HAVE CELEBRITY DIVORCES ALWAYS BEEN CRAZY?
THE NIGHT THAT CHANGED FOOTBALL FOREVER
How Fantasy Football Got Its Start
Every year, 40 million Americans (and even entire offices) play fantasy football, “drafting” players from across the NFL for their virtual teams and competing for money and, more importantly, bragging rights. Maybe you have a virtual team in the locker room as you’re reading this! But where did the concept of fantasy football start? According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the gridiron trend began in a New York City hotel room in 1962 — a night that changed football forever. There, a group of friends led by Oakland Raiders part-owner Bill Winkenbach created the first fantasy football league. They dubbed it the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League — or GOPPPL for short. Apart from the point values assigned to different accomplishments on the field, their original model wasn’t very far off from the fantasy football of today. “The league members would ‘draft’ actual National Football League (NFL) and American Football League … players to their fantasy franchises, and on the basis of the actual performance of those players in games, the members would accrue points and compete against each other,” the encyclopedia reports. Early fantasy football leagues were complicated undertakings. In the days before the internet, members had to agree to reference the box scores in a particular newspaper’s sports pages and “draft” their teams in the same room on long phone calls, or even via snail mail. CBS Sports began offering online fantasy football leagues in 1997, and today it’s even easier to play. The sport is built right into the NFL website (Fantasy.NFL.com), and you can join a free league or start a league of your own with a click! Whether you’re a former player or a superfan who wants to play coach for a day, fantasy is a great way to stake a personal claim in the sport and connect with friends while you do it. Check out the article “How to Play Fantasy Football: A Beginner’s Guide” on NFL.com to learn the basics. It’s updated annually, so make sure you hunt down the 2021 version! When you start, don’t forget to salute Winkenbach, the official “Father of Fantasy Sports.”
What is it about celebrity marriages — and their subsequent endings — that fascinates society? Depending on how you measure, telling the stories of makeups and breakups is a multibillion-dollar industry for media organizations online, in print, and on TV. Are we really that hungry for nasty headlines? Or is something deeper going on in the human psyche? In the last 12 months, we’ve seen some of the worst marriage breakups in Hollywood history, but Amber Heard and Johnny Depp’s libel suit took center stage. As usual, “Whom do you believe?” was the question of the day, but it quickly became obvious that both parties needed a therapist’s help to work through serious emotional problems but, instead, they tried unsuccessfully to do it themselves. Perhaps the most disturbing element in the Heard/Depp trial was the violence that seemed to pervade their daily lives. But that’s nothing new; in fact, the violent behavior of both partners is likely what drew so much attention in the first place. That was certainly the case with O.J. Simpson’s breakupwith his wife, which didn’t get half the headlines her murderwould (and the “trial of the century” that followed) two years later. You could argue, though, that we’re getting better. When we look at the roots of the “celebrity divorce” phenomenon, it goes back in time to the realm of myth. The gods of Greece and Rome were always leaving each other and getting back together, a clear indication of the drama that interested our ancestors. But the most famous celebrity divorce of the pre-19th century (and perhaps of all time) was Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. It had all the hallmarks of modern public breakups: People took one side or the other, with other parties still “shipping” Henry and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Henry and Catherine’s divorce led to the trauma of war across England and Europe. Like today’s celebrity cases, it didn’t last long. Anne was executed a few short years later when someone new caught the king’s eye. Henry VIII was the archetype of the modern Hollywood actor with the wandering gaze, and Catherine and Anne typified the women willing to give him “one more chance.”
Seeing how that ended, perhaps we should be grateful that things today are aired out in the media — instead of on the battlefield!
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