The Evolution of Fantasy Sports

The Evolution of Fantasy Sports

By Adam Purdy

In the past, being a diehard Jets fan has meant that by about Week 11, on a good year, the Jets have eliminated themselves from the playoffs and all my attention shifts over to my fantasy football team. Now I’m not saying that I’m not completely invested in my fantasy football team all season long, but before week 11, I’d rather see the Jets beat the Steelers than Josh Gordon bail out Brandon Weeden and lead my fantasy team to victory. After the Jets have no shot of making the playoffs though, I’m all about my fantasy team and pray that every time Tom Brady drops back to pass he is going to toss it to Shane Vereen on the outside for a nice 20 yard gain and more importantly, 3 more points for my fantasy team.

Now I’m the kind of person who after a long night out will still set his alarm for 8am on a Saturday or Sunday morning and somehow wake up in time to catch the Everton game. Hell, I almost missed Yom Kippur services this year just so I could make sure my Crimson Tide held on for the win against Texas A&M, sorry Dad. But for all of the time I spend watching and reading about sports, football is the only fantasy sport I play.

I still play in a league with all of my boys from home and we do a live draft every year at my friends’ house that usually takes about 3 hours, an hour of that time consists of everyone declaring why their team is best and should be declared the outright champion before the first game is even played. The thing that makes it so great though is that I only have to set my lineup once a week. I can get home from work on Monday, read a few articles to get a feel for who is set to have a big week, set my lineup, and barring any midweek injuries, be set for all the games on Sunday. I used to play fantasy baseball and basketball but after the first few weeks, I get tired of having to set my lineups every single day and having to check if Matt Harvey is out because he’s getting Tommy John Surgery or if Greg Popovich is going to bench Tim Duncan and Tony Parker because it’s a midweek game. I’ve even been the guy who tried to start a fantasy English Premier League, EPL, with my friends in college. Believe me; you don’t want to be that guy. As a result, I’ve been tied down to just playing fantasy football for a while now, a fantasy monogamist you might say. However, thanks to one of my roommate’s and our good friend, I might be back to playing the field very, very soon.

It all started in college when one of my roommates, who is also a sports addict, told me about this site FanDuel.com. On this site you could join one-night fantasy NBA leagues for cheap and win money depending on what place you finished in on the night. You were given a certain budget each night and players were valued at different prices depending on their season performance and who their opponent was that night. Obviously the idea of betting $5 on one night of NBA games and winning upwards of $50 was very attractive to me but for some reason I never acted on it. We would talk about it from time to time and there were times I would come into our TV room to see him on the edge of his seat watching the Bucks vs Pistons game, as funny as that sounds, because he needed a big night from Larry Sanders or Andre Drummond to win his FanDuel league.  A few nights here and there he would come in the top 5 or 10 in his league and win over $200 and half of our friends would be excited because our friend just won $200 from one night of NBA games while the other half were stoked because that meant one less round of Fireball shots they would have to buy that night at the bar.

After we graduated from college last May, my roommate and I moved into an apartment in New York that happened to be right next to another friend of ours from college who we had played soccer with and was as big of a sports fan as the two of us. Now my roommate and our other friend had always loved talking about sports, especially fantasy sports, but when my roommate told our friend about FanDuel, a spark went off in both of their heads. They had this idea of comparing player’s statistics, their opponent that night, and their listed price on FanDuel to come up with a list of the best possible team that they could pick each night with the budget they were given. It was basically the fantasy sports equivalent of Money Ball. 

They worked on this huge excel document for a few weeks trying to perfect it so that it always provided them with the team that gave them the best chance of winning every night. I was around one night when they were early in the process of creating this algorithm. I fancy myself a pretty smart person but I’ve never been more lost in my life hearing these two configure all of these excel formulas to create what they now call “The Tool.” It honestly felt like that scene in the Social Network when Mark Zuckerberg was creating Facesmash and I was his drunk friend sitting on his bed having no idea what was going on and what it would eventually lead to. 

