Fantasy Sports 

Legacy Page

I've run fantasy leagues in 3 sports for a while now:

www.williamt.com/fantasy

This (fun) page sort of summarizes the history, or legacy, of all those leagues. And of course, I will sprinkle in a few stats for your entertainment (cough). Huzzah!

he he... yow, bill 

I. A Brief History of (wasted) Time

The first fantasy league that I ran was 1998 fantasy baseketball: the Naperville Invitational Basketball League: 

The NIBL

The NIBL was pretty unique in its day. It was a head-to-head fantasy basketball league. You played a different team each week... picking two games during the week for each player you had in your lineup: G, G, F, F, C. The score was your tally of points + rebounds + assists + blocks + steals. It didn't take long for that scoring tally to be called "nibls"... as in, "I lost by 37 nilbs last week". 

This was before every website on the planet offered fantasy leagues. I wrote a Java program that sucked the stats out of Yahoo boxscores, and I finagled the web pages myself. Excellent.

Well, the NIBL died in 2003 (pretty much along with basketball in Chicago), but I've run fantasy baseball and football leagues each year since then. These leagues have survived, in some form, divorce, war, near-depression, global warming (not!) and more!

The fantasy seasons that I have run are:

• NIBL from 1998-2003

• Jonesy Football from 2003-2005

• LetsPlay2 Baseball from 2004-2006

• Payton34 Football from 2006-today

• LetsPlay3 Baseball from 2007-today

II. Legacy Database and Stats

So, I have spreadsheets and websites and sometimes even paper notes from all these leagues. Yahoo is also starting to track some legacy information from season to season. I took a couple hours and compiled stats across all the season we have played... legacy stats. Enjoy:

• Legacy spreadsheet from all seasons: legacy.ods (Open Office format)

• List of all owners: owners_list.pdf 

• Baseball legacy stats: baseball_stats.pdf

• Football legacy stats: football_stats.pdf

• NIBL legacy stats: nibl_stats.pdf

• Legacy stats from all leagues, all seasons: all_stats.pdf

• Legacy data sorted by owner: by_owner.pdf

He he.

You can peruse yourself, but here's a couple quick stats jumped out at me:

• 60 different owners... I don't remember meeting 60 different people. He he.

• Don is the easily the most prolific fantasy owner of all-time with a better-then .700 winning percentage over 6 seasons. It's all NIBL work, but still pretty incredible.

• Tommy and I are tied with 3 fantasy titles each. Of course, my record came in 20 seasons, and his in only 12.

• The greatest fantasy baseball team ever? Well, the 2007 Vatican City Pope had a best-ever 0.684 winning percentage with his 144-63-13 record... and, of course, won the title that year.

• Eric also ran the winningest ever football team... the 2008 Mellonville Larue went 11-2-1 for an 0.821 winning percentage. Alas though, the Larue lost the title that year to Jay's HOFFMAN HILLBILLY.

• In the NIBL, good ole williamt (me) went 12-1 with the 1999 Aruba Thong... only to lose in the finals to Don and the West Chicago WifeBeater.

• The worst fantasy team of all time? I have to give the nod to the 2000 Elk Grove Cougar in the NIBL. The Cougar went 0-22 that year. Nice catch, Moz. He he. The only other winless team: NIBL 1999 Bolingbrook Big hops. The worst baseball team ever: Brian's sweet georgia brown squad garnered a 24-186-10 record for the 2007 season. That's nearly 160 games below 0.500 and a meager 0.132 winning percentage. Yikes.

• Finally, the first champion ever was... sigh... a girl. Denise's Manila DogEaters shocked the world with her 1998 NIBL crown.

III. My Legacy

My fantasy teams are always from Naperville, except twice. Here's my team history:

Fun fun fun.

enjoy... yow, bill