Posts Tagged ‘Started’
The history of Fantasy Football actually began several years before the first fantasy team was selected. Although the exact details seem to differ according to who is telling the story, there is no doubt that it was one Wilfred Winkenbach that first had the idea of a fantasy sport, wherein participants would formulate their own teams and determine the success or otherwise of these teams by means of the statistics of the individual team members.
In fact, it was not football but golf that was the first sport to be played under fantasy rules. Wilfred Winkenbach devised fantasy golf in the latter part of the 1950s, in which each player selected a team of professional golfers and the person with the lowest combined total of stokes at the end of the tournament would win. Golf is a simple fantasy game to administer and keep tabs on, since you are concerned only with the scores of your team members without anything else to complicate it.
As with many breakthrough ideas, the concept was simple and it was extended to baseball before Winkenbach had the idea of fantasy football. This was not surprising, since he was part owner of Oakland Raiders at the time – in fact, what WAS surprising was that he developed fantasy golf and baseball before fantasy football! The football idea came to him on a wet October evening in 1962, when he discussed his idea with the Oakland Raiders PR man Bill Tunnell and the Oakland Tribune sports journalist, Scotty Stirling.
They were actually spending the night in a Manhattan hotel during a Raiders’ tour. The original idea was formulated into a football league comprising eight teams, and they also formulated a points scoring system somewhat different to the norm whereby 25 points were awarded for a field goal, a passing touchdown or a touchdown reception. Ten points were given for an extra point, and a massive 200 points for a kick-off, punt or pick-six. The scoring system has changed over the years, and various leagues now have their own scoring systems which offer fewer points than the above.
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Once they returned to Oakland the three of them pitched their idea to George Ross, then sports editor of the Tribune. They decided that they would have to formulate a set of rules, and came up with the GOPPPL. This strange-sounding code, which was adopted in 1963, actually stood for the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League. A prognosticator is one who makes a prediction, or foretells results, which describes their activity precisely.
Among the GOPPPL rules were the three prerequisites that participants had to meet in order to take part in the league:
- Have an administrative affiliation with an AFL professional team.
- Be directly related to professional football through journalism.
- Have either purchased or sold at least ten tickets for Oakland Raider’s 1963 season.
The next significant advance was the opening of the Kings X sports bar in Oakland in 1968 that held annual fantasy football drafts. This was done by one Andrew Mousalimas, and provided a kick to the league that continued to enjoy a steady growth through the 1970s and beyond. While its rate of spread did not exactly set the country alight, it was unexpected and the increasing following held promise of spectacular things to come.
The way it works is that participants in the fantasy league buy a team of American football players by auction or draft. The players are chosen according their particular skills or attributes and you score points that depend upon the way that your players perform in the actual games. The performance is generally determined by statistical analysis, and points can be awarded as previously indicated. The players themselves are real football players, playing for their own teams. It is only the team and the league that is fantasy.
Some fantasy leagues are run just like real leagues, with drafts, playoffs, salary caps and so on. Players can be given a value and you can only register players up to certain overall value for your team. This prevents everybody selecting only the very best players for their team, and the possibility of hundreds of teams with exactly the same personnel.
Fantasy Football simmered for a few years, although never kicked off completely until the personal computer and the internet made the gathering of statistics unbelievably simple. Prior to that, the idea was a good one, but it was not easy to carry out in practice. Teams and scores were difficult to update because you would have had to find all the statistics for each player in your team, how many rushes were made and yards gained. Not easy to do manually, but now real-time scoring is very accessible.
The internet has now made this simple, and the popularity of fantasy football has risen exponentially to the extent that it is popular throughout the entire world, and is participated in by around 20 million Americans, each with their own virtual team, and competition can be either league based, or head-to-head where you play against a specific opponent.
http://www.articlesbase.com/football-articles/love-fantasy-football-learn-how-it-started-608437.html
Premiership Football Matches are going to be StartedThere are 20 clubs in the Premier League. During the course of a season (from August to May) each club plays the others twice (a double round robin system), once at their home stadium and once at that of their opponents, for a total of 38 games.
