Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Author of The History of Fantasy Sports Larry Schechter joins the show

Episode Date: July 4, 2024

Matthew Coller talks to author Larry Schechter about his book The History of Fantasy Sports. Larry tells fascinating stories from the growth of fantasy from newspapers to an empire. How a court ruling... over fantasy sports changed the world for fans forever and where it's headed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 🎵 Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider as we continue Fantasy Football Week. And I have a very special guest here. He's not going to offer all the projections for the green Bay Packers and so forth, but instead we will dive deep into the history of where fantasy sports came from with Larry Schechter, who is the author of the history of fantasy sports and the stories of the people who made it happen. And Larry, I am enjoying the heck out of your book because I'm going to tell you the truth. If you asked me, I would have said, I don't know, fantasy football probably started in 2006 with the internet or something. And instead I found in your book that it goes back way, way farther.
Starting point is 00:01:13 So why don't we talk about the beginnings of fantasy sports, where this started to come from and the background, and then we'll get into the complicated world of fantasy sports as it exists right now. I found it super interesting that you talked about how it was kind of just different pockets of people who found different ways to do this, including of course, rotisserie baseball. I'm sure people are familiar, at least to some extent with what rotisserie baseball is, but I never knew why it was called that, that it was started in a restaurant by a couple of guys who are fantasy icons now. So maybe you could kind of take me back to the early beginnings and what the first fantasy sports looked like. Sure. There were precursors to modern fantasy sports. mean you know depending on what your definition is of
Starting point is 00:02:05 fantasy sports uh but it goes back like the 1800s were like first like tabletop games where you have like a you'd roll a ball and it and it's and it would like uh like an automatic spring activated bat would hit the ball into a hole for a single double or out or whatever and then it advanced to games like pataco ellis all-star baseball which was a board game and then in like the the 50s roughly you had apa baseball appa football which was based on real major league players and uh nfl football players based on their stats from the previous year. And then of course, after APA, Stratomatic followed pretty quickly. And these are all precursors to modern fantasy sports. And for me, the definition of modern fantasy sports is it's a fantasy sport game based on what hasn't happened yet.
Starting point is 00:03:06 So in fantasy football, fantasy baseball, you're drafting a team before the season has started and then you're getting statistics based on what actually happens. Whereas something like Athens Stratomatic is based on what they did last year. So you don't know what's going to happen in any particular at-bat or game, but it's going to end up pretty close to what they did the previous year. So the people you referred to with rotisserie baseball, Dan Okrent was the guy who's primarily credited for the invention of modern fantasy baseball and they met at a
Starting point is 00:03:41 restaurant in Manhattan called the Rotisserie Francaise, which is why they named the game originally Rotisserie Baseball. And there's kind of a myth out there that Dan Okrent magically thought up the idea for this game on a plane ride from Connecticut to Texas. That's not true. That's not true at all. There's a whole lot more to the story before he got on that plane ride. And when he got on that plane, he actually had the game already invented. There are a lot of people that kind of came up with their own primitive versions of fantasy baseball and also fantasy football before that. But the big difference with Dan Okrent is that he was in the publishing business.
Starting point is 00:04:28 He was a writer and an editor, and the people that he got to join his first leagues were all in the writing business. So because of that, they actually got articles published in places like the New York Times, and that spread the word about fantasy baseball. Whereas prior to that, you had some individuals, as I said, playing their own primitive versions of the game, but they weren't spreading it to anybody else because they weren't in the publishing business and they weren't trying to spread it to anybody. So Okring gets the lion's share of credit for inventing, it was originally called Rotisserie Baseball.
