Fantasy Football Story
Fantasy Football Story Fantasy Football began as an idea of Bill Winkenbach, a partner in the Oakland Raiders organization. During a Raider's three week east coast road trip in 1962, Winkenbach, his friend Philip Carmona, and Bill Tunnel, a Raiders PR man, hashed out the idea with the help of Scotty Stirling and George Ross of the Oakland Tribune. Upon their arrival home, the first fantasy football league, the GOPPPL (Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League) was born.

The five men wanted a way to pass the time with some enjoyment while still keeping focused on football. They devised a game in which they would pick football players and build a team and those players would earn points based on their performance in their weekly games.

Over the next three decades fantasy football was played in limited number by sports writers,
NFL personnel and fans that some would call obsessive. It became slightly more popular in the early 90's. Fantasy owners would huddle around the newspaper on Monday mornings to get Sunday's stats and calculate their team's scores. It was not until the late 90's with the emergence of personal computers and the internet that the game exploded.

Today serious fantasy football owners have access to up-to-the minute statistics, injury reports and expert analysis 24 hours a day via the internet. Owners sometimes spend months rating players in preparation for their drafts. Fantasy football has spawned, fantasy baseball, hockey, basketball and even golf. CBS, ESPN and Yahoo, the industry leaders in fantasy sports consider this a huge part of their business. This simple game developed by Bill Winkenbach and his friends as a way to pass the time over 40 years ago has become a multi-billion dollar business.