Making Learning Fun

Alexander Walker
ENGL 1102: Writing for Academic Contexts II
Professor Walden
March 17, 2014

Walker 1




Introduction
Throughout this paper we will explore game-like platforms such as fantasy football and
how it offers incredible possibilities for learning and problem solving. In this paper I will discuss
how to use fantasy football as a mode of learning in classrooms. Is it not possible to make
learning fun? Can we not take something that the kids find fun and find a way to incorporate that
into the learning lesson to get them more focused? When it comes to learning I have found it to
be very helpful if I can see how what I am being taught can be used in everyday life. I know I
am not the only one who feels this way. Back in High School I did this poll before where I asked
Do you like learning something even know you most likely know you will not ever use it again
after school?. Every one answered no. When it comes to especially math they teach you a lot of
these ridiculous formulas and I have talked too many of people about if they even used these
formulas when they got older and their answer was umm not really. So why teach us
something we will never use again once out of school? When it especially comes to math class I
have the hardest time wanting to learn something and staying focus when I know the formula
they are trying to teach me is a waste of time and that I can get through life without it. I mean I
have talked to some engineers about what they were taught in calculus 1 and 2 and they told me
straight up the calculus 2 will probably be the hardest math I learn and that it is the most
pointless because everything they learned in calculus 2 them as an engineer never used it again.
So you tell me why I am being taught math formulas that even a field as engineering, which is
based around math, does not even use anymore. Well I then came up with an idea of how to
make learning fun. Why not take something that people can do on a daily based that involves
things that they would be taught. I was watching a television show called The League. For those
Walker 2



of you that have never heard of it, it is about fantasy football. As a fan of fantasy football I
absolutely love this show. Even if you werent a fan of the show I am pretty sure you would like
the television show because it is an extremely funny show. As being a fan of fantasy football I
realized that you can take something as fantasy football and use it to teach people. With fantasy
football you can use the stats of each game or practice predicting what you think a certain player
will do against that certain team based on past matchups between those teams of just based off of
how those teams or players are performing. So I guess what I am getting at is with this paper I
would like to explore the world of fantasy football and see how people relate to it and is if there
is a way to take what you do in fantasy football and use that to teach. So to beginning I will give
you a literacy review of fantasy football that will incorporate the history of fantasy football and
how it has developed.
Literacy Review
Ever since I got into the television show, The League, I have been playing fantasy
football which then translated into me playing other fantasy sports. I have decided to do my
assignments for this class on one of my favorite television shows which is what my observation
notes state. For this assignment I am researching more on how fantasy sports work, how they
came about and how they affect fan attendance and on just the overall effect of fantasy sports. I
did most my research on fantasy sports on the game of fantasy football since the television show
that I observed was about fantasy football.
Fantasy Sports
In this section I will go into how fantasy sports work and talk about different
fantasy sports. To start off with if it is a sport then there is most likely a fantasy sport for it. Just
Walker 3



an example of sports you can play is Football, Baseball, Basketball, Racing, Hockey, and even
golf. I found this stat from this survey that says football is the most popular fantasy sport
followed by baseball, basketball, hockey, NASCAR, and golf (Lomax 420). This survey was
done in 2003. If it was an update survey it would probably be Football, Baseball, Basketball,
NASCAR, hockey and then golf. The fantasy sport of NASCAR is slowly but surely growing.
To play these fantasy sports there is three popular websites. One is on course ESPN
(Entertainment and Sports Programing Network), then you have CBS Sports and Yahoo Sports.
I have played some type of fantasy sport on each of these websites and I will have to say the one
I like the best is ESPN. While playing these fantasy sports you can add players or trade players
with other teams and if you dont want them anymore you can release them (Davis 247). You
can even take your injured players and put them on an injury reserved spot if they arent
seriously injured so you dont have to risk losing those players but you can place them on the
injured reserve so you can free up a spot to find a fill in. When it comes to fantasy sports you
take the stats of the players per game and how ever they do will get you points (247). People
have started playing in leagues now that cost money to play and if you finish the season in the
top three you win money. Normally third place is just like your money back and second place
gets you a little money where first place you get majority of the money (247). So basically your
main purpose is to be a better manager than the other participants in your league (Randle 147).
Fantasy Sports History-
I decided I should just research the history of fantasy sports so I can give a background to
my paper. Back in 2006, fantasy sports had been in existence for over 50 years (Lomax 416). If
you go even further back to 1999 there was an estimate do that stated there was about 30 million
fantasy sports players in the United States and that 6 million of those played online (Shipman 2).
Walker 4



