*Written for The Butler Collegian Oct. 15, 2014*<\/p>\n
KAYLIN PELLEGRINI | STAFF REPORTER<\/p>\n
Fantasy football. Odds are, you\u2019ve heard these words tossed around on campus lately.<\/span><\/p>\n But what does fantasy even have to do with football and why should you even care?<\/span><\/p>\n Well thankfully, fantasy football can be just as fun for your average Joe as it is for the seasoned fantasy sports veteran. Even if you don\u2019t know the difference between a touchdown and field goal, you can still enjoy being in a fantasy football league and maybe even score a few extra bucks.<\/span><\/p>\n According to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, 41.5 million Americans played fantasy sports as of 2014. That is around 14 percent of the entire U.S. population.<\/span><\/p>\n To actually play the game you have to go through a few simple steps. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n First, you have to join a league or make a league with your friends\/colleagues on any number of different hosting websites including ESPN, Yahoo, CBS, and Fox Sports.<\/span><\/p>\n The two most common types of leagues are prize earning and free leagues. Most prize earning leagues have an entry fee.<\/span><\/p>\n CBS Sports\u2019 fantasy football website has a prize league that pays out up to $5,000 in prizes to the winner in each league. CBS\u2019 website also hosts free leagues that can compete for a $10,000 cash prize sweepstakes.<\/span><\/p>\n There are other ways to use fantasy football to supplement your student budget.<\/span><\/p>\n When a league is made up of a group of friends or colleagues, oftentimes they will join a free league and all put a few dollars into a general pool. At the end of the season, whoever wins the league gets the money.<\/span><\/p>\n Joining a league is great, but in order to actually play the game you have to have a team.<\/span><\/p>\n To get your team, your league will set a date to have a \u201cdraft.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n On the decided draft day and time, each team owner in the league will take turns picking players. Team owners pick<\/span> a variety of players including quarterbacks, running backs, receivers and a team defense.<\/span><\/p>\n Each player earns a certain number of points per week based on their performance in their actual game that given week.<\/span><\/p>\n Every week, different team owners in a league are matched up against each other.<\/span><\/p>\n Whoever\u2019s team earns them the most points that week is declared the winner of that match-up or \u201cgame.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n When the season ends, whichever team owner has won the most games is declared the winner of the league.<\/span><\/p>\n Butler sophomore Nolan Mikowski has been playing in the same fantasy football league for 3 years.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s me and 11 of my friends from back home. It\u2019s a way that all of us can feel connected especially now being in college,\u201d Mikowski said. \u201cFantasy football is something that we talk about all the time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Sophomores Taryn Gay and Megan Osborne knew little about football and nothing about fantasy football.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt would be fun with someone who would teach me along the way,\u201d Gay said.<\/span><\/p>\n When it comes to fantasy football, the more you know the better off you will be.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt would get more exciting and more involved once I had a better understanding,\u201d Osborne said.<\/span><\/p>\n Finding a friend or a peer who is knowledgeable about football, even fantasy football, is easy on a sports-minded campus like Butler.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s a way for normal fans like me to feel more connected to the league. It gives you more reasons to watch other than just following your favorite team,\u201d <\/span>Mikowski said.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" *Written for The Butler Collegian Oct. 15, 2014* KAYLIN PELLEGRINI | STAFF REPORTER Fantasy football. Odds are, you\u2019ve heard these words tossed around on campus lately. But what does fantasy even have to do with football and why should you… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3375,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[6160],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-portfolio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/kpellegr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/kpellegr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/kpellegr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/kpellegr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3375"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/kpellegr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/kpellegr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":146,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/kpellegr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions\/146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/kpellegr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/kpellegr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/kpellegr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}