Dear Mr. Fantasy
Rotobowl promises to shake up football season
by Dave Bontempo
Imagine a convention of fantasy football diehards. Imagine a replica of the NFL draft, replete with the nation’s top experts, Eagles cheerleaders and a post-draft party. Imagine this scenario on the NFL’s opening weekend, in Atlantic City, with pigskin popularity sizzling.
Well, imagine no more.
Welcome to Rotobowl, the future of Fantasy Football.
A nationwide craze now featuring about 15 million players has reached a utopian level. Rotobowl allows players to advance beyond winning local leagues. They can compete against a larger field, and America’s top players, for a substantial prize.
A prize of $20,000 and two Super Bowl tickets awaits the winner of a season-long competition, which kicks off at the Atlantic City Convention Center September 9. A $250 entry fee puts a player in a random 12-team league, with two conferences, for the first 12 weeks of the regular season. A 13th week decides individual league champions and a cumulative competition from weeks 14-16 decides the overall titleholder. Rotobowl pays down to eight places in the season-ending playoff.
Rotobowl had 168 participants last year and will at least double, according to founder Chris Clarke of Fairlawn, N.J. Entrants register at www.rotobowl.com. Last season, participants ranged from New England to the Carolinas. Clarke founded the event along with Matthew Pepe, both longtime veterans of leagues.
They secured the involvement of John Hansen, the Absecon-based, nationally renowned Fantasy Football Guru. Hansen’s visibility through a nationwide subscription service and appearances on Comcast and the NFL Network helped ensure Rotobowl’s success. Hansen plugged the event to his 17,000 subscribers and a number of them showed up. He joins a field of national experts slated to play.
Rotobowl’s appeal is rooted in intangibles. It’s for “experts,” who many people already consider themselves to be, and it’s affordable. The entry fee even includes transactions and the party.
“It is the ultimate weekend for a football fan,” Clarke says. “You’ve got the Thursday night game to open the NFL, Friday to digest it all and on Saturday you come to Atlantic City for the largest fantasy football draft you will ever see. We will have a 30-foot screen showing the college games and there’s food. After the event, there is a party sponsored by FHM magazine at the House of Blues. It’s a wonderful weekend. The camaraderie is extraordinary. At least 90 percent of the people from last year are coming back.”
And they will bring new entries, but that won’t change the regular season odds. Though one has to beat perhaps 400 players to win the grand prize, he must only defeat five to turn a profit. Conference champion winners over the first 12 weeks are guaranteed $300. Conference winners meet in week 13 in a one-game affair that provides $750 to the winner, along with entry into the week 14-16 free-for-all.
The grand prize will always seem attainable because the avalanche of shared information waters down the concept of an edge. Hansen discovered this dilemma last season, sitting down at the draft and facing three of his subscribers.
“They knew everything I did,” Hansen says, laughing. “There was no edge. And then I lost my division by four tenths of one point.”
That, by fantasy standards, is four yards. Want to talk about white-knuckle stress? Twelve weeks and the point totals of several players can be decided by miniscule barometer. Hansen says he has won and lost season-long pools by even less. That means a quarterback kneel-down, supposedly meaningless sack or a penalty can decide the financial roller-coaster.
Rotobowl incorporates some pleasant elements missing from most leagues. For openers, there are no trades. The element of collusion, which rears its head in most leagues at least once a season, has been eliminated. Another bonus is the weekly point structure. It combines the best of cumulative and head-to-head scoring. Although opponents play head-to-head, the top three scoring teams in each conference gain an additional victory each week. The bottom three are assessed an additional loss. This assuages a player who scores heavily, but loses to the top-scoring team that week.
Teams are comprised of 20 players and they start 11. Quarterbacks receive four points for a touchdown thrown. All players who score touchdowns gain six points. Every 10 yards produces a point.
Waiver-wire selection produces another wild card. Teams are given 1,000 imaginary dollars to pick up players. They bid, e-Bay-style, once a week. One must ascertain the mindset of his opponents and his own bankroll to determine a bid. If a team exhausts its transaction money, it cannot pick up players.
Here is a Rotobowl checklist. Bring your favorite antacid. Remember the Sept. 6 registration deadline. Check the website for updates.
And bring your dreams. Jon Carangi of Absecon, a “non-expert,” captured the league last season.
Dave Bontempo is an award-winning sports writer and broadcaster who calls boxing matches all over the world. He has covered the Philadelphia Flyers in the playoffs, as well as numerous PGA, LPGA and Seniors Golf Tour events, and co-hosted the Casino Connection television program with Publisher Roger Gros.
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