After listening to them talk about FanDuel and all these other one-night fantasy sports websites I started joining a few one-night fantasy NBA leagues on this website SkyllZone.com. On SkyllZone, you are given two free drafts for the Wednesday night slate of games. You draft in a ten team league, the nine other teams are all computers, and if you come in first place you can win $20. Now $20 is obviously not a number you go bragging to your friends about but I did actually win one time and let me tell you, it felt pretty damn good when I got a $20 check from SkyllZone for taking a 10 minute break out of my day to draft a team for one night of games. While this seemed pretty cool to me, my roommate and friend had their sights set on bigger and better things.

It has been about 5 months since my roommate and our friend created “The Tool” and they have continued to increase their winnings night after night. The other night I came home from soccer hoping to catch the end of the Heat vs Pacers game but when I walked in, my roommate was watching the Kings vs Knicks game with our other roommate. He was in 2^nd place at the time and had the possibility of winning $100,000 if Tyson Chandler could have a good game. You’ve probably never seen three guys root for Tyson Chandler harder in your life than we did that night. Unfortunately for my roommate, Tyson Chandler and good games have not been synonymous many times this year and he ended up not winning the $100K. While he didn’t get first place, he still ended up winning a very impressive amount of money from watching one night of NBA action.

So after the other night I had to check this FanDuel website out for myself finally. The page is pretty straight forward. It explains that FanDuel is a one-night fantasy sports website where up to $1,000,000 in cash is paid out every day.  Seemed pretty cool to me. There were a few endorsements for the site from places like the Wall Street Journal and Fox Sports as well as some YouTube clips you could watch, but what really caught my eye was what I found at the bottom of the page.

Look at this guy Chris Prince. He seems like a very nice, average guy from Detroit. But Chris Prince is no average man; he has won over $539,638 from playing fantasy sports on FanDuel. Are you kidding me? He might be my new hero; he’s definitely my roommate’s hero. “Playing a game in one day and getting paid the same day is awesome,” said one Chris Prince. You’re damn right it is Chris. You sir are an inspiration. If you’ve made it this far in this article I highly recommend you check out FanDuel or SkyllZone or any other of the one-night fantasy league websites just to give it a shot and see what it’s like. Take it from a man, Chris Prince, who has won more than $539,638 on FanDuel and a guy who once won $20 on SkyllZone, me, playing a game in one day and getting paid the same day is awesome.

Should College Athletes Be Paid?

A recent article I read in Bloomberg Businessweek detailed the academic 'fudging' of college athletes' grades, specifically Division I basketball and football players, at the University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill. Many of these athletes were enrolled in 'paper classes,' where they were not required to physically attend the class throughout the semester, and were only required to write one paper in order to get course credit. It was noted that most of the time these papers were never even read and were automatically given 'A's' or 'B's' by the professors, who were knowledgeable of whose papers they were 'grading.' Grades were also reportedly altered and boosted for those struggling athletes, namely football and basketball players, in order to preserve their athletic standing. These increasingly commonplace developments in university's athletic/academic programs is not exclusive to UNC, but rather a growing trend and issue for traditional scholars across the country. An athletic advisor at UNC named Mary Willingham investigated these issues and challenged the school's academic integrity. Her evidence and research was warranted and eye-opening, but was also met with disdain from university officials and UNC athletic supporters who believed Willingham was just stirring the pot. College athletics has become a $16 billion dollar business, namely from the revenue generated from football and basketball through media contracts, ticket sales, etc. The unfortunate part about this business, which is a word that was not associated with amateur athletics years ago, is that many feel as if these athletes are overworked and underappreciated. With the amount of money the NCAA and big-time schools generate through their athletic programs, these athletes who are essentially worked like professionals should be fairly compensated for their continuing efforts.