There are 20 clubs in the Premier League. During the course of a season (from August to May) each club plays the others twice (a double round robin system), once at their home stadium and once at that of their opponents, for a total of 38 games. Teams receive three points for a win and one point for a draw. No points are awarded for a loss. Teams are ranked by total points, then goal difference, and then goals scored. At the end of each season, the club with the most points is crowned champion. If points are equal, the goal difference and then goals scored determine the winner. If still equal, teams are deemed to occupy the same position. If there is a tie for the championship, for relegation, or for qualification to other competitions, a play-off match at a neutral venue decides rank. The three lowest placed teams are relegated into the Football League Championship and the top two teams from the Championship, together with the winner of play-offs involving the third to sixth placed Championship clubs, are promoted in their place.
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The Premier League, colloquially referred to as the Premiership, is an English professional league for football clubs. At the top of the English football league system, it is the country’s primary football competition. It is contested by 20 clubs, operating a system of promotion and relegation with The Football League. The Premier League is a corporation in which the 20 member clubs act as shareholders. Seasons run from August to May, with teams playing 38 games each. It is sponsored by Barclays Bank, and is therefore officially known as the Barclays Premier League.
The competition formed as the FA Premier League on 20 February 1992 following the decision of clubs in the Football League First Division to break away from The Football League, which was originally founded in 1888, and take advantage of a lucrative television rights deal. The Premier League has since become the world’s most watched sporting league. It is the world’s most lucrative football league, with combined club revenues of around £1.4 billion in 2005-06, which are expected to rise to around £1.8 billion for 2007-08 due to media revenues. It is also ranked first in the UEFA rankings of leagues based on performances in European competitions over the last five-years, ahead of Spain’s La Liga and Italy’s Serie A.
Ticket4Football.com is the most specialized and fully dedicated football ticket website offering the best place to buy football tickets for all the popular football matches around. You can buy your favorite online through our secure and guaranteed online booking system. Ticket4Football offers 100% safe and secure online booking system.
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http://www.articlesbase.com/football-articles/premiership-football-matches-are-going-to-be-started-3076500.html
Ever Wonder How Fantasy Football Started?
Years ago, fantasy sports were the game of the few. An entire subculture formed, one that shared much in common with the tabletop roleplaying phenomenon of the 1980s. Those who played the game were essentially the D&D nerds of the sports world. We can almost imagine them with glasses and pocket protectors crawling over newspaper box scores with ink-stained fingertips. That once-association between lovable geeks and fantasy sports gives rise to the common belief that Rotisserie baseball was the first of the fantasy sports. Baseball fans do love their stats, after all. However, the first fantasy game was actually golf, devised and played by Wilfred Winkenbach in the late 1950s. Winkenbach was a limited partner in the Oakland Raiders organization. In the early 1960s, Winkenbach defined the rules for the first game of fantasy football, and he played it alongside a Raider employee and a beat reporter, among others. By all accounts, the game was a success, but it never made it very far outside that circle. It was not that the idea of it was unappealing. Fantasy sports had existed in one form or another since World War II. However, the early 1960s marked the age of Strat-O-Matic and the magnetic football games. This was stiff competition for the barely budding game, and inevitably too much for it to gain notice then. Fantasy sports as Winkenback had imagined them and as we view them today, fell by the wayside and they would not gain favor again for many years. When they did, it would all start in the 1980s at La Rotisserie Francaise, a Manhattan restaurant, with a group of baseball-loving friends. This time, the time was right, and the stat-based nature of fantasy baseball suited itself perfectly to a game fueled by the statistics. This is when the subculture formed. Adults are playing in work cafeterias, and the children are playing in the cafeterias at school. This captures the attention of game companies who soon begin to offer play-by-mail versions of fantasy baseball and even fantasy football. Fantasy GMs across the nation are hammering out trade negotiations by phone. By 1990, the USA Today newspaper estimated that more than 500,000 Americans were playing some form of fantasy sports. That number may seem small by modern standards, but it was more than enough to set the table for the coming boom. By the mid-1990s, the pastime was so popular that USA Today had a dedicated fantasy sports writer in place, John Hunt, and he operated a high-profile baseball league that included such notables as Peter Gammons and Bill James. Then, the storm came, the advent of the Internet in the late 1990s. Websites like RotoNews and RotoWire were forming faster than the fan could follow. Suddenly, fantasy sports were more accessible than ever, and we were all experiencing information overload. Gone overnight were the days of tracking box scores or playing by mail. Heck, you didn’t even need people to play with locally. Those 500,000 Americans