Tee Off with Your Fantasy Football Heroes and TSE

I heard it for the first time earlier this year. I was at a commercial shoot for one of our clients. We were working with former Pittsburgh Steelers running back and NFL great Jerome Bettis. During a break, a man in his early twenties on the production team went up to Jerome and told him he was his favorite “fantasy player” of all time. I wonder how many fans have gone up to Joe Montana and said the same thing? Probably not many. Although I am sure if fantasy football was as popular when Montana played, then he would have been many people’s favorite too.

Fantasy sports have been around many years. In fact, I played a form of fantasy football back in 1985. No joke. We received updates via snail mail each week. I was pretty excited when the company that ran the league, Big Apple Sports, began to come out with early results by fax machine each week. Of course, I didn’t have a fax machine, nor did anyone I know at the time. We had to get the results brought to us by someone who worked in an office that actually had one.

Times have certainly changed and technology has evolved at a rapid pace in a short amount of time. Today, when I have to do something with the wife on NFL Sundays, I wonder how I would ever survive without my phone allowing me to receive text message score updates.

Fantasy sports have changed people and how they watch games. On some Sundays, I will watch the games at a local sports bar called Blondies on 79th street in New York City. There are games on all the different screens throughout the place. As soon as a big play happens the first thing you hear is “Who was that? Who scored? Yes! I have him on my team.” Sure people still have their favorite teams and root for them passionately, but fantasy sports has changed how we all relate to the individual players. A kid growing up today who might be a big New York Jets fan might actually root for Tom Brady because he/she has them on their fantasy squad.

Especially this year, it’s great I have my own fantasy team to root for. My favorite team — the Jets — is 1-7 and virtually eliminated from the playoffs, but my fantasy squad is in the middle of the hunt. In past years without fantasy football, I may have lost interest in the rest of the league at this point. Now, I have a reason to watch intently each Sunday, which doesn’t require betting. I have even established special fantasy relationships with certain players. I seem to have Ahman Green from the Texans on my team each year as well as Carson Palmer and Marvin Harrison. In my mind, I have a special bond with all three of these players because they play for my team (named Dynomite) in the TSE Sports & Entertainment/Zog Sports league each year. In fact, I think I enjoy setting up appearances with one of these players just a little bit more because they are on my team.

This year, at TSE’s Annual Celebrity Golf Tournament at the Super Bowl, we are going to try and sign-up players from each of our staff member’s fantasy teams. At an event like the Super Bowl, we virtually have our pick of the litter for celebrity appearances because most players are on-site already. So why not pick guys we have on our fantasy teams? An autograph from a guy on my fantasy team is like an autograph from my childhood idol, Wesley Walker. Well, almost.

So I am sure this year in Arizona, at our big Super Bowl celebrity golf event, there will be many clients just like the TSE employees who are fans of all of the players on-site. We are going to make sure those players are key fantasy guys. I guess there will be a lot of offensive players golfing with us!