Fantasy Football has opened new doors to the world of Internet gaming. A simple game that started out as fun has become nationally known.The popularity of fantasy football has rapidly grown as Yahoo!, ESPN and even the National Football League have gotten into the action by offering various leagues.

Josh Chauvin, health and physical education junior from Thibodaux, believes the game has become so popular because it is advertised more.

“I think the media increased the popularity of fantasy football,” Chauvin said. “It has been around for a while, but it didn’t become really popular until it was being advertised more and more often.”

NFL analyst Mike Detillier said fantasy football has become so popular that he gets more calls about that than anything else.

“People call me all the time asking for hints about who to draft,” Detillier said. “Out of all of the things I do with the draft book and everything, I still receive more calls about fantasy football.”

Detillier said that knowing information about players is also very helpful in winning a fantasy football league.

“The people who are in paid leagues have to do their homework on a player before they draft him,” Detillier said. “It is important to know a player’s stats and information about a player. In years past, the stats of a player may not have had to be known, where as they do now in order to draft well.”

Certain publications, which help with the background information on players, are available to the public.

“Magazines like ‘Sporting News’ produce books just on fantasy football,” Detillier said. “The rules of fantasy football leagues can vary depending on the type of league in which a player may be. Some leagues have salary caps and others have no trade deadlines; it all depends on the type of league you’re in to determine who to draft.”

In a normal league, each team is allowed 15 players, but only one quarterback, two running backs, three receivers, one tight end, one kicker and one overall defense is allowed to start. The rest are placed on the bench and can be swapped at anytime during the week until the first game starts on Sunday.

Each league consists of 10 teams that play one another in a head-to-head fashion each week. Each league has a total of five games a week with each team in the league playing one game each week. At the end of 12 weeks, each team will have played each other at least once, and the top four teams play each other to determine who will finish 1-4.. The bottom six teams play each other to determine who will finish 6-10.

A team-owner’s fantasy points are determined by how well the players on his team perform that week. At the end of the week, the points are calculated, and the team with the most fantasy points wins each game.

In addition to rules being different, the type of play for each league is also different. Players who play for fun will generally not be as competitive as those who play for money.

Chauvin prefers Yahoo! fantasy football above all the rest.

“As long as I’ve been playing, I’ve used Yahoo!,” Chauvin said. “I like the way Yahoo! has their leagues set up so I’ll stick with them.”

Yahoo!, which offers a variety of fantasy sports, lets the participants choose whether to live-draft or auto-pick draft. If a live draft is chosen, then an individual receives an E-mail stating the time of the draft, and every team’s owner can choose the best available player.

The auto-pick draft feature allows people to pre-rank their players as to who they would like the computer to draft for them. If a pre-ranked player were already taken, the computer would choose the next highest ranked player at that position.

Chauvin prefers the live-draft.

“I rather live-draft because you know you are getting the best available players,” Chauvin said. “The computer drafts players according to their last season stats, which aren’t always the best player.”

Both Detillier and Chauvin believe they would draft Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning with the first pick.

The ability to form private leagues is also available through Yahoo!.

“I am in one public league and two private leagues,” Chauvin said. “I rather private leagues because it gives me and my friends something to do on Sunday.”

The fantasy football season begins at the same time as the NFL’s regular season. Detillier believes the game has raised interest in the real sport.

“In a way, fantasy football can increase the interest in pro-football,” Detillier said. “It gives someone a reason to want to watch football so he can see how his players are doing.