now counted themselves in the millions, and many of them were online. More change was coming. While fantasy baseball was still essentially a niche hobby, the football version was about to take North America by the proverbial storm. While pop culture recognizes baseball as America’s pastime, sports fans recognize that it is, in fact, football that captures America’s passion. Likewise, while baseball had carried the fantasy sports torch into the Internet age, it was fantasy football that would create a phenomenon and bring the game to the mainstream. Football is a fascinating game for many reasons, but the fan culture in particular is intriguing. This is a sports fan culture that is actually inviting to those who would otherwise have no interest in the sport. Sure, the wife might attend a ballgame with you, but she’s not likely to huddle around the TV set for the World Series. The Super Bowl is another story entirely, and this casual association with the game inevitably led those “almost-fans” to fantasy football. Earlier, we presented the notion of the wrinkled-nosed mathematician pouring over stats as he played fantasy baseball. However inaccurate, that was the image, but the fantasy football player was shattering it. The fantasy football player was your teacher, your secretary, your mom, the person you overheard at the grocery counter, and your coworkers standing at the water cooler. This was the new March Madness, and offices across North America were battling it out on virtual gridirons. In less than fifteen years, fantasy sports, riding on the back of fantasy football and powered by services such as Yahoo and SuicideFantasyFootball.com, became a billion-dollar industry. That’s a lot of cheddar, and the sports leagues, notably the MLB and NFL, became acutely aware of just how much money these services were generating. So they made a play for their piece of the action. This is a critical time in the history of fantasy football. If they have their way, fantasy sports services have to pay for the use of the stats, and that means no more free fantasy football. “Free” is a vital thread in the fabric of this phenomenon. If you take free out of the equation, you lose the casual fan, and then fantasy football becomes a lot more like fantasy baseball. Fortunately, we’ll never have to know what would have become of the game because the courts upheld our First Amendment right to use publically available information. Thanks, in part, to that decision, fantasy sports continue to grow in ways we never conceived. It is common for Sunday gatherings to look like small IT affairs, as everyone in the room uses laptops or mobile devices to make last-minute roster changes. Is the wife demanding that you shop with her on Sunday morning? Well, we’ll just monitor the roster from our phone and know that the DVR will have us covered if we’re a few minutes late. Perhaps we witness the game’s greatest mark on culture in ESPN’s programming. Consider how many hours they spend preparing us for our fantasy drafts. During the season, they have entire shows dedicated to managing our teams. Tomorrow, you can walk into any office in North America and get a reasonable answer when you ask the question: Who’s your number one?
Having a collection of autographed soccer memorabilia has long been a way of proving your loyalty and passion to the sport. If you’re interested in starting your own collection, here are several tips to ensure that you’ll not only have an easy time collecting
How to Obtain Autographed Soccer Memorabilia
There are two ways for you to obtain autographed soccer memorabilia: you can have the soccer gear or equipment signed by the athlete with your own effort, or you can purchase one that has already been autographed.
It’s certainly more affordable to work for your own autographed soccer memorabilia by yourself, but your main problem would be finding ample opportunity to approach your favorite soccer player and get his autograph. You will also have to work on getting a certificate of authenticity for your memorabilia in the event that you’d wish to sell it for a profit.
Purchasing autographed soccer memorabilia is easier, naturally, but more expensive as well. You also run the risk of buying from fraudulent sellers selling fake autographed soccer memorabilia.
Types of Autographed Soccer Memorabilia
Photographs – These can be photographs of the athlete himself or a scene from a particular soccer game containing the necessary signature. Photographs may be something you’ve taken by yourself, purchased, or won. If it’s a group photo, consider having it enlarged so that all the signatures of the members making up your favorite soccer team can easily fit its surface.
Soccer Ball – These can be either purchased or obtained at your own effort as well. If you’re going to have a soccer ball signed by your favorite players, invest in the best soccer ball you can purchase: one that has the words “FIFA approved” or “official size or weight” imprinted on them. Make sure to have a dark-colored soft tip marker ready for the signatures because it writes well on soccer balls and is easily visible. When you have completed the signatures, place it inside a glass or see-through container for safekeeping.
Soccer Shoes – Many sports brands nowadays produce clothing, gear, and equipment under the name of famous players; the same thing applies to soccer as well. If your favorite soccer player has his own line of shoes then it would be ideal to have him affix his signature on his own product. Since shoes don’t have much writing space in them, they are usually good for a maximum of three signatures.
Soccer Wear – These are what make up a complete soccer outfit: soccer top, shorts, and socks. A soccer shirt or uniform serves as one of the best types of autographed soccer memorabilia because it allows the players and coaches to write as long as they want.
