If you’re like any red-blooded American, you’re in a fantasy football league. If you have a manic obsession like myself, you’re in multiple fantasy football, baseball, basketball, and hockey leagues throughout the year. We owe all of our fantasy heartaches and triumphs to one man, the reason why Joc Pederson was bitch slapped, 74-year-old Daniel Okrent. The father of fantasy sports and record holder of the biggest bag ever dropped.
Okrent came up with the idea for fantasy the winter before the 1980 baseball season. It was weekly handwritten points system, “rotisserie” style. The “Rotisserie” leagues we still use today actually got its name from the restaurant where Daniel’s first league drafted, La Rotisserie Française in NYC.
What started out as a $250 league amongst friends, spread as a worldwide phenomenon when Okrent became the first public editor for The New York Times.
Now it doesn’t matter what time of the year, what time of the day, what’s happening, fantasy football will be somewhere on your timeline. Tragedy could strike, we could be invaded by a foreign country and someone somewhere would be rushing a deadline to tell you who they believe will “finally crack the top 20 wide receiver threshold this upcoming season”.
According to sportsmedia.com fantasy sports was a $20.36 billion industry in 2020. BILLION and Daniel Okrent never saw a cent. The injustice. Okrent says he doesn’t regret not monetizing his idea which is total bullshit. I’m sure he didn’t live some schmuck life. Editor of The New York Times, author of multiple books, but you created fantasy sports my man! Your name should be next to Musk’s on the Forbes list! Your face should be framed in every sports bar! But alas, fate is a cruel mistress. And most embarrassing of all, Daniel Okrent as of 2015 has never came in first in a fantasy league.
According to sportsmedia.com fantasy sports was a $20.36 billion industry in 2020. BILLION and Daniel Okrent never saw a cent. The injustice. Okrent says he doesn’t regret not monetizing his idea which is total bullshit. I’m sure he didn’t live some schmuck life. Editor of The New York Times, author of multiple books, but you created fantasy sports my man! Your name should be next to Musk’s on the Forbes list! Your face should be framed in every sports bar! But alas, fate is a cruel mistress. And most embarrassing of all, Daniel Okrent as of 2015 has never came in first in a fantasy league.
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