When the month of Sept. hits, the thing I hear most about from my boyfriend is the amount of fantasy football leagues he is in, what players are important to him and how he is doing in said league.

The amount of times I go over to his house and find three televisions on with various football games on because “they’re important to me in fantasy” is a high amount of times. 

This leads me to the question “what is so great about fantasy football?” Why are so many (predominantly) men interested in this and even investing money to join leagues?

To try and find an answer to this question, I joined a league myself, made up of my boyfriend, his friends and mine, with a five-dollar fee to join the Slay Season league. 

I don’t know much about football players, but I can tell you who Joe Burrow is and that’s about it when it comes to the modern teams.

When I participated in the draft, I found it to be somewhat stressful and confusing.

What do you mean you just pick at random? What do you mean I can’t take two quarterbacks right away– aren’t they the best players? (Yes I did pick Josh Allen in the first round and Jalen Hurts in the second, so what?)

The draft continued on for an hour, and I continued picking players (with some help from my boyfriend) mainly based on how fun their name was or if I had seen them on TikTok. 

To be honest, the draft in itself was stressful, you had about two minutes to pick your player for that round of the draft, and if someone took the player you wanted it was a scramble to figure out what to do next. 

The way people picked varied, with some opting to have some fun since the league wasn’t expensive to join, for example, one friend made his team “The Pretty Boys” and picked players he deemed attractive (yes Joe Burrow is his quarterback).

After the picks had been done, we waited for the next day and Thursday night football games to commence. 

I picked my lineup for the week and got to see how many points players were projected and what my win probability was. 

As the games progressed into the weekend, I’ll admit I was having some fun with the league. I saw my win probability go up and down and saw how players were doing throughout the different teams. 

It all came down to Monday night, with people on the edge of their seats to see what players would give them their final points for the week’s matchup.

At the end of the last game, I had won my matchup with 100.0 points and made it through my first week of fantasy. 

To sum up my experience from just one week of fantasy, I’ll say I had a lot of fun with it. 

I was able to pay attention to football closer and follow along with players more than I usually am (meaning I actually understood positions when watching the game). 

I understand why fantasy football leagues can be a lot of fun for people to participate in, it makes watching football more engaging and gives you a chance to root for players other than your “home team.”

You also don’t have to completely know football to participate in fantasy, anyone can create a league and have fun with picking players and deciding team names, you can even throw a draft party to make it even more fun.

Fantasy football is a way to include everyone in the sport and partaking in watching the games, and I encourage everyone to do it next year if they get the chance. 

I wish everyone luck to everyone in their fantasy leagues this year!