About this Format

Where Fantasy Football Began

Fantasy football traces back to 1962, when Oakland Raiders limited partner Bill Winkenbach, together with Raiders PR staffer Bill Tunnell and Oakland Tribune reporter Scotty Stirling, dreamed up a season-long prognostication game during a road trip. The following August, Winkenbach hosted the first-ever fantasy draft in his den, where eight owners — mostly Raiders staff and Bay Area sportswriters — picked their teams for the newly formed Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League, or GOPPPL.

Pro Football Hall of Famer George Blanda holds a unique piece of trivia from that first draft: he was picked twice — once as a quarterback, once as a placekicker. Fitting, since GOPPPL's original scoring rewarded touchdowns (25 points, whether by pass, rush, or reception), field goals (25 points), extra points (10 points), and long return touchdowns most of all (200 points for a punt, kickoff, or interception return). Yardage and receptions — the backbone of most fantasy scoring today — counted for nothing. Only genuine scoring plays did. Remarkably, that original league is reportedly still played today.

A Points-Only League

Dr. George Reese founded this league on that same principle: your players only help you if they actually put points on the board. There's no credit for total yards or catches — a running back who piles up 150 yards but never crosses the goal line scores nothing here, just as it worked in Oakland in 1963. Touchdowns, two-point conversions, field goals, extra points, and a handful of defensive plays are the only ways to score (see How Scoring Works for the full rules) — a deliberate throwback to the format's original spirit, scaled up with modern distance-based scoring tiers.

Dr. Reese has been running this league for the last 43 years and counting — the founder's league.