Starting point is 00:05:07 And what happened is they tried to make some money off of it. They trademarked the name, but people quickly realized there's nothing really to trademark. You don't really need to pay them anything. So they started changing the name to Fantasy Baseball instead of Rotisserie Baseball. So they wouldn't have to pay them
Starting point is 00:05:23 for any kind of licensing fees and that's how you transition from rotisserie baseball to fantasy baseball and i interviewed uh i interviewed oprah you know i i did like an unbelievable amount of research i spent 18 months researching one thing after another googling article after article after article. I interviewed dozens of people, mostly by Zoom, to get the actual stories of what happened. Yeah, I mean, you could tell with the amount of people that you talked to to build this story. And there was one on the football side that was a bar out in the Bay Area where they got people involved that were even inside the game and things like
Starting point is 00:06:06 that, paying attention to the football part of this. And I guess I so much think of its roots in baseball, but football is so intrinsically built nicely for fantasy, right? But one of the problems that people would run into as they were going along is where to get the information, where to get the stats. This all sounds insane to anybody who is younger than 30 years old that it was waiting for box scores. And you told the story of somebody going to bed and missing the end of a game and then going to the newsstand to try to figure out if a kicker had made a field goal or something at the end of the game. And what came out of this though, was so many companies and publications popping up through the years that were creating their own fantasy products. And I found it to be fascinating how many people kind of had the same idea with different approaches. And you told many different stories of this, but it reminded me of that. Wasn't there a story of inventing the telephone or light bulb that two guys invented it at the same time? And one guy gets credit for it. I wasn't paying attention in history class,
Starting point is 00:07:15 but it feels like the same thing where as it started to gain momentum, a lot of people found different ways to start businesses and publications around this, even before we had the easy access to the statistics? Yeah, pretty much. I mean, first of all, I want to mention when I started writing the book, I realized early on that I could just write the history of fantasy sports. When I started it, I thought it was going to be called the history of fantasy sports. And I realized early on that I could just write all the information, all the facts and figures, who, what, when. And I would tell the whole story. But I realized early on, if I do that, it's going to come off like a very boring research paper.
Starting point is 00:07:56 You know, it would have all the information, but it would also be very boring. Because what happened is, as I started getting into it, I started learning all these fascinating stories of what people did, like just, you know, fascinating, some were inspirational, a lot of humorous, some will even bring a tear to your eye. And so I realized, you know, if I kind of tell the facts and figures but really focus on the people and their stories, it would make it very, very interesting. And that's what happened. That's where I got the subtitles. The subtitles and the stories of the it very, very interesting. And that's what happened.
Starting point is 00:08:25 That's where I got the subtitles, subtitles and the stories of the people who made it happen. So, so yeah, so it's like, it's an easy read and got a lot of really interesting stuff. And to what you said, you know, it's like an entire industry sprouted up from the ideas for these games. You know, people had ideas for these games and people started playing the games. And then some people got the idea, well, I can do this as a business. You know, it started with like friends
Starting point is 00:08:54 playing with friends, but then, you know, people would say, well, I can start a business and make this game available to people to play and make money as a business. And then other people would say, well, you know, there's not any information out there. It's hard to get information. I'm going to start a magazine or I'm going to write a book. And then when you started, you know, people originally had to do all the statistics from hand. And with the advent of computers, some people would say, well, you know, with a computer,
Starting point is 00:09:19 I can do statistics for people. So this whole industry just came out of nowhere, just people seeing something that didn't exist, but would be a good idea. And now here we are in 2024 with hundreds of companies and analysts and it's on TV, it's on radio, you got SiriusXM radio station, you got huge companies like RotoWorld and RotoWire providing information. It's like a $25 billion worldwide industry with billions of people playing all kinds of fantasy sports all over the world. You've got not just baseball and football. You've got fantasy Id did a ride fantasy wakeboard, fantasy, everything. No, it's, it really is incredible. I want you to talk about some of the stories in the, of these
Starting point is 00:10:12 businesses and how people would play, because I found this to be most interesting when I, when I was a little kid, the internet was just starting. And so I remember that there were newspaper fantasy, you know, USA Today or Baseball Weekly or whatever fantasy ads where you could call a number and submit a team. And I remember at one point filling out, maybe you even had to punch out little holes to say who was on your team and mailing it in to somebody like convincing my mom to mail it to someone. It's just, but people were obsessed with it, even at the great lengths that they would have to go to, to actually play fantasy sports. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you,
Starting point is 00:10:56 initially you had games like what you're describing. There were, there were, there were games advertised in newspapers. Companies would, you know, mail you information, like, you know, and you'd fill it out just kind of like what you described. And then as things got, you know, things got more sophisticated with computers and the internet, you know, eventually people could start getting statistics, you know, done on the internet where initially the games, you'd have to do all statistics by hand.
