With the NFL preseason getting underway starting with the Hall Of Fame Game this weekend, fantasy football season is coming soon. Not everyone is going to just play their usual leagues. Daily Fantasy Sports is a multi-billion dollar industry. Whether you think that it’s gambling or a legal form of skill-based entertainment, daily fantasy sports is a big deal in sports but it’s not exactly new. In fact, while fantasy sports has been around for over 70 years, daily fantasy is actually almost ten years old. For more fun facts on fantasy sports, we have this handy infographic for you.
Fantasy Sports
The Dollars and Cents of the Fantasy Football Boom (Infographic)
With the hockey season just underway and the NFL already far enough in for my Lions to be eliminated from the playoffs, fantasy football’s busiest time of year is in full swing. You know it’s a big deal because you hear people talking about fantasy sports all the time. What you may not know is how big a deal it is. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry with tens of millions of people playing every week.
For more on the dollars, cents and sense of fantasy sports, here’s a handy infographic looking at the fantasy football industry.
Join The Lowdown Blog Fantasy Basketball Pool
With the NHL’s players and owners locked in a bitter labour dispute with no end in sight, we’re turned to a different league to give us our fantasy sports fix for the winter. That’s why we’ve launched our first fantasy basketball league. There are 16 spots in the league and it’s a public pool so anyone can join which means spaces will go quickly. It’s a head-to-head league with the winner of each match-up based on winning the most of the nine categories (Points, Blocks, Steals, Assists, Rebounds, FG%, FT%, 3P%, Double-Doubles). The autopick is on October 25th so sign up now so you’re not left in the cold.
Click here to join The LowdownBlog.com Fantasy Basketball League.
Join The Lowdown Blog 2012 Fantasy Baseball Pool
If you thought that we were only hockey, football and Formula One fans around here at The Lowdown Blog, you would’ve been wrong. We’re also baseball fans. This year, we’ve got a couple of different rotisserie baseball pools for you to join.
The first is a classic rotisserie league. You compete against the rest of the league on ten different traditional roto stats including runs, home runs, RBIs, stolen bases, batting average, strikeouts, pitcher wins, saves, ERA and WHIP. Click here to join the classic LowdownBlog.com Roto Pool.
Our other rotisserie baseball league is based on Moneyball. Bill James would be proud of this fantasy pool because we’ve picked ten stats that follow the classic Moneyball principles. These stats are runs, extra base hits, RBIs, pitches per plate appearance, OPS, pitcher wins, ERA, WHIP, strikeouts per nine innings and saves plus holds. Click here to join the LowdownBlog.com Moneyball Roto Pool.
Join The Lowdown Blog March Madness Bracket Challenge
In addition to all the other March Madness and bracketology happening here this month, we’re launching our own March Madness Bracket Challenge. If you have an ESPN.com account, signing up is as simple filling out a bracket. Click here to get to our March Madness challenge page.
Remember, this challenge is all about pride and bragging rights.
Fantasy Racing Advice: March 11 – 13, 2011
Alright, last week’s picks didn’t go so well for me. I ended up 1678th out of 4500 in the Wind Tunnel Super 7 Sweep pool. It was still in the top half of the field but that’s what happens when Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and Kevin Harvick (in NNS) all lay eggs. This week, the Camping World Truck Series is the only S7S series in action so I’m giving you my team for this week and why I think I’ve got the right team for the job. Continue reading
Fantasy Racing Advice: March 4 – 6, 2011
Since I fancy myself a bit of a fantasy racing guru thanks to a few weekly top ten finishes in Wind Tunnel’s Super 7 Sweep and a top fifty in their Chase for the Championship, I thought I would share my insights and luck with you folks here. Since my primary fantasy series is the Wind Tunnel Super 7 Sweep, I’ll be gearing my advice to that game. That may change if you tell me what some of the more popular games are. Then I can gear my advice to help you out.
For now, here’s my pick for this weekend’s action in motorsports. Continue reading
The Humanoids: Friday The 13th Edition
It’s that day of the year that shows up whenever the hell it wants. It’s Friday the 13th. Good luck avoiding homicidal maniacs that will try to kill and inevitably will if you try to run away screaming. But today’s column isn’t about serial killers, though I understand that one was in the news recently. No, today’s column is about things that are wastes of time or wasting our time or somehow attached to things that waste our time. Anyway, there’s dangerous forces at work that need to be stopped. Generally it’s the usual moroninity that I cover here on The Humanoids except that I was really fired up over some of the ridiculousness of some folks over the last week. This post might have a bad title but I’d like to think that the content is good.
Anyway, the latest episode of the radio show is online. This one had something that should go away: Me talking about TV. Entertainment should be purely Jackie’s domain. However, it had a lot of Christopher Walken’s Poker Face in there which brought the show right back up. Click here to get the synopsis and download links for the radio show and Extra. Our next show is going to be another hockey edition. Don’t worry, thing’s will pick up in December. We’re trying to get a copy of DJ Hero from Activision to review for the annual Christmas gift buying guide (also known as The Lowdown’s Salute to Capitalism). There’s no way that works out the way we want it to. Continue reading
The Lowdown 