It all comes down to this. You’ve paid your league dues. You’ve started dishing out your trash talk. You’ve sat down for hours listening to draft analysis from The Talented Mr. Roto to Dave Richards. You’ve been staring at your computer for so long that you’ve probably caused damage to both your cornea and your retina. It doesn’t matter. This is for league domination.

Fantasy football is an interactive online competition that provides people with a challenge to create their ultimate team, score points, and beat their friends. It combines the real world, using real players in real life games, and fantasy elements by allowing team managers to select players for their teams.

“It’s like owning your own football team essentially,” said senior Jack Jennison. “You pick a player for each position on the offense and one team’s defense and depending on how well they perform that week, you earn points and try and beat your friends.”

The game has taken leaps and bounds from where it first began. You used to have to draft offline on a big board, and send in your roster via fax machine to your league score keeper. They would then calculate a score based off each individual players and team defenses stats for their games that week, using the box scores in the next morning’s paper. Now all that tedious work can be done for you instantly.

“Being online makes all the difference,” said senior Jason Ford Jr. “It allows you to see results right away and make lineup changes immediately. Aspects like that become especially useful as injury statuses are updated right before kickoff and possible adjustments could be made almost instantly.”

It all starts with organized chaos. Everyone in the league gets together for a plan-ruining, pick-stealing, gut-wrenching two hours. Welcome to draft day.

“Ah draft day, the key to any good draft day is a good breakfast so it’s usually eggs and bacon for me,” Jennison said. “Mental preparation is key, as well as knowing who the potential starters for each team are going to be. Also, you’re going to need a bit of luck, you always need some luck on draft day. That’s the chaos of it, you often don’t have all of these things.

After your team members have been assembled, you set your lineup with the best combination you have. It all comes down to matchups, Quarterback and Wide Receiver tandems, and the sleeper you found in the seventh or eighth round who is bound to have a breakout year. Lineup tweaks on Sunday mornings are key, but what really puts a manager’s stomach in their mouth comes a day later.

“To me, Monday Night Football is D-Day,” Ford said. “You are either going to get a great last push by your team and steal a victory or a have a nightmare performance from just one player and it will cost you the money.”

Fantasy football keeps players coming back because of the chance to rise to the occasion and for the ability to build a team that is second to none. To prove to the league that when it comes to compiling NFL players to make the best roster possible, you reign supreme.

“The constant trash talk between myself and opposing friends is what keeps me coming back year after year,” said senior Brent Niemerski. “It feels so good when they get destroyed!”

This year there are more competitors participating in Fantasy Football than there has ever been in the fifty-one year history of the game. It is a game that has become very popular, and is a good way to bond and have fun with friends and family.  As long as you are not playing against them that week.