Every Fantasy Football Season Is Really A Chance To Connect With Friends And Family

Fantasy football. Chances are you’ve heard of it. But in case you aren’t familiar with the rules: let me explain. The game is played online. Each team “owner” rosters about 15 real-life players and each player accrues points depending on the play of those real life players in real NFL games each week. The teams with the best scores win. 

Okay, got it? Well, now I have a secret to tell you. 

Fantasy football isn’t really about fantasy football. At least, not really. As I see it, the point of the game, which most people play on their phones these days, is not to win, per se. Although, bragging rights and a little cash at the end of the season isn’t bad. 

Really, though, the point of the game is the people you play it with. 

The point of fantasy football is to connect with coworkers in your office. The point of fantasy football is to keep in touch with high school and college friends. The point of fantasy football is to stay close with family members, near and far. 

Every year around this time, groups of fantasy football players get together to draft their teams. Sometimes those drafts go one by one, team by team. Other leagues prefer auction drafts where each team bids on players. 

Again, none of this really matters. Sure, you can take the game as seriously as you want. You can be in five leagues. You can curate each league to have any number of quirks. But at the end of the day, none of that matters. 

Not to me, anyway. 

At the heart of it, fantasy football is a goofy game. It’s rooted more in luck and chance than in anything else ( though don’t tell those hucksters selling draft “insights” that will give you a supposed edge!) If your No. 1 pick in any given year gets hurt in Week 1, chances are you aren’t going to have a very successful season, from a wins and losses perspective. 

But you know what will be fun? Trash talking your cousin, sending wacky trade proposals to your officemate, and upsetting your old college roommate in a random game when his QB is on a Bye Week. 

That’s what it’s all about. 

Really, if you find yourself in a league comprised of players who take the game overly serious, you may want to find another option. The point of fantasy is not to defeat your opponents one by one—leave that to those actually playing on Sundays.  

Instead, the point is to have fun and connect with others. 

It’s funny—when it comes to our careers and how we follow sports, we can often take them too seriously. Too easily we forget life is to be lived. That a smile on our faces is worth more than furrows to our brows. 

It’s okay to enjoy things once in a while, especially a game like fantasy football.

So, that’s my advice to everyone out there either preparing to play the game for the first time or gearing up for your 25^th anniversary season. Have a little fun out there! Too often we forget to include joy in our daily routine. 

I’ll leave you with one last tidbit. My company Greatness is fortune enough to have a number of talented, skilled people working for it. But the reality of 2026 is that many of those folks live outside our homebase of Tallahassee, Florida. 

We have folks who live in Los Angeles, Louisiana, rural Scotland, the Philippines, Seattle, Charleston, Gainesville (FL), Detroit, Madagascar, Iowa and elsewhere. While everything is going smoothly, to be sure, we also know that keeping an eye out for reasons to get together – virtually or in person – is important. 

That’s why we love March Madness brackets in our office and that’s why I recommend anyone in the same boat to look into playing fantasy football this time of year. 

It’s the one game you can play that has nothing to do with … the game!