Starting point is 00:11:25 You have to get the box scores from the Sporting News or then the USA Today and compute it all by hand. It would take the commissioner hours and hours every week to do the stats and they would mail them to people in the league. You know, then you had fax machines, you know, then you got the internet. And so it, the, you know, the computers and the internet just made it so much easier to play and to make it available to millions of people is really what spurred the growth of it. And what I really enjoyed was having started my own business here with this. And one of the things
Starting point is 00:12:02 that I do is I hire my friends to work with me. The more success we have, the more friends I bring in. And there were so many instances of that where a couple of people decided to start something. And one of them was, you know, you call a 1-900 number to make changes to your lineup and things like that. And people end up hiring their friends and family and colleagues and coworkers and stuff to answer phones, to change fantasy lineups. I think that when you think of it from, from that perspective, it's really fun. And I'm sure for those people, it's great memories of the time that they built a fantasy sports company or whatever, but it's also kind of evidence of the type of power that fantasy sports has.
Starting point is 00:12:47 And what really struck me in your book is that it almost didn't happen because of a Supreme court case. We almost never had any of this. It would have just belonged to the leagues and not allowed other companies to create fantasy sports, you know, that people could play because they wanted to own all the names and the statistics and everything. And it's a really like big turning point in the fantasy sports universe. Maybe you could take us into this Supreme court case that essentially allowed the fantasy sports universe to exist now as it is. You know, the major league baseballball Players Association, the NFL Players Association, they would charge licensing fees for people, you know, game operators to use the names
Starting point is 00:13:33 and statistics of the players. And a lot of companies pay the licensing fee, even though they didn't necessarily think they should be required to pay a licensing fee because it's kind of like public publicly available information but they paid a fee to go along with it they weren't you know they were kind of challenged the nfl players association or major league baseball but then what happened is one year the the major league baseball players association sold the rights for their licensing to uh major Baseball Advanced Media. And Major League Baseball Advanced Media, when they bought the rights, they decided
Starting point is 00:14:10 we're just going to license a few big companies like maybe ESPN, Yahoo, CBS, and everybody else. We're going to deny a license and we're going to basically, you know, try to dominate the industry. They were going to put out their own games. So they denied licenses to people who previously had a license. And one of these was a company called CDM in St. Louis, which was kind of like a medium-sized game operator. And they were faced, they had been paying licensing fees for several years for, you know, to the Players Association for baseball, football, hockey, I think, if I remember correctly.
Starting point is 00:14:46 And but they were faced now with basically going out of business. You know, the Major League Baseball, against media, it was like, well, we're not going to give you a license. Turn over your customer base to us and we'll give you 10% commission on anybody who signs up for our game. And then you're done. So they were faced with extinction. So they decided, you know, to sue.
Starting point is 00:15:06 So they sued Major League Baseball, Advanced Media. And, you know, they were saying that we shouldn't have to pay a licensing fee because this is publicly available information. And on the other side, the Players Association, which was also backed by Major League Baseball, and they were also backed by the NFLPA and they're also backed by by the nflpa and nfl etc um they said well no this is like the right to publicity you can't use player names um if you're gonna make money off of it and you know the cdm's argument is kind of like well statistics are available for
Starting point is 00:15:41 free in the newspaper you can look at the newspaper and and see Derek Jeter went two for four and scored a run. That's different than a typical record of publicity is like if you say, well, Derek Jeter is endorsing my hat. Derek Jeter is saying, buy my hat. That's clearly something where Derek Jeter needs to be compensated. But to look at a newspaper and say, well, he went two for four and scored a run, why does he need to be compensated? So that's kind of like the basic argument.