To make it where fantasy sports had been around for so long you have to go back and take into a
count the days before computers when people played fantasy sports with game boards, player
cards, and dice (Lomax 416). The very first fantasy sports board game to come out was fantasy
baseball (416). To play the fantasy baseball board game you were given a batting lineup, a dice,
player cards and score sheets (417). You would use the dice to determine how the batter did
against the pitcher (417). Fantasy football can be traced all the way back to the fall of 1962
(417). It is stated in this article that fantasy football was started up by Bill Winkenbach and he
called his league the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League (417). This
term for fantasy football stuck until it finally became called fantasy football (417). When the
internet came along they made fantasy sports more realistic by allowing you to do what actually
General Managers (GMs) can do (417). By doing that you start getting more advanced and
coming up with the rules.
Rules of Fantasy Football
Some of the things that got added in that GMs could do was trade deadlines, free agency
and being about to trade your players and do an actually live draft with your friends in your
fantasy sports league (417). When you draft players you draft for position and in fantasy football
you normally have 1-2 quarterbacks, 2-3 running back, 2-3 wide receivers, 1 tight end, 1 defense
team, and 1 kicker (Nesbit 96). The scoring process is based off of a few different things. For
quarterbacks you score points in fantasy football based off of your yardage thrown and
touchdowns thrown during the real life game that day (96). Your quarterback can also lose points
though if they throw an interception. For the running backs the scoring is based off of the yards
gained and touchdowns for their game in real life (96). Your running back can lose points if they
fumble the football during that game. For your wide receivers and tight ends they earn their
Walker 5



points based off of catches, yards gained and touchdowns for that game in real life that week
(96). Your wide receivers and tight ends can lose points for drop passes in a game and fumbles.
Your kicker earns points for extra points made and the certain distance of the field goal made
(96). Like if your kicker was to make a field of 30 yards and then one of 50 yards the 50 one
who be worth more points. With kickers they lose points for missed field goals or blocked field
goals. For your defensive they score points for tackles made, sacks, interceptions, forced
fumbles, fumbles recovered, and touchdowns (96). Your defensive though loses so many points
if they allow so many yards or so many points. In fact now there is a chat room inside the draft
room so you can chat with your friends while they are drafting and comment on each others
picks and it just makes everything seem so much more real. There has even been research done
on the motives behind participating in fantasy sports and the research consisted of 21 items with
seven dimensions which are economic, social interaction, escape, fantasy, achievement,
knowledge, and pass time (Young 2). Some of this interest people have for fantasy sports is due
to the fact that fantasy sports is based off of real life and a virtual world (4). The fact the real life
brings into it is the stats and gives you the ability to actually watch the real life and then see what
happens transfer to that virtual world where you have a team who needs those stats of that player
(4).
Criticism of Fantasy Sports
But with the internet came problems like the NFL Players Association arguing saying
that using the players stats is like using their photographs (Shipman 2). Along with some of that
you also had people arguing that it was just a way to get people to gamble and that they should
not be allowed. Fantasy football can be so addicting at times because you just get so into it. In
the book written by Matthew Berry, he gives examples of what some people were willing to do
Walker 6



for fantasy football. One of the example that where given was about this guy who was a best
man in a wedding and he started trying to trade for Megatron (Berry 120). Megatron is only the
best wide receiver in the NFL right now. Well anyways the guy is standing up front for the
wedding being the best man which his phone out and him trying to wheel and deal over text
messaging with this other guy (121). Another example Berry gives is about this boy who forgets
that his players were coming off a bye week so during the middle of his SAT he pulls out his
phone to put those players back in his lineup (125). Was it worth it, who knows I mean he got
called out for cheating during the SAT. Now with all this background information I have given
through my literacy review I will now conclude my argument.
My Opinion
My opinion is that you can use something like Fantasy football to make teaching a class
like Stats and make it fun to learn. To teach a class like stats you use things like polls and
statistics so you could easily use fantasy sports to make it fun. The only problem you run into is
that fantasy sports tend to not appeal to girls as much as it does to guys. You also run into the
problem that certain people only like certain sports. Like certain people would not find it
interesting to play fantasy sports for soccer if they do not like soccer or understand how soccer
works. So I truly feel like using fantasy sports to make teaching fun especially in a class like
Stats but you would have to come up with an idea to maybe partner people up for the sport they
like but then you run into the problem that certain sports do not start at the same time and the fact
that certain people would not find it interesting. I feel like it would work but to satisfy everyone
would be impossible so you would just have to basically make everyone do one sport and then
you basically are back into the problem of a normal class that would make it boring for some.