Gloves – These are worn only by goalkeepers, so you can generally expect only signatures from popular goalkeepers to appear on gloves. Again, autographed soccer memorabilia of this type can be purchased or obtained through personal effort.
Shin Guards – While shoes, uniforms, and soccer balls make up the bulk of autographed soccer memorabilia, it’s very rare that you’ll find a famous signature written on shin guards. Thus, this type of memorabilia is usually obtained by personal effort.
As a last warning: make sure that you are truly purchasing from a trusted and reliable source especially if the transaction will be processed online. Be careful about using your credit card, and never allow payments to be handled by any website you haven’t checked the Better Business Bureau with.
The history of Fantasy Football actually began several years before the first fantasy team was selected. Although the exact details seem to differ according to who is telling the story, there is no doubt that it was one Wilfred Winkenbach that first had the idea of a fantasy sport, wherein participants would formulate their own teams and determine the success or otherwise of these teams by means of the statistics of the individual team members.Golf Came First!
In fact, it was not football but golf that was the first sport to be played under fantasy rules. Wilfred Winkenbach devised fantasy golf in the latter part of the 1950s, in which each player selected a team of professional golfers and the person with the lowest combined total of stokes at the end of the tournament would win. Golf is a simple fantasy game to administer and keep tabs on, since you are concerned only with the scores of your team members without anything else to complicate it.
As with many breakthrough ideas, the concept was simple and it was extended to baseball before Winkenbach had the idea of fantasy football. This was not surprising, since he was part owner of Oakland Raiders at the time – in fact, what WAS surprising was that he developed fantasy golf and baseball before fantasy football! The football idea came to him on a wet October evening in 1962, when he discussed his idea with the Oakland Raiders PR man Bill Tunnell and the Oakland Tribune sports journalist, Scotty Stirling.Early Scoring System
They were actually spending the night in a Manhattan hotel during a Raiders’ tour. The original idea was formulated into a football league comprising eight teams, and they also formulated a points scoring system somewhat different to the norm whereby 25 points were awarded for a field goal, a passing touchdown or a touchdown reception. Ten points were given for an extra point, and a massive 200 points for a kick-off, punt or pick-six. The scoring system has changed over the years, and various leagues now have their own scoring systems which offer fewer points than the above.
Once they returned to Oakland the three of them pitched their idea to George Ross, then sports editor of the Tribune. They decided that they would have to formulate a set of rules, and came up with the GOPPPL. This strange-sounding code, which was adopted in 1963, actually stood for the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League. A prognosticator is one who makes a prediction, or foretells results, which describes their activity precisely.GOPPPL Rules!
Among the GOPPPL rules were the three prerequisites that participants had to meet in order to take part in the league:
- Have an administrative affiliation with an AFL professional team.
- Be directly related to professional football through journalism.
- Have either purchased or sold at least ten tickets for Oakland Raider’s 1963 season.
The next significant advance was the opening of the Kings X sports bar in Oakland in 1968 that held annual fantasy football drafts. This was done by one Andrew Mousalimas, and provided a kick to the league that continued to enjoy a steady growth through the 1970s and beyond. While its rate of spread did not exactly set the country alight, it was unexpected and the increasing following held promise of spectacular things to come.
The way it works is that participants in the fantasy league buy a team of American football players by auction or draft. The players are chosen according their particular skills or attributes and you score points that depend upon the way that your players perform in the actual games. The performance is generally determined by statistical analysis, and points can be awarded as previously indicated. The players themselves are real football players, playing for their own teams. It is only the team and the league that is fantasy.
Some fantasy leagues are run just like real leagues, with drafts, playoffs, salary caps and so on. Players can be given a value and you can only register players up to certain overall value for your team. This prevents everybody selecting only the very best players for their team, and the possibility of hundreds of teams with exactly the same personnel.Fantasy Football Now
Fantasy Football simmered for a few years, although never kicked off completely until the personal computer and the internet made the gathering of statistics unbelievably simple. Prior to that, the idea was a good one, but it was not easy to carry out in practice. Teams and scores were difficult to update because you would have had to find all the statistics for each player in your team, how many rushes were made and yards gained. Not easy to do manually, but now real-time scoring is very accessible.
The internet has now made this simple, and the popularity of fantasy football has risen exponentially to the extent that it is popular throughout the entire world, and is participated in by around 20 million Americans, each with their own virtual team, and competition can be either league based, or head-to-head where you play against a specific opponent.