Starting point is 00:16:13 So it's a little more complicated than that, but that's the basic argument. And the thing is, it was like David versus Goliath. You had this relatively small company, CDM, in St. Louis with their one attorney up against Major League Baseball, Advanced Media, and Major League Baseball Players Association with like, you know, a couple dozen high-priced attorneys and political connections. So it was really like a David versus Goliath thing, but CDM won, And then Major League Baseball, Advanced Media appealed, and they lost the appeal. And then they tried to go to the Supreme Court,
Starting point is 00:16:52 but the Supreme Court denied to hear the case, and that settled it kind of once and for all, that you don't have to pay to use these publicly available statistics. And as you said, had CDM lost or had they never even sued, everything would be would have been completely different. You would have had a lot of companies, a lot of game operators would go out of business. New game companies would not be able to get into business. It would have just been a few dominating the industry.
Starting point is 00:17:24 And that would also have an effect on every ancillary thing, like the Roto Worlds and Roto News and all the other companies that aren't offering games, but they or even fan created entities this would have made it a lot more difficult for that i imagine that eventually the dam would have broke with so much internet uh that eventually this would have had to have been changed around but it would have put a huge stop gap in the progress of fantasy sports overall. And I sent a link to your book to my friend who created pro football focus, Neil Hornsby. And that was something that they ran into as they were creating pro football focus was this question of, can we use this? Can we use the names?
Starting point is 00:18:22 There's a chapter in my book where he's got a lot of lawyers looking at this, wondering, are we going to have to shut down PFF after we've gotten it rolling and have deals with teams, or can we go forward with it? And of course, I think in part because of this case, they were able to go forward and create this enormous company. So it is profound and it had ripple effects beyond just that. And I like the anecdote that you have in the book that lawyers were calling the lawyer for this case and saying, please, I love playing these fantasy sports here. You got to win. You can't leave this all to the leagues. So that was really a significant moment, I think.
Starting point is 00:19:02 Now, you also talk about the connection, which fascinates me because I do a lot of analytics on the show and my book is rooted in the analytics with pro football focus as well. So it's a huge point of interest for me. And you talk about the connection with fantasy sports and analytics. And I'd love to hear you talk more about that because I think that people who were the creators of analytics, a lot of their interest was started or rooted in fantasy because they're just so interconnected with this interest in the statistics and team building and all those types of things. It goes back to Bill James, but it seems like these two analytics and the movement
Starting point is 00:19:42 and fantasy sports are very much tied together. Yeah. And I just want to make a comment on something you just said, right? Back to the CDM case, their attorney was Rudy Kelscher. And, you know, Rudy, I, you know, Rudy's one of dozens of guys I talked to at length and I got some very interesting stories from him. But one thingy told me is in his career up to then you know he was in a lot of court cases but it was always like one company against some other company and other than the companies nobody cared about it but this was the first case where other people cared and what you said about attorneys, people would email and call Rudy,
Starting point is 00:20:25 like in the middle, all day long, game operators, people who play, just everybody, like, you know, we're counting on you. We're rooting for you. This isn't right. You've got to win. It was like the first time in his career he had all these dozens, hundreds of people that were affected by this. It wasn't just one company.
Starting point is 00:20:47 So that was kind of special. And going back to your analytics thing, Bill James, which is actually something that's interesting about Bill James, there's a connection between Dan Okrent and Bill James. Dan Okrent actually helped discover Bill James, which is an interesting coincidence. I talk about this in the book. But
Starting point is 00:21:09 Bill James didn't really want to have anything to do with fantasy. He was interested in just real baseball. But other than that, as you say, a lot of people took Bill James' stuff and started applying it to fantasy. Ron Chandler started Baseball HQ and Baseball Forecaster,
Starting point is 00:21:28 kind of combining fantasy information with advanced analytics. And then, you know, a whole bunch of other people did too. Like Aaron Schatz is kind of like the Bill James of football. And then Baseball Prospectus and Pro Football Forecaster, you know, took the, you know, they just continued with that. So, you know, one of the big things in playing fantasy sports, whether it's fantasy baseball, fantasy football, fantasy hockey, fantasy basketball, whatever you're playing,
Starting point is 00:21:56 one of the most important things, obviously, is try to forecast performance. You know, if I'm going to draft somebody, you know, how many touchdowns is he going to score this year? How many yards is he going to get? How many home runs is he going to hit? And advanced analytics, as you know, is a way of helping forecast that. Because people, you know, before advanced analytics,
Starting point is 00:22:18 people would just say like, okay, well, you know, guys, baseball pitchers era was, you know, 3.50 and his whip was 1.27. And they didn't think about the fact that there was any kind of luck involved or, you know, that his defense mattered. So people started coming up with these, you know, with these analytics like, you know, BAPT and other things where you could say, okay, if you kind of neutralize the luck involved in some other factors,
Starting point is 00:22:55 what, you know, what did this guy really do? So that gave people an edge for forecasting statistics. And, you know, before that, like at the early, really early days, the edge people would get is by getting information that nobody else could get. Like in the very early years, there's a guy who started a fantasy football league in Florida. And the first thing he did is he subscribed to 28 out of town newspapers for every NFL city at the time, because by getting the out-of-town newspapers, you could read information that your competitors didn't know.
