Fantasy Football: Why we're talking about the cultural phenomenon

Dream Teams

Background

Fantasy football is a fan game based on National Football League statistics. Competitors draft players from across the NFL, then earn points for their real in-game achievements, like touchdowns, receptions, and interceptions. The team with the most points in a given week wins.

Today, the game is part of a sprawling multibillion-dollar fantasy sports industry featuring over 62 million participants. Fantasy football, in particular, has become a prominent part of American popular culture and has changed how its participants watch the sport.

Pigskin Prognosticators

An early version of fantasy sports began in the mid-1860s with “Sebring Parlor Base Ball,” a tabletop board game in which players flicked a coin as if they were hitters. By 1930, “National Pastime,” a card game that used the statistics of real Major League Baseball players, had arrived, setting the template for the modern fantasy sports model.  

In the mid-1950s, Wilfred “Bill” Winkenbach, a part-owner of the Oakland Raiders, concocted two fantasy games: one for the MLB and one for the Professional Golfers’ Association. In 1962, he discussed his idea for a fantasy football game with two writers for the Oakland Tribune, and by the next August, they’d dialed in the rules and launched the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League, the first fantasy football league. 

The game allowed team owners to draft players from both the NFL and the AFL, then separate leagues, and create an impossibly epic roster. The first pick was future Hall of Fame quarterback George Blanda, a Raider who played quarterback and kicker. Because of his dual role, the GOPPPL allowed him to be drafted twice by two separate competitors.

Digital Gridiron

GOPPPL was a private league, but by the end of the ‘60s, a bar in Oakland opened the first public fantasy football league. Over the next few decades, the game grew more popular—and more lucrative.

Fantasy football moved online in the mid-1980s. The web-based versions automated scoring and simplified setting a weekly roster, changes that would spread the game even further, especially as the internet became more commonplace. 

By the late 1990s, CBS, ESPN, and Yahoo had all launched their fantasy platforms, allowing anyone with an internet connection to join a league, even if they didn’t know the other owners. 

From Fantasy to Reality

In time, the NFL noticed the game’s popularity and began catering to its audience through fantasy-focused programming. Some allege the league has altered its rules to boost points and yardage, two important fantasy metrics.

Academics have argued that fantasy football can have adverse effects on health and that it has normalized sports betting, though others praise its community-building aspects. 

One thing is certain: Fantasy football is not going anywhere. In 2022, an estimated 49 million people played the game.

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> Community Through Harmony

In 1978, Gary Hennerberg was fresh out of college and in a new town, looking for something to do. A coworker heard he’d performed in musicals in college and suggested he join his chorus—a group that sang barbershop, a style of a cappella music popularized in the 1800s.

Hennerberg was hooked; the way the voices blended mirrored his camaraderie with the other singers. When his work moved him a few years later, he found a new barbershop group in his new town. He’d repeat it every time he moved, five times over the next few decades. Regardless of where he wound up, Hennerberg knew there would be barbershop. “[It] was a source of stability,” he told me.

In Dallas, he found Vocal Majority. They were perennial favorites at Barbershop Harmony Society’s international convention, a Super Bowl for the singing style, but they were also a warm community, welcoming Hennerberg like he’d been with them for years. It wasn’t long before he considered himself a part of the family. “I can’t imagine my life without it,” he said.

This past July, Hennerberg was with Vocal Majority for the 2025 convention when they won their 14th gold medal. The performance, though, went deeper than the competition at hand. In honor of the Texas flood victims, the chorus, over 150 strong, sang a stirring medley of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain.” 

Hennerberg didn’t fully understand the impact of the performance until he started reading the heartfelt responses on the Vocal Majority Facebook page. “It’s just a source of comfort for people,” he said. “And that’s really what we consider our role to be.”

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