Fantasy football was designed for the avid football fan who wants to be more involved in pro football without risking life or limb.   Without having to pay millions of dollars to buy an NFL franchise or risk serious injuries by attempting to actually play in the NFL, fantasy football leagues allow you to own, manage and coach your very own team without even so much as breaking a sweat.  You get the emotional benefits and rewards of owning your own team without having any real consequences or financial losses that real owners have.  You will celebrate when your team wins the fantasy football superbowl.  You will be miserable if you have a losing team.  You get to play the roll of general manager and coach of your very own team. 

You will operate your fantasy football team just like an NFL franchise.  You, in the roll of general manager, draft players in the fantasy football draft.  The draft takes anywhere from 2 to 4 hours to select your team.  Normally, there are 12 teams in a league, so there are 12 selections per round in the draft.  Once the draft positions are selected, you then begin the draft.  We go in reverse order in the even rounds.  In other words, if you have the first pick in round 1, you will have the last pick in round 2 and so on.  When completed, your roster will need to have 2 quarterbacks, 4 running backs, 4 wide receivers, 2 tight ends, 2 kickers and 2 defenses.  You of course, will have to build your team from scratch, just as any new franchise in the NFL does.  You will build your team through the draft, scan the free agent market and waiver wires and make strategic trades with other fantasy football teams.  To further assist you, Sports-aholics.com and Draftguide.com have valuable information to assist you in selecting your team.

Imagine having just drafted Marshall Faulk or Priest Holmes to be star running back on your team.  Or selecting Randy Moss or Terrell Owens to be your receiver.  Picture drafting Donovan McNabb or Rich Gannon as your quarterback.  You live and die by how they perform each week.  You will actually start thinking a strange ways that you would have never thought before you entered the world of fantasy football.  Say you drafted Marshall Faulk and he ends up not performing as well as you had hoped.  You will consider benching or even trading the former MVP of the NFL.   Rich Gannon in a slump?  Bench him.  Randy Moss dropped too balls, you can cut him.  You can also trade players to other teams, claim players off of waivers and pick up players in free agency.

As the coach, you will have to decide on a starting lineup each week.  Your starting lineups will consist of 1 quarterback, 2 running backs, 2 receivers, 1 tight end, 1 kicker and 1 defense.  Deciding on your starting lineup can take anywhere from 5 minutes up to days, depending on how decisive you are and how much research you care to do.  We at Sports-aholics.com provide you with all of the information you need.  We have everything from pointers on who to start and why to injury reports to weather reports.  Draftguide.com offers cheatsheets for your draft to help you in drafting excellent teams.

Your team will compete head to head against other fantasy teams.  You score points as your players perform on the field.  As they score touchdowns, they score for your team.  You also score points for the amount of yardage they get.  You can score on defense too.  As your defense gets turnovers or they score touchdowns, they score for your team.  You get point for field goals and extra points from your kicker.  At the end of the NFL week, we gather your points from how your players did and total them.  If your total points are greater than your opponents total points, you win that weeks game.  You will have a set weekly schedule and win-loss records, just like in the NFL.  If your team scores more points than your opponent’s players do, you win the game. 

Hopefully, your team will be good enough to qualify for the playoffs where you will have the chance to go all the way to the fantasy football superbowl.   The fantasy superbowl will be played on week 17 of the NFL regular season.  The fantasy football playoffs usually start on week 15 of the NFL regular season. 

You might be wondering how to keep track of all of those stats, scoring and win-loss.  Good news!  That’s where we come in.  We will keep track of all statistics, scoring, win-loss records, schedules and trades.  We also host your league draft.  We post the results on our website. 

So, you think you know a lot about football?  Are you good enough to get to playoffs?  Think you can win it all? Then it’s time to see how well you will do in fantasy football.  We have our leagues set up for 12 teams (owners) in each league.  We can alter this, but basically, we are set up for 12 teams.  You can either join one of our established leagues and compete against people from all over the world or you can get you and 11 of your friends and family and have a private league and compete against them.  Sounds like fun doesn’t it?

So there you have it, the basics of fantasy football.  You can go to sports-aholics.com and join one of the leagues.  Go to the website and click on leagues.