Fantasy football – addicting to a sports fan who loves stats

Let me say from the start that I am working on this blog late in the evening after a good day’s work at Stat-Ease. However, I must confess that I’ve been hooked on fantasy football since being introduced to it about 25 years ago – at least a decade before it became popular throughout the USA. Back then one would eagerly await the Monday morning sports pages for the Sunday stats. Now fantasy-football players can get instantly updated via websites such as that maintained by my son Hank. Unfortunately for their employers, web-surfers seeking scoring stats do some of this on work time. The executive search firm of Challenger, Gray & Christmas (CG&C) estimates that addiction to fantasy sports could cost the nation's businesses $36.7 million daily. The CG&C calculation stems from research indicating that 14 million people play fantasy football and that they typically spend 10 minutes of every workday managing their team. That seems conservative to me (not that I ever took a look at Hank’s website when I get to work first thing Monday and checked how my team did over the weekend).

PS. While searching the internet on this topic, I came across a promising site offering the “world's most comprehensive football statistics.” However, the pictures looked funny to me – a round ball rather then the prolate spheroidal shape that I’ve grown to love for being so unpredictable when wobbling through the air and bouncing on turf. It turns out this website is run by the British Association of Football Statisticians. I’d say they are far sicker in their fascination of sports stats than any Americans!