsZone

Three questions

1. What were ESPN’s plans for and expectations of the fantasy games unit at the start back in 1996?

From the business side back then it was primarily about subscription revenue. As such our first task was to build a unique player-ownership fantasy game engine that would support the four major sports in a pay-to-play model. Our first year of fantasy baseball (1996) we had just over 7,000 teams join with an average price point of about $20. Fantasy football brought in about 15,000, the next season of baseball matched that and we created a nice little revenue stream for ESPN.

When the games started drawing sponsorship interest, we diversified and built “minigame” engines, i.e. “pick’em,” “challenge” and “bracket.” The first of such games was the salary-based Baseball Challenge 1997, and our strategy was to get users first into the free games then upsell and convert them to play the full-season pay games. Around 1998, the TV producers started to see the upside in creating games to help drive promotion/ratings for their products, and we extended the engines to work for such events as The ESPYs, Summer/Winter XGames and NFL Draft. By 2000 we were releasing over 25 game titles per year.

2. At what point did ESPN decide to get into offering commissioner-based games? What was the logic in making the games free to play?

The initial development for commissioner games started soon after we moved the group back East in 2002. At this time all our fantasy games were “standard,” in that everyone played with a fixed rules set and we played commissioner (ruling on protested trades, etc.). Our two main competitors — SportsLine and Yahoo — both offered users the ability to customize their league settings, so we started development of our own “League Manager” platform. At first we took the SportsLine model of charging on a per-league basis and launched Fantasy Football League Manager in 2003. However, after a couple of (difficult) years with little growth we changed direction and decided our best long-term strategy would be to offer both standard and custom leagues totally free of charge. SportsLine was charging about $120/league and Yahoo was still charging about $10/user for live stats, and we figured by going free with our marketing reach and brand name we would eventually win the never-ending battle for market share. The first year under this free model, our fantasy football unique users increased over 1,200%, and each year since over 25%.

3. What’s different about developing and producing fantasy games today from 1996? What hasn’t changed?

On the product side, the biggest difference is definitely scale. In the mid ’90s, we only had about 100,000 users playing fantasy football. By 2009, that number had increased to more than 3 million. As such we needed to re-configure our data models and hardware to match the load. Another thing that’s changed — especially over the last 3-5 years — is the acceptance of fantasy as a viable subject matter for TV content. Back in the ’90s ESPN never would’ve thought of producing an hour-long TV show on Sunday mornings dedicated exclusively to fantasy football.

On the “what hasn’t changed” side, fantasy football is still king. Fantasy football traffic rolled up is about equal to all our other games combined. Also, to this day, the single most-important factor in any fantasy product’s success is stability — especially when it comes time to do online live drafts and having accurate real-time stats on NFL Sunday’s. We’ve spent countless days/months/years working to ensure the games work to the level of quality users expect from an ESPN product.

Bonus: How long did it take before ESPN allowed fantasy guys to eat in that cafeteria we always see on the Sportscenter commercials?

Well really about 7 years, since the entire fantasy group was based in Seattle until one day in 2001 when we were told our operation was moving east to Bristol, Conn. Since then we’ve been allowed into the café where on any given day you’ll find yourself in the sandwich line with the likes of Hannah Storm, Bob Ley, Karl Ravech, Scott Van Pelt, Jamal Mashburn, Jalen Rose, etc. Every month or so you’ll see the Wieden+Kennedy folks filming a commercial for the This is SportsCenter campaign. And every now and then you’ll even see some random college mascot roaming the halls.

Name: John Zaleski
Nickname: Dr. Z
Job title(s): Owner
Full-time in fantasy? Since 1991
Age: 50
Education: BA in Marketing - Long Beach St.
Family status: Married 26 years with 3 kids, ages 21, 21, 13
Favorite fantasy sport to play: Baseball and Football
Favorite sport to watch: Hockey
Favorite team (any sport): Ducks and Angels
All-time favorite athlete: Teemu Selanne
Years playing fantasy: 26

I got my start in the fantasy industry when: The Original 1984 Rotisserie League Baseball Handbook came out. I started organizing work and fraternity leagues the next day.

Since then, my fantasy résumé includes:
1986 — Started “California Fantasy Sports” organizing So. Cal. leagues.
1988 — Changed name to “Ultimate Fantasy Sports” and went nationwide.
1989 — First of many Owners Conventions in Las Vegas
1990 — Started “Lifetime” Leagues where owners keep all players on their team from year to year.
1998-2000 — Co-Host Of Fantasy Fever Daily Internet Radio Show on Sportsline.com.
1999 — One of 12 founding board members of Fantasy Sports Trade Assocication.
2000 — FSTA Football Broadcast Award Winner
2001 — UFS Baseball Park Tour treated customers to games in 14 cities in 45 days with stops at Hall Of Fame venues in Cooperstown and Toronto.
2001 — Nominated for FSTA Lifetime Achievement Award
2002 — FSTA Executive of the Year Award
2002 — FSTA Small Business of the Year Award
2008 — Fantasy Factor Partners founded.

Three questions

1. You started your fantasy sports business before there was really anything we could call an industry. What made you believe success was possible in this space?

I started “fantasy” games in 1968, creating leagues playing “All-Star” baseball by Cadaco. I also created games in all sports combining a deck of cards with player stats. When I started UFS, I knew there were millions of sports fans with a passion as deep as mine, and I am not surprised at where the industry is today.

2. There aren’t many folks who can speak to the difference between running games before and after the dawn and spread of the Internet. How would you describe it?

Having a Life. Night and Day. Seriously, we started before FAX machines, and I remember leaving weekly reports on an answering machine and rotating the league reports each week. A 16-line, $25K voice-mail machine made the timeliness of lineup submission and league reports much improved until we went to the Net in 1997.

3. What makes your new venture, Fantasy Factor, different from other weekly/daily fantasy models hitting the market these days?

There are more than a dozen features that we feel make us better than the current models.

The “factor” style of game leads to more strategy than a salary-cap game, and it takes a minute to create a team, instead of the 10-15 of a cap game.

We guarantee action/prizes even if a league does not fill.

The website/game app is one of the best to ever hit the industry and was developed by one of the best interactive agencies in the U.S.

The rules of the game are simple, challenging and fun to play.

Bonus: Can you name the first players you ever drafted in each fantasy sport?

No fair!! That was 1984!! Let me go fire up the old AppleIIc. I’ll get back to you …