The Fantasy Football Effect

Catherine Robinson used to roll her eyes when she heard her boyfriend and his friends use terms like, “waiver wire,” “bye week” or “sleepers.” They’d spend hours researching player statistics, and she’d spend equal time making fun of their obsession.

“It’s just a game,” she’d tell them.

But they didn’t hear her. They were too consumed with this game that has amassed over 28.5 million players in the last few years; the game that a recent Forbes article stated is now a $70 billion market – fantasy football.

Fantasy football has been around since the 1960’s, but it hasn’t been until recently that social media has facilitated its ubiquitous nature. Apps like ESPN Fantasy Football, CBS Sports Fantasy Football and MFL Mobile have made the traditional draft board obsolete. Players can access their rosters with a swipe of their smart phones and are able to monitor members of their leagues in real-time.

Robinson, a sophomore at the University of Arkansas, quickly grew tired of this time-consuming hobby, she said.

“It’s all they talk about. If I don’t want to watch the game, then I’m not seeing him, because he is definitely watching the game,” Robinson said.

She realized that the situation would continue to present a problem unless she did something to change it. She did – she joined their league.

“Females now make up 20 percent of all fantasy football players,” said Melissa Jacobs, managing editor of TheFootballGirl.com, in an interview done with Fox News.

“I was never really big into football. I liked it when U of A played. Now that I have a [fantasy] team, I watch it all the time,” Robinson said.

Fantasy football has taken a toll on Robinson’s motivation for school. By wanting to prove to her boyfriend that she could have a team that would do well, she spent hours watching games instead of devoting that time to studying. The average fantasy sports player spends 8.67 hours per week consuming fantasy sports, according to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association.

“Procrastinating for finals was already easy. Now it’s easier,” Robinson said.

To her boyfriend’s dismay, her team made her league’s playoffs.

“Catherine’s lineup was surprisingly awesome. I didn’t think she could hang, but I was wrong,” said Fayetteville native Taylor Turberville, Robinson’s boyfriend.

Other girlfriends aren’t as eager to join the competition as Robinson.

Mary-Kate Konz, a UA senior, said her boyfriend is a fantasy football fanatic, but she has no desire to play.

“He has his thing; I have mine. Right now mine is the nursing program and my new puppy,” Konz said.

Grace Hubbart, a current Fayetteville resident and recent graduate from University of Texas, said fantasy football doesn’t make having a relationship easy.

“My ex-boyfriend was a ghost during football season. He and his friends were so consumed by the league that he couldn’t even go out to dinner without checking the scores. It was so annoying,” Hubbart said.

Hubbart is not alone in her thinking. There are numerous self-help articles written for the “football widow,” which Urban Dictionary defines as “A woman who must cope with the temporary death of her relationship during football games.”

Football widows are easy to find now that more football is being watched, according to a 2012 NFL TV recap. The years 2012 and 2013 have boasted some of the highest ratings for the NFL in history. In 2012, the week 17 Cowboys – Redskins game was the most watched Sunday primetime game in NFL season history with an average of 30.3 million viewers, according to NFLCommunications.com. A year later, 10 NFL games have topped 25 million viewers thus far, up 400% from last year, according to a press release issued by Network TV.

Some think fantasy football is the cause of the high ratings.

A study done in 2011 by the Journal of Sport Administration & Supervision set out to answer the question – “Does a game having more NFL players that are starting in a high percentage of fans’ fantasy football leagues lead to an increase in that game’s television rating?” The results suggest that there is in fact a positive correlation between games with NFL players starting in greater than 90 percent of fantasy leagues and the television rating for that particular week’s game for both the ESPN and NBC samples.

During football season, Matthew Brooker of Rogers, Ark., doesn’t miss a game, but not because he likes watching all of them; it’s because his fantasy players might be playing. He and his friends in the league have moved off their couches and to the barstools. Every Sunday they go to Foghorns in Fayetteville to watch the games.

“Fantasy [football] has made football more fun. It’s interactive now. We feel like coaches,” Brooker said.

Brooker said his girlfriend isn’t a fantasy widow because she is also a fan of the game.

“Next year she wants to join the league,” Brooker said.

If she does join in on the fantasy football phenomenon, she will be one of the 6 million women who play the game.