Walker 7



Conclusion
So with all that background you get to see how fantasy football as developed over the
years due to the change in technology and how education as impacted fantasy football. I just
found it hard to believe that even before technology people still loved sports so much that they
played what they called then fantasy football where they had to do their own work and keep up
with stats to calculate who would win. So I mean using fantasy football to help teach someone to
learn would be easy but there is a problem that you will run into. That is getting everyone
interested. I mean everyone likes different sports so how could you just use fantasy football
when lets say there is a person who does not even watch football because they do not like the
sport and that they would rather watch baseball because they are huge baseball fans. When it
comes to learning it is going to ne about impossible to get everyone interested into what is being
taught because everyone has different interest. I mean yes it is possible to use fantasy sports as a
way to teach a class but there is the fact that people like different sports so do you go with the
approach that they can do their favorite sport or that you will do multiply lessons with different
sports so everyone will get what they want and be able to experience what it was like learning it
through a different sport. Another problem you will run into with fantasy sports is the fact that
not many girls play fantasy sports but let me tell you the ones that do get so into it and honestly I
feel like enjoy it more than the guys. So the hard part would definitely be getting everyone to
participate. I mean I guess you could show the television show the League to the class so it
would let everyone see how fantasy sports works, and that all types of people can play. By
possibly showing the show you could get the girls interested into it. So using something like
fantasy sports or more in detail like fantasy football can be done to teach a lesson on problem
solving. If you could just get everyone to participate then you are home free.
Walker 8



Bibliography

Berry, Matthew. 2013. Fantasy life: the outrageous, uplifting, and heartbreaking world of
fantasy sports from the guy who's lived it.
Davis, Nickolas W., and Margaret Carlisle Duncan. "Sports Knowledge is Power Reinforcing
Masculine Privilege Through Fantasy Sport League Participation." Journal of Sport &
Social Issues 30, no. 3 (2006): 244-264.
Lomax, Richard G. "Fantasy sports: History, game types, and research." Handbook of sports and
media (2006): 416-425.
Nesbit, Todd M., and Kerry A. King. 2010. "The Impact of Fantasy Football Participation on
NFL Attendance". Atlantic Economic Journal. 38 (1): 95-108.
Randle, Quint, and Rob Nyland. 2008. "Participation in Internet Fantasy Sports Leagues and
Mass Media Use". Journal of Website Promotion. 3 (3/4): 143-152.
Shipman, Frank M. "Blending the real and virtual: Activity and spectatorship in fantasy sports."
In Proceedings from DAC01: The Conference on Digital Arts and Culture. Retrieved on
April, vol. 8, p. 2007. 2001.
Staff, NPR. "An Unreal Sport: Mixing 'Fantasy Life' With Reality." NPR.
http://www.npr.org/2013/07/16/202310956/an-unreal-sport-mixing-fantasy-life-with-
reality (accessed February 24, 2014).

Walker 9



Suh, Young Ik, Choonghoon Lim, Dae Hee Kwak, and Paul M. Pedersen. "Examining the
psychological factors associated with involvement in fantasy sports: An analysis of
participants motivations and constraints." International Journal of Sport Management.
Recreation & Tourism 5 (2010): 1-28.
Walker, Alexander. 2014. Assignment One Observation Notes.




Images
http://influxis.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/cbs_sports_fantasy_main.jpg
http://sites.psu.edu/thisandthat/wp-content/uploads/sites/4615/2013/09/momentum-fantasy-sports.jpeg
http://payload177.cargocollective.com/1/8/277497/5848345/ESPN_Fantasy_App_tiles_all.FINAL_1.jpg
https://www.profootballfocus.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/fantasy_life.jpg