Starting point is 00:23:31 And like now, obviously, everything's on the internet, so you can't do that. But back then, that was like how you get an edge. You get all the newspapers or other people would go like every Sunday to the local newsstand that had some out-of-town newspapers and they'd buy them all and they they throw out everything but the sports section. And then they read the sports section and then, you know, they get these tips like, you know,
Starting point is 00:23:52 Justin Jefferson has a hangnail and he's going to miss two weeks or, you know, who's going to be the, the goal line back for the Packers or whatever. Yeah. That's a aggregation of circa 1980s, I guess. But if you could do it, you could really have some ownership. Throughout the book, you layer in a lot of different people that are or were involved in some way
Starting point is 00:24:18 that are recognizable, like whether it's celebrities or people in sports. The influence though of playing fantasy sports on people who eventually became influential in real sports is a pretty fascinating subject to me because everything now is through the analytical lens. And it kind of reminds me of actually video games with players where NFL players will play a video game and use it in part to study certain things or simulate certain things on the
Starting point is 00:24:46 game. And it seems like there was a lot of that with fantasy sports and people who went on to do things in real sports. I just think that's such a, such a cool connection. Like general managers, they're just like us, Larry. Yeah. Well, you know, what comes to mind hearing you say this, the biggest thing that comes to mind is like Stratomatic. Like when I started researching the book, I thought like at Stratomatic, I'll probably have like two or three paragraphs about how they're sort of like a precursor. Some people think they're a precursor to fantasy sports, you know. But when I got in, when I started researching, I found out, like, oh, my God,
Starting point is 00:25:32 like, Stratomatic, especially Stratomatic, had such an incredible influence on people who became, you know, became general managers for baseball teams or did things in fantasy. It's like so many people played Stratomatic, you know, even Dan Oprin played Stratomatic. And one of the reasons Dan Oprin ended up kind of creating rotisserie baseball is because he used to play Stratomatic with somebody. And then this guy played Stratomatic with, had to like move across the country.
Starting point is 00:26:01 So he didn't have a Stratomatic part of him anymore. And I've got a lot of stories in the book about people who've been in Stratomatic or Appalachian for years and years, 40, 50 years. I got a story about
Starting point is 00:26:18 John Miller, the famous baseball broadcaster, when he was broadcasting for the Orioles, they had a cross-country flight from Baltimore to the West Coast. They were playing Stratomatic on the airplane with some of the players. And Cal Ripken Jr. walked by. He was like, you know, what are you guys doing? Like, we're playing Stratomatic.
