Fantasy Football Trivia
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This fantasy football trivia quiz has 49 free questions with answers and covers the whole hobby, not just this year's rankings. It starts with the origin story - Wilfred Winkenbach, the 1962 Raiders road trip, the GOPPPL and the Oakland bar where the first public league was born - then moves through the internet era: CBS in 1997, Yahoo going free in 1999, the NFL's own game, and the rise of DraftKings and FanDuel. There is a full block on how the game is actually played - PPR and standard scoring, snake and auction drafts, dynasty, best ball, superflex, guillotine and empire leagues, and jargon like FAAB, sleeper and Zero-RB - plus a run of the real NFL seasons that fantasy managers still talk about: LaDainian Tomlinson's 31 touchdowns, Peyton Manning's 55, Randy Moss's 23, Chris Johnson's 2,509 yards and more. The League, Matthew Berry and the Tommy Pham slap round things out. Roughly a third of the questions are warm-ups any league regular can handle; the rest climb toward commissioner-level detail. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia, ESPN's own glossary and the primary sources they cite, and each explanation adds one more fact worth knowing.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Bill Winkenbach, who devised fantasy football on a 1962 road trip, had what real-life tie to the Oakland Raiders?
Part-owner
Part-owner Bill Winkenbach sketched the rules in a New York hotel with a Raiders PR man and an Oakland Tribune reporter, so the game of pretend owners was invented by a real one.
Q 02What word fills the blank in the first fantasy football league, the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin ___ League?
Prognosticators
Prognosticators gave the league its triple-P acronym, GOPPPL, and in 2015 it was still playing under its original scoring system.
Q 03Which quarterback and kicker was the first pick in fantasy football's first draft in 1963?
George Blanda
George Blanda was then a Houston Oiler, so a league founded by Raiders insiders opened with a rival's star; Oakland signed him itself four years later.
Q 04In the first fantasy football league, a touchdown pass scored the same 25 points as what?
Field goal
Field goal: a kick was worth as much as a touchdown pass, while any kickoff, punt or interception run back for a score paid 200, eight times as much.
Q 05Fantasy football first went public in 1969, when an original league member started a league at what kind of business?
A sports bar
A sports bar, the King's X in Oakland, hosted it, and patrons who crossed the bay for its trivia contests soon started leagues in their own bars.
Q 06Before he turned to football, fantasy football's inventor devised a 1950s fantasy game for which sport?
Golf
Golf came first: each player drafted a team of pros, and the lowest combined score at the week's tournament won.
Q 07Rotisserie leagues are named for La Rotisserie Francaise, a Manhattan restaurant where writers planned the first one for which sport?
Baseball
Baseball: Daniel Okrent and friends planned their league over lunch there, and the restaurant's name became a label for fantasy leagues in any sport.
Q 08Which site broke from its pay-to-play rivals by launching free fantasy football in July 1999?
Yahoo
Yahoo went free while its big rivals charged every league, and living on ad money instead made it the most visited fantasy host on the web.
Q 09Which network launched online fantasy football in 1997, while shut out of NFL broadcasts for a fourth straight season?
CBS
CBS lost the NFL to Fox after the 1993 season and got games back only in 1998, so its SportsLine fantasy leagues returned it to football a year before its cameras did.
Q 10Which Eagles running back entered fantasy football infamy in 2007 by dropping at the 1-yard line instead of scoring?
Brian Westbrook
Brian Westbrook had a clear path to the end zone against Dallas but went down so the Eagles, leading 10-6, could simply run out the clock.
Q 11A job-placement firm that prices fantasy football's cost in lost work time still tells employers to do what?
Embrace office leagues
Embrace office leagues: the firm put the 2019 cost at about $9 billion, yet argued that playing together lifts morale and helps companies hold on to staff.
Q 12What won fantasy sports an exemption from the 2006 federal ban on online gambling payments?
Managers' skill
Managers' skill: the law exempts contests whose winners reflect knowledge and skill across many real games, while it defines gambling as staking money on a game subject to chance.
Q 13After an insider-information scandal in 2015, DraftKings and FanDuel both banned whom from playing daily fantasy for money?
Q 21In a 'best ball' league, what does a team's weekly point total automatically reflect?
The highest-scoring players at each position
The highest-scoring players at each position count automatically, so nobody sets a lineup, and since most contests also drop trades and waiver pickups, the draft decides almost everything.
Q 22What happens each week in a 'guillotine' league?
The lowest-scoring team is eliminated
The lowest-scoring team is eliminated and its whole roster hits the waiver wire, so the surviving teams bid for its stars and grow stronger each week until one is left.
Q 23After a dynasty league's first season, the yearly draft centers on which group of players?
Their own employees
Their own employees were barred after a DraftKings staffer won $350,000 on FanDuel, sparking claims he had seen inside data on which players rivals were picking.
Q 14A PPR league awards one bonus point for every what?
Catch
Catch: PPR stands for point per reception, a format that lifts the value of pass-catching running backs and high-volume receivers.
Q 15Under default ESPN and Yahoo scoring, which kind of touchdown is worth only four points instead of six?
Passing
Passing touchdowns pay four