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Page 3 • Tuesday, November 19, 2001
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Computer Quarterbacks
Fantasy football blitzes the Internet and satisfies NFL fanatics
By Denise Schoppe
THE BATTALION
There is high school football. There is ed
ge football. There is the NFL. And then ...
Miljereis fantasy football.
“1 basically started playing fantasy football
jisaway to make NFL football more interest-
|g,”said Matt Fleener, Class of 1997.. “I
pped having a favorite team when the
'opie preienj
Cowboys fired Tom Landry. I always had
incover
iden
ffevorite players.”
Fantasy football is an online game that
lows gamers to assemble their own “fantasy”
jjeams from active National Football League
payers. Teams are organized into leagues. A
jam’s success is based on the performance of
it-NFL players during real-life games,
iker on ihe J Gamers and their fictitious teams play against
fer to thekifcftch other for prizes and bragging rights,
omat in “Fantasy Football allows you to have an
3ct. 28, the Interest in almost all the games played each
noted in thet^eek,” Fleener said.
Once participants are set up against each
bin Laden eriMher, there is a draft where the teams are built
direct jl)\ picking players and putting them on each
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trticipant’s team.
Dan Mulka, a senior management major at
[erris State University in Michigan, plays in
ro leagues, but only spends about half an hour
[week playing the game. His league is run by
the Web site www.yahoo.com,
one of several fantasy football
providers.
“I’m in a league with my
supervisor at work and then
one with about 10 of my
friends from home,” Mulka said.
“Yahoo keeps it pretty organized
with each league on its own
(Web) page.”
Yahoo is not the only site
that offers fantasy football,
but it’s one of the few that
offers it for free. This
helped draw Mulka into the
game in the first place.
Some players are
brought in by friends
that are already
involved.
Chris Camacho,
a senior electrical
engineering tech
nology major, was brought
into the game by his broth
er.
“At NFL.com you
have to have 12
teams to make a
league and he need
ed a few more teams.
so he actually signed me up,” Camacho
said.
Since then he said some of the people
in his dorm tried to put together a league
as well.
“We tried to make a league in Hotard
(Hall), but somehow we couldn’t put it
together,” Camacho said. “I don’t
think that we ever got 12 people to
JON FULLRICH • THE BATTALION
so the league was never formed.”
Despite Hotard Hall’s experience, fantasy
football is growing in popularity across the
nation, but some gamers are more involved
with their teams than others.
“Sometimes I don’t think about it,” Camacho
said. “I really don’t put much time into it.”
Camacho said he spends around half an hour
a week playing the game. However, the lack of
time and attention to the game hasn’t hurt his
team, he said.
“I am undefeated when I set my team up,”
Camacho said. “So I like to give others a
chance by not even looking at my team for that
week. Or, at least that’s how I excuse it.”
Camacho said he’s never talked about the
game with the people he is playing against, but
occasionally he will talk with other people in
his dorm who are playing in other leagues.
“I will talk about it when we see highlights
of games,” Camacho said. “They ask me for tips
and I tell them that would be cheating, because
if I give them tips then they will never lose.”
For some players, the teasing and competi
tion is something that keeps the game lively.
“I’ve played with roughly the same guys for
the last five years,” Fleener said. “For us it is a
way to make every game more interesting and a
chance for competition and trash-talking
PEOPLE IN THE NEWS
Defendants in Russell
Crowe case file law suit
|SYDNEY, Australia (AP) — Three men
accused of blackmailing Russell
Crowe over his role in a brawl said
Monday they're suing police and
prosecutors for malicious prosecution
and wrongful arrest.
jotapeotLs 1 Police accused Philip Cropper and
I by U.S.fa!® a ' C0 ' m Mercer, both 38, and Mark
and
Potts, 45, of trying to extort money
from the actor after he was allegedly
captured on a videotape in a brawl
outside a nightclub in Coffs Harbor on
Nov. 18, 1999.
Crowe, the Oscar-winning "Gladiator"
star, has a ranch in the hills behind
Coffs Harbor, a seaside town halfway
between Sydney and Brisbane.
Charges against Potts were with
drawn shortly before he was to go to
trial earlier this year. A jury cleared
Cropper and Mercer in June of
demanding money from Crowe in
return for not publicizing the video.
Ex-gardener sues TIC
singer Tionne/T-Boz'
MOORPARK, Calif. (AP) - A gardener
is suing Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins of the
R&B group TLC and her rapper hus
band, Mack 10, for allegedly stiffing
him on a bill for snapdragons.
A hearing is scheduled for next
month in the lawsuit, filed in Ventura
County Superior Court in July.
The lawsuit contends that the singer
and her husband. Detrick Rolison,
ordered landscaping last year for their
gated Moorpark home but never paid
their gardening firm, Kevin Persons Inc.
Persons alleges the couple owes him
nearly $15,000 for providing 50 flats of
mixed snapdragons, four 15-gallon
plants, sod, sprinklers, tree lighting and
10 square yards of walk-on bark.
The Thousand Oaks gardener claims
he had an oral agreement with Mack 10.
"He's got more money in cars than
what I make in a year," Persons said
Friday.
The couple did not have an immedi
ate comment Monday.
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