Starting point is 00:26:37 So Cal's like, hey, can I play? And Cal actually lost his game against John Miller. And when they were done, Cal took the score sheet back to the back of the plane, sat with his dad, who was a coach on the Orioles. And he went over the score sheet with his dad and he came back a little while later. He's like, all right, I think I know where I screwed up. Let's play again. I love that story. It's a great story. And I was in a stratomatic league for about five years until I couldn't keep up. And I didn't want to be that guy who wasn't submitting lineups each week and so forth. But obviously I was playing it on the internet and it is a fascinating study of how to manage
Starting point is 00:27:17 a team. And, uh, my final year in the league, I went all in, I traded all my draft picks. I knew I was, this was my last year in the league and a first round of the playoffs. I got upset because Josh Hader, who had something like a 0.9 ERA gave up a bunch of home runs and that's baseball for you even in Stratomatic. So there's my, there's my tragic Stratomatic story. I, when it comes to my own playing fantasy sports, I started to be aware, I think in maybe college, it was around 2003, 2004, 2005 for me, where I started to get in fantasy leagues with friends and the internet was there. My space was there. You could connect with people who were
Starting point is 00:28:02 doing the same things as you are early social media again. Yeah. This is like throwing it back a little, but is there like a big bang internet fantasy change? Because you go from people starting companies using newspapers, using the sporting news, using phone lines and stuff like that to do fantasy. And all of these fantasy companies start to create websites because they know it's the right thing to do, but then it transitions eventually into being everything on the internet and growing toward the game today. So is there like a, this is, this was the sweeping change of everything going off of paper and onto interwebs? Well, pretty much there was, you know,
Starting point is 00:28:53 there was a transition where you went from doing statistics by hand to then some people started doing statistics with computers and then, you know, online. There was a transition until eventually, you know, pretty much everybody's doing it online. And some people would try to hang on to their old ways. Like Emil Kadlik. I don't know if you know Emil Kadlik. Emil Kadlik is pretty well known.
Starting point is 00:29:16 He's a publisher of some of the big fantasy football magazines. He also started the World Championship of Fantasy Football with Lenny Papano. And Emil has been in his own home football league for years and years and years. And these guys, they have these totally 50 years ago rules. It's like the only scoring is like a, the only points are for like scoring touchdowns or something. And every couple of years they'll meet and they'll suggest like, Hey, maybe we should add, you know, some points for yards or something like that or points per reception.
Starting point is 00:30:00 And these guys are always like, what are you talking about? Points per reception? What the hell is that? You know, we have the greatest league ever and they just have kept it like that all these years. So he finally gave up trying to change it. Yeah, that makes sense for if you're doing it in like a group of friends to just keep doing it the same way. The rest of the world, though, has moved on. And I'm very curious about your opinion on where we stand now. And I mean, there's just so many jobs that have been created. This entire week has been guests and the people on the show are full-time fantasy analysts. They're people who started fantasy businesses like fantasypoints.com. Or I mean, there's probably a dozen of them that are really well known in this universe,
Starting point is 00:30:42 but it's also become unbelievably competitive. Whereas before, if you started a business and you got a couple of newspapers involved, or you got a magazine involved, you could build a pretty significant business. But now there are so many people fighting for the space, so many people battling for attention and different opinions and who's the loudest voice kind of thing. It has grown to the point where I think it's even hard for people who generally like to play one fantasy team, one fantasy league to understand who even to listen to. So that, that explosion, uh, I think has, has made it both really interesting and there's so much content
Starting point is 00:31:22 out there that you can look at, but also maybe has taken something away from what fantasy sports used to be. Going back years ago, this has to do kind of like with the creation of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association. The people that were in the industry realized at a point like they were competing against each other like you know the companies that offered games were competing against each other the companies that offered statistics were competing each against each other etc but they realized back you know back then that rather than competing with each other and trying to
Starting point is 00:32:02 outdo each other um what they could focus on was growing the pie. Like, let's band together and let's help grow this industry. And the bigger the pie gets, you know, we each have a bigger piece of pie for ourselves. And that's kind of what happened. They really worked together. The people started, like, the Fantasy Sports Trade Association. They realized they needed each other and they worked together and help,
Starting point is 00:32:28 help grow the whole, the whole hobby, you know, and there's a chapter in the book about the fantasy sports trade association, how it, how it started and what they did. And some of the challenges they faced and a lot of legal issues that came up. Where do you think things stand differently than even a few years ago with the legalization of gambling? Because I know that a lot of these companies, technically it's not gambling, it's fantasy sports, and that is very dicey. And they're fighting legal battles all the time on stuff like that. but it has changed the game to open up the door along with things
Starting point is 00:33:06 like apps and everything else to allow for a lot more people to be in this so much easier, as opposed to the way that the way that the guys in the seventies and eighties and things like that are described is kind of like total nuts for their sport and they get together with their friends. But now everybody can be a nut for fantasy football but i i'm curious about that connection with gambling and how you think that's changed the game you know when when they legal and daily fantasy sports really pushed the envelope as far as you know what's legal and there was a big question about whether i mean initially there was a question about whether fantasy sports was gambling um but and there was a big question about whether i mean initially there was a question about whether
Starting point is 00:33:45 fantasy sports was gambling um but and it was kind of determined finally that it's not gambling but then with daily fantasy sports they you know they pushed the envelope and they they they you know they they were determined to not be gambling so they're they're clear but there was a period of time where you know it was a big question mark and they were in serious danger of being shut down. And there's a chapter in the book about daily fantasy sports and also all there's rules. And if they break them, they get suspended, but they can do it for other sports and other places. I think it's still, when you have something like this, that seems so innocent that you just want to play fantasy sports, but there's so many other legal implications and things like that, that are layered through your book that makes it a really interesting.
