What is Relative Fantasy Value?

If you visit this blog over the next weeks, months and hopefully years to come you are going to see the term Relative Fantasy Value or RFV used. One of the things I will be using RFV for is to determine the Fantasy Football Historian Most Valuable Player for each season. 

I thought I’d take a second to explain exactly what it is. 

Back in the mid-1990's, Joe Bryant of FootballGuys came up with a concept called Value Based Drafting or VBD. The basic idea behind VBD is the value of a player is determined not by the number of points he scores, but by how much he outscores his peers at his particular position. Bryant's concept was created to be used during fantasy football drafts, using player projections and player baselines to determine if you should draft the #10 quarterback, the #22 running back or the #39 wide receiver.

The Origins of Fantasy Football

Before I can share my research here on the Fantasy Football Historian blog, I have to talk about the origins of the game of fantasy football. 

In the 1994 edition of Fantasy Football Index magazine, Luke Esser discussed the birth of fantasy football. You can view the article by clicking the link below:

The Birth of Fantasy Football

To quickly summarize the article and some of the history, fantasy football was born in a room at the Manhattan Hotel (now the Milford Plaza) in New York City. The Oakland Raiders were on an East Coast road trip in the fall of 1962 when Wilfred “Bill” Winkenbach (limited partner of the Oakland Raiders), George Ross (Oakland Tribune sports editor) and Scotty Stirling (Oakland Tribune beat reporter) met in that hotel room and came up with idea that became fantasy football, a game played by over 60 million people today.

The first fantasy football league, the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League (GOPPPL) was formed in 1963. The original eight-team league held their first draft in the basement of Winkenbach’s house in East Oakland. The first pick in the GOPPPL draft was future Hall of Fame quarterback George Blanda of the American Football League’s Houston Oilers by Andy Mousalimas and Stirling, who partnered up as team owners.

First GOPPPL Draft (1963)

Welcome to the Fantasy Football Historian Blog

Welcome to the Fantasy Football Historian blog. This site will be dedicated to all things fantasy football from the past, to the present and the future. I have played fantasy football for 30+ years in various forms and look forward to sharing with you some of my research. I will be highlighting the best players, games and seasons starting in 1963 and going through present day. 

If you have any suggestions or comments I would love to hear from you. You can reply to individual posts/articles or I can be reached at jlculley@gmail.com.