I was reading an article from Bill Simmons this morning talking about Fantasy Football and how far it has come. It stirred up some feelings about CHALQ (bad) and my first fantasy season (good). My first season playing was in 1998 on Exit42.com. I had the first pick and took a rookie QB, Peyton Manning. My dad, well he took Ryan Leaf. Needless to say we didn’t understand how fantasy football worked.

This league consisted of my brothers friends, my dad, and my uncle. The 1999 season I played in the family league again, but also started a league with my high school friends. It seemed reasonable enough to me, but in 1999 finding ten high school freshmen football fanatics with email addresses and pitching them on a fantasy football league was not easy. Fantasy football seemed like such a bizarre niche to most of them, and worse, it was considered nerdy. Nothing like today where your girlfriend is about as likely to be in a league as your college roomate. Regardless, we all ended up playing that season. It probably contributed to a few league memebers computer and internet literacy. That league ended up staying together for five seasons. We had formed a ten person social network that kept us together for five months a year.

Yahoo!, CBS, and ESPN have massive sports communites in fantasy football leagues, but they are not sticky or connected. When the NFL season ends, we all lose touch. After that first NFL season in college, my high school league dissolved. There isn’t a year round sports community that allows sports fans to use new communication tools that are prevalent on social networks. Fantasy sports games (Football, Baseball, Golf, Basketball, Hockey, NCAA Sports, Olympics…everything) are the killer app for this community.

Nobody in a current fantasy league benefits by there being 4,000,000 (made up number) fantasy users on Yahoo!. The community hasn’t been connected yet. That’s what is coming next. I just wonder who is going to build it.