Starting point is 00:34:42 I don't want to ruin the entire book though for everybody, i want them to read it if you're interested in this subject super super good in-depth look you can tell how much work that you put into it larry but i gotta know are you good at fantasy football i know you're good at fantasy baseball but are you good at fantasy football i am i'm i'm actually i'm if you look yeah i'm i'm good at fantasy football. Okay. How good? What makes somebody good at fantasy football? I'm terrible at it. I cover the league. It's my job of things that are in common. I, I did write a book 10 years ago called winning fantasy baseball, where I gave out all my strategy on how to win fantasy baseball. And a lot of that applies to football as well, or other sports.
Starting point is 00:35:36 All right. Give me something, Larry. Give me some help. What do I do? What do you do for football football yeah give me something give me something for football that i could take with me well not just me but everybody who's listening as well but but i it's always been a struggle for me i've never won a league i've never come even close the matter sometimes somebody wins the league when they barely try sometimes i've tried super hard and i'm making acquisitions and dropping players constantly. I have not, I'm just starting to get into, because this show is going to be sponsored soon by underdog, the best ball stuff that everybody loves. So I haven't
Starting point is 00:36:15 dove in yet, but I'm curious about that. I think I might be a little better at that, but when it comes to just the traditional regular type of league, I've never won. I've always struggled. Give me, give me one tip. That's going to help me out. How much, how much time do you spend preparing for your draft and going through players?
Starting point is 00:36:32 Well, I mean, it is my job to know everyone in the league. So I think not a lot specifically for drafting, but just like, I know all of the NFL, but maybe this is the problem is that I don't take enough time strategizing. And I'm just kind of like, well, I think this guy will be good this year.
Starting point is 00:36:50 That might be my problem. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, one of the things I put in a lot of time, which is one of the reasons I've been successful, but it's also something that not everybody has time to do that. But like, I'll go through the players and I'll as best I can try to project what they're going to do that. But, like, I'll go through the players and I'll, as best I can, try to project what they're going to do. You know, like for, you know, Justin Jefferson,
Starting point is 00:37:11 how many receptions is he going to get? How many yards? How many touchdowns? And then whatever, you know, what do those points add up to? So I kind of have a projection for every player based on, you know, based on whatever scoring system you're using. What do you think, you know, what's your best guess at what they're going to produce in terms of points?
Starting point is 00:37:29 And then when you have that all laid out, you can look and you can kind of figure out who are the best players to take. You can look at the ADP, if you have a reliable ADP for your league. Now, you know what ADP is? Not everybody knows. Yeah, average draft position. Yeah. to lead. You know what ADP is? Not everybody knows. Yeah, average draft position. You can see like, okay,
Starting point is 00:37:50 here's a receiver that I think will get 200 points, but you have to take him in round two, and here's this other receiver, and he's going to get 190 points. I can get him in round five, so he's a better deal. I kind of analyze like that.
