Watching football for a living? At home? Local writer has fan’s fantasy job

As a fantasy football writer for USA Today and Sports Weekly, Columbia resident Matt Pitzer hears plenty of sob stories like mine during the NFL season.

The trials and tribulations of my fantasy football franchise make the winless Detroit Lions look feisty.

After starting off strong, my team – christened Brock the Vote in honor of University of Missouri football great and unsuccessful political candidate Brock Olivo, – started to lose. A lot.

Without question, the most painful defeat came near the end of the season when I lost to my league’s defending champion by a whisker. Had I started anyone at the wide receiver position except Justin Gage – a Mizzou alum, who suits up for the Tennessee Titans – I would have made the playoffs.

Pitzer, who has been writing about fantasy football since 1998, is one of many go-to guys for people seeking to guide their imaginary teams to the Promised Land.

Pitzer told me that he’s been surprised about the emotional attachment people have for their squads. He said he regularly corresponds with fantasy football players who – like me – fell painfully short of victory.

“I’ve been doing it for a little bit now, so I’m kind of used to people being so passionate and so emotional about it,” Pitzer said. “I get e-mails all the time from readers and people who are completely up in arms about something unbelievable that happened.”

Pitzer did give me props for showing so much loyalty to my alma mater. After all, Pitzer is enrolled at MU, where he’s working to obtain a master’s degree in business administration when not researching, writing and blogging about fantasy football.

In his online bio, Pitzer writes, “When I’m not trying to help you, I hack my way around the golf course, chase my kid around the house and bake bread.”

One wall of his home office in southwest Columbia is filled with four flat-screen televisions. He takes notes on his desktop computer while games are being televised and surfs the Internet to get extra statistics and other information needed for his analyses.

Over the years, Pitzer watched fantasy football’s transformation from a fanciful diversion to a passionate ritual for millions of pigskin fanatics. He credits the Internet with growing the activity’s popularity.

“Before that, you really had to be committed to getting up and opening up the paper and getting all the stats by yourself,” Pitzer said. “Once it became a lot easier to manage your team and manage your league, I think a lot more people became interested in playing.”

Although the concept is relatively simple, there is strategy behind success. In print and online, Pitzer’s advice on whom to start and whom to bench can help.

“There’s certainly luck involved,” Pitzer said. “I mean, you can’t control who’s going to get hurt. You can’t control the weather, so you might wake on Sunday, and your quarterback’s playing in a blizzard. But there’s a lot of skill involved, too, just in knowing what’s going on with the teams, what’s going on with the individual players, doing that research and being on top of every team and every situation.”

An estimated 30 million people play fantasy sports in the United States, according to a 2007 Harris Interactive study. On the USA Today Web site, fantasy football is one of the 10 sports links at the top of the page.

But how much skill actually goes into it?

Seth Trachtman, the new media editor for the St. Louis-based Fanball.com, said luck plays a bigger role in how fantasy football games get decided than in other fantasy sports. Fantasy baseball, he noted, requires more skill because there are significantly more people who can contribute to a competitor’s team.

“For football, I’d say it’s quite a bit of luck,” Trachtman said. “I think that’s one of the things, on top of the Internet, that’s made football specifically so much more popular. It’s easier to play. And you don’t have to follow as many players as any of the other sports.” ϖ

How fantasy football typically works

• Before the National Football League season begins, a group of eight to 14 people “draft” a set number of players. Competitors take turns selecting quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers and team defenses from multiple teams in the NFL.
• Every week during the regular season, competitors have head-to-head matchups. In one week, for instance, “Brock the Vote” would compete against a team controlled by my friend Jonathan that he calls the “Best Team Ever Assembled.”
• Participants select the players at each position they want to start for the week. Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner, for example, was my quarterback for the season. New York Jets running back Thomas Jones was my premiere running back.
• Each of those starting fantasy football players receive points that are based on the performances of the real players during the actual games that week. They can gain points when their namesakes score touchdowns and gain yardage, and they can lose points when they fumble the ball and throw interceptions.
• At the end of each week, the cumulative score for each team is tabulated. The team in the head-to-head matchup with the most points is the week’s victor.

Although the concept is relatively simple, there is strategy behind success. In print and online, Pitzer’s advice on whom to start and whom to bench can help.

“There’s certainly luck involved,” Pitzer said. “I mean, you can’t control who’s going to get hurt. You can’t control the weather, so you might wake on Sunday, and your quarterback’s playing in a blizzard. But there’s a lot of skill involved, too, just in knowing what’s going on with the teams, what’s going on with the individual players, doing that research and being on top of every team and every situation.”

An estimated 30 million people play fantasy sports in the United States, according to a 2007 Harris Interactive study. On the USA Today Web site, fantasy football is one of the 10 sports links at the top of the page.

But how much skill actually goes into it?

Seth Trachtman, the new media editor for the St. Louis-based Fanball.com, said luck plays a bigger role in how fantasy football games get decided than in other fantasy sports. Fantasy baseball, he noted, requires more skill because there are significantly more people who can contribute to a competitor’s team.

“For football, I’d say it’s quite a bit of luck,” Trachtman said. “I think that’s one of the things, on top of the Internet, that’s made football specifically so much more popular. It’s easier to play. And you don’t have to follow as many players as any of the other sports.”