College athletes receive financial aid for their athletic skills and talent through grants and scholarships. The amount of the scholarship ranges based on the individual's athletic ability and perceived worth to the team. Revenue sports such as football and basketball oftentimes, especially at big conference programs, have a large amount of scholarship money to allocate to the players on their rosters. They generate a ton of revenue for the school, mostly at the Division I level, and some of that money is put into the betterment of the overall quality of the teams. However, there are plenty of players who are overworked without a moment to spare who do not receive a nice, juicy athletic scholarship in order to help fund their college education. For example, not all 53 players on a football roster can be granted large sums of financial aid, leaving some players with minimal funds to help get them through college. The advantage the revenue sports have is that the athletic department has more money to put into the advancement of the program, whereas non-revenue sports are usually operated on a tight budget. I received an athletic scholarship to play tennis in college, which categorizes as a non-revenue sport. Tennis is an example of a sport that generally does not generate revenue for their schools' athletic program. There is usually little to no television coverage, which means no media revenue for the school, and there are no ticket sales, as most matches have roughly 30 people watching in the surrounding area. These sports are not given the financial support of revenue sports because, guess what?, they don't generate any. I started out playing at the Division III level and was given an 'academic grant' (Division III is not allowed to give athletic scholarships). This scholarship was very valuable in helping my family pay for my education. A couple of years later I transferred to play at the Division I level and was now given an athletic scholarship along with academic financial aid. Again, these scholarships were helpful in lessening my family's financial burden. My point is that while scholarships and grants are great, the athlete is not given the option of being paid directly for their services. Being a college athlete is liking going to college with a full-time job. No matter what sport you play, you have weight-training/running requirements, on-court/field practice, travel (sometimes for a full week) and your actual games/matches. And you have to balance all of this with a rigorous academic schedule and coursework, and are expected to maintain good academic standing. I would like college athletes to at least have the option to directly accept payments or choose to accept aid in the form of scholarships to reduce their annual tuition. Generally, college students are not swimming in the dough, and every bit of money could help pay for meals, nights out, groceries, gas and other basic needs. There should also be an option of the athlete being permitted to take a cut of their scholarship in the form of a direct payment and allocating the rest to reduce their tuition bills. Employees are paid to perform a job or do a service to their company, so why should college athletes (basically employees of the university) be restricted in their financial options in terms of how to receive their aid? This ongoing debate is a significant one, as individuals who make a big commitment and sacrifice over the course of four years, should have the right to choose how they receive their money. 

Melo's 62 or LeBron's 61?

Two of the best players of this generation have put together their career-high scoring outputs in a single game this season. Both LeBron and Melo have the capability to put their teams on their backs and carry the offensive load. They displayed that in full force in their 60+ point performances this season, where you saw everything from step-back jumpers, ferocious dunks and long-distance three-pointers that were made to look easy by these two compatriots. You knew early on in the games that each man was locked in and was ready to put forth a super-human effort in order to make history. Melo broke Bernard King's Madison Square Garden point total of 60 when he reigned in 62 against the Charlotte Bobcats on January 25th, 2014, and LeBron broke Glenn Rice's Heat record of 57 when he put in 61 points of his own against the same foe on March 4th, 2014. Both were impressive displays of basketball talent, but which one was a better individual performance? It is ironic that the only 60+ point games of the season came against the same opponent (poor 'Cats), but which warrants more praise? Melo is perhaps one of the only men at the small forward position in the NBA that can compare to LeBron from a strength and stamina standpoint. LeBron is more explosive and dynamic off the dribble and driving to the basket, while Melo is definitely a better pure shooter. Melo's performance included a halftime, half-court buzzer-beater, while LeBron's included several acrobatic finishes around the rim. They are both masters at using the ball-fake in order to create space from their defenders while shooting the basketball. From an entire season perspective, there is no question who is in better shape in terms of the standing of their team and potential for an NBA championship, but who had the best single-game performance of the season? And neither of these men are considered the front-runner in the MVP race. Something to think about.