Starting point is 00:38:04 You need to kind of have projections that are more specific than just like, oh, Justin Jefferson, he's really good. And this other guy's really good. And this other guy's not as good because, you know, you've got to quantify it. I think my trouble is probably not putting enough effort into the strategy of the draft, when to take certain players, mapping them out of who I'm going to be able to get in the future. And maybe not paying enough attention because something that I would think of football through the terms of who's really good, but maybe there's circumstances for getting
Starting point is 00:38:35 stats. So if you're a running back and your quarterback checks down a lot, you might get a lot more receptions, but I might not think of it in those terms. I might think of it as just as like, Hey, this running back doesn't get as many carries or whatever. I'm going to have to work on it, Larry. Maybe this year is my year. Last thing for you. I saw in another interview, you talked about how you became a twins fan as a kid. Are you still a twins fan? And even if you're not, I love the story. So if you want to tell the story. All right. Well, OK. When I first started becoming interested in baseball, I was maybe something like 10 years old.
Starting point is 00:39:14 And I asked my older my older brother was about 15. I asked him, who's the best player in Major League Baseball? And he said, Willie Mays. And I said, I don't like him. Now, I have no idea why I didn't like Willie Mays. But I said, I don't like him. Who's second best? And my brother thought, I said, well, maybe Tony Oliva.
Starting point is 00:39:38 So I said, all right, Tony Oliva, whoever the hell he is, he's my favorite player. I just, you know, I anointed him my favorite player because my brother said he was probably second best. So from that point on, I was maybe 10 years old or whatever I was, Tony Oliva became my favorite player, and the Twins became my favorite team, you know, with everybody else they had, Armin Killewood, Jim Cott, Rod Carew.
Starting point is 00:40:02 And I lived in Schenectady, New York, which is about three hours north of New York City and about three hours east of Boston. And in that area, you have like 67% Yankee fans and 33% Red Sox fans. And then there was me, the one Twins fan. And so that's what happened. And then when I was 17, a junior in high school, 1975, was the Red Sox kind of went crazy with
Starting point is 00:40:37 Jim Rookies, Jim Rice, and Fred Lynn. And I jumped on the Red Sox bandwagon and dropped the Twins as my favorite team and became a Red Sox fan and have been a Red Sox fan since then. I actually ended up going to college in Boston and living in Boston for several years as well.
Starting point is 00:40:55 So you jumped ship. And for a while, it looked bad. Late 80s, early 90s, that looked like a terrible choice. And then, of course, since then, the Twins just getting their first playoff series win last year. So it's, it's been a little bit of a rough ride here, but, uh, Tony, Oh, certainly a good choice for you. Um, Larry Schechter, just a great conversation, really a delight. And again, I've really been enjoying this book, the history of fantasy sports and the stories of the people who made it happen and i got it on
Starting point is 00:41:26 kindle and so you get on kindle you can order the book um show your friends who love fantasy sports i am sure that most people larry do not know where all of this came from and how many interesting people that i wrote my book in a similar type of way so i'm connected to it that it's really the stories of the people that make this whole thing come together and uh so. So I'm connected to it that it's really the stories of the people that make this whole thing come together. And so I'm really enjoying it. I'm really glad that we could have this conversation. Great to meet you.
Starting point is 00:41:53 And congratulations on the book. Thanks for coming on. Thanks. Let me just mention a couple of quick things. Sure, go ahead. You know, to what you said, the book's available on Amazon, paperback and Kindle.
Starting point is 00:42:03 It's also available, most booksellers, if you go online to Moat, your favorite bookseller, paperback, and Kindle. It's also available, most booksellers, if you go online to your favorite bookseller, most of them have it available, paperback and e-book. And about what you just said about, you know, Paul Charchian, who's another, you know, well-known person in Minnesota, by the way, he was the president of the FSTA from 2009 to 2020. He's been in the industry his entire career.
Starting point is 00:42:28 And he read the book and he's like, I didn't know a lot of this stuff. You know, he was fascinated by it. So it's like, yeah, nobody knows this stuff. Yeah, absolutely. And I know Paul is very, very popular in the fantasy space and around here. So again, congratulations and really enjoyed the conversation. I think a great addition to fantasy football week. So take care of Larry.
Starting point is 00:42:50 Appreciate it.

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