Fantasy Fantasy Football

FFF 2010 logo

Fantasy Fantasy Football is a game where players pick regular Fantasy Football players from the same league in an abstraction. The first known game was played in 2010 by 6 FFF players at Cook in Bloomington. The game was conceived by Ben Watkins and Mark Krenz. Rules were created by Brad Renner, who also acted as the commissioner for the league.

The motivation for the game came from Ben and Mark's annoyance with hearing about football excessively during the regular season. They wanted a way to participate with the group without talking about football. FFF not only managed to obscure talk about regular football, but it got regular Fantasy Football players interested since they were the drafted players in the abstracted game.

Inaugural Rules

The Inaugural rules for Fantasy Fantasy Football were created by Brad Renner and based off of existing, typical Fantasy Football rule sets. For example, owners/players of Fantasy Fantasy Football would each draft a number of "players" from an existing Fantasy Football League which would represent their "team." This is similar to Fantasy Football, with the major exception being that instead of drafting actual, current NFL players, the FFF owners will be drafting another FF league's owners (which themselves are made up of a team of drafted NFL players).

The FF League that made up the FFF League draft pool consisted of 12 players/owners. Therefore, for the inaugural season of FFF, 6 owners/teams were allowed, each allowed to draft two FF League owners as their "players." To create "positions" similar to NFL player positions in Fantasy Football, the 12 FF League owners were grouped into 4 different groups (positions), based off of related traits/similarities. FFF Owners were not allow to draft 2 players from the same group (position), unless it was mathematically impossible to do so. For example, FFF Owner 'A' could not draft both FF Player-1 & FF Player-5, if both belonged to the same "Example" group (position), unless players from that group were all that was left.

The Inaugural draft was a live draft held in person and lasted two rounds. The draft order was based on random draw, with Mark Krenz drafting #1 overall. The draft order was: Mark, Ben, Leigh, Megan, Tanvir, and Andy. The draft was in a "snake" fashion (the last player to draft in round 1 was the first player to draft in round 2).

The scoring for a single FFF Owner/team is the combined point total of their owned "players" (FF League owners, which themselves are the combined point total of their "owned" Fantasy Football NFL players). For example, the point totals for the FFF League players (FF owners/teams) are combined to create the FFF Owner's total weekly score. This score is then used for weekly head-to-head match-ups between two FFF Owners to decide who wins their match-up (game), the FFF owner with the higher total score wins the match-up.

• Example: FFF Owner-A has FF Player-1 & FF Player-5, FFF Owner-B has FF Player-2 & Player-6. Owner-A has a combine total score of 185 (Player-1 = 90 + Player-5 =95) & Owner-B has a combined total score of 162 (Player-2 = 62 + Player-6 = 100). In this scenario, FFF Owner-A would have the higher combined total (from their owned "players") and would win their match-up with Owner-B. Owner-A would get a "Win" & Owner-B would get a "Loss." The Win/Loss record is recorded for the entire season (8 weeks, week 4-12 of the NFL season) and is used to determined who will make the FFF Playoffs.

In the event of a tie (either in head-to-head match-ups or Playoff selection/seeding) the tie breaker was the FFF Owner with the highest combined total of letters in their "players" last names. For example, Owner-A has player "Smith" & "Doe," which would equal total number of 8 letters. If Owner-B did not have higher than 8 or higher combined letters from their players' last names then Owner-A wins the tie. A second tie breaker was in place in the event of the first tie breaker tying, it is the cumulative total number of weekly points scored.

Other rules included the duration of the inaugural season (8 weeks of the regular season + 4 weeks of the FFF playoffs/post-season). Which started on Week 5 of the NFL season (the first weekly match-ups begin on this NFL weekend), giving the FFF owners a chance to gauge the total & weekly point output of the FF "players" they would be drafting for the first 4 weeks of the NFL & Fantasy Football season. The top four teams (based on win/loss record) out of the six team league are awarded Playoff berths and allowed to compete in a single elimination tournament for the Fantasy Fantasy Football Championship! The other remaining teams complete cumulatively over the 4 week postseason for the right for next season's #1 draft selection (higher cumulative point total wins).

The Playoff match-ups are determined via seeding the four teams based on win/loss records. The highest seed faces the lowest playoff team & the other two seeds play in the other part of the bracket. Each Playoff match-up last a duration of two weeks (i.e. 2 weeks of NFL pay), with the combined cumulative total from both of those weeks equaling the FFF Owner's Playoff round score. After the first round of the playoffs (2 weeks) the winners from both match-ups meet in the Fantasy Fantasy Football Superbowl for the Championship of all Fantasy Fantasy Football! The other round 1 losers play in a consolation game for better draft position in the coming year's draft (The winner gets pick #3 instead of #4). The second round of the playoffs are the same as round one in structure and last a total duration of 2 weeks, after which a FFF Champion, and 2nd through 4th place finishers are also determined.

In the Inaugural Season of FFF, the FFF Superbowl Champion received the winnings of all the other entrants into FFF (2 "John Mellencamp CDs" entrance fee * 6 participants = 12 "Mellencamp CDs" as the Championship pot).

First Season & Players

• Andy Fraley
• Leigh Grundhoefer
• Mark Krenz
• Megan Ripley
• Tanvir Sagri
• Ben Watkins

The Inaugural season started off with a clear bang as through the first four weeks of the FFF season, the "Haves" & "Have-nots" were clearly defined. Both Ben and Mark started off the season strong, compiling a record of 3-1 & 4-0 respectively. The rest of the league traded wins & loses back and forth, except for Leigh who wound up being win-less (0-4). Through an intensely competitive regular season filled with twists and turns that only M. Night Shyamalan could have expected, the final playoff seedings were decided. Mark (6-2) captured the #1 seed and played #4 seed Megan (5-3) as #3 seed Ben (5-3) faced off against #2 seed Andy (6-2). Tanvir (2-5 as well as still win-less Leigh (0-8) missed the playoffs for the first time ever.

Playoffs & Championship

In the first round of the playoffs, after cruising to the best record in the regular season, Mark (the #1 overall seed) was crushed by #4 seed Megan by a score of 415 - 347.5. In the other part of the bracket, Ben the #3 seed also upset the higher seeded Andy (#2) by a final score of 371.8 - 356.1. Mark and Andy, seemingly devastated from their postseason letdowns, then had to battle in the consolidation 3rd place game as Megan & Ben played in the Inaugural Fantasy Fantasy Football Superbowl I. After the first of two weeks, Megan held a slim lead over Ben of 207.8 - 204. Perhaps feeling that the Superbowl had already been won, Megan let her guard down and allowed Ben to storm back. For the final week these two titans of Fantasy Fantasy Football knowledge and prowess traded epic blows against one another until only one had the fortitude to emerge victorious...

On Tuesday, December 28th, 2010 at 8AM EST the victor had been established and with that distinction came all the spoils ("12 Mellencamp CDs!") one could possibly ever imagine from the derivative of Fantasy Football. Ben Watkins was crowned the one and only EVER Fantasy Fantasy Football Champion of the World!!! Possibly the Entire Universe... Ben won with a commanding 425.2 - 395, complete effort Superbowl performance. Mark also defeated Andy in the 3rd place game, & Tanvir continued Leigh's win-less streak as he grabbed the #1 overall draft pick for next year.

Proposed Improvements for Next Season

Several proposed changes have been mentioned for next season's league. Including but not limited too, increasing the league entrance fee (and subsequently the championship pot), creating a prize for the runner-up (possibly get their entrance fee back), league expansion, and lucrative merchandising and promotional deals throughout cyberspace.