In an age when fantasy football is a near-equal part of Sunday-football tradition as football itself, it seems natural to wonder how the virtual nation-wide obsession effects the NFL and it’s fans. Yes, the way we watch football has changed since the days before fantasy, and the way football is covered  by the media has changed with it. Fantasy football is cultural; something seemingly unique to our nation.

Before we get into why fantasy has changed the game of football, one crucial question must be addressed: what is it that makes fantasy football so compelling? Is it the camaraderie between friends playing in a league, or the technicality of drafting players by rank of effectiveness in order to rack up as many points as possible? Maybe it’s the sheer competition of it; a battle for bragging rights or even a little cash.

“By far the best thing about fantasy football is beating your friend’s team and then winning it all, which I do every year,” Will Stenner 18’ said.

With so many things to like, it’s easy to see why fantasy sport has become a staple of our American football tradition. But fantasy football went a step farther than to align itself with the pigskin sport; it changed the way we view the game, and how that game is exposed to us. Picture a time when football fans rooted for teams over players. A time when the only draft that crossed your mind was the NFL draft, not one between friends in fierce competition for bragging rights.

If you have a fantasy team, you’re probably watching more than just one game a week. You check in on your players by watching them in game, debating trade proposals and simply rooting for your key assets. You aren’t just watching football, you’re a general manager. You vigorously manage your team in a feverish pre-trade deadline crunch. All in all, fantasy seems to make football matter more.

“Being a Packers fan, I only watched [the Packers] and sometimes the Bears,” Kevin Lizik ‘18 said. “But when I started fantasy I would watch almost every game too make sure my players were playing well.”

Football media coverage is changing as well. In the United States and Canada, almost 57 million people age 12 and above played fantasy sports in 2014, according to the New York Post. With so many people invested in fantasy, it’s safe to say that it would be a smart move for sports-broadcasting channels to appeal to that audience as best they can. Thus, the creation of NFL RedZone. It’s a channel that frequently reports the statistical performance of players and switches between games in constant progression. This caters to fantasy players who want to monitor more than one game at once.

The amount of people that play fantasy football in the U.S. and at LT is staggering. It’s broad spectrum of appeals seem grab the interest of football fans of all kinds, so it’s not surprising that fantasy has made such an impact on the way we view the sport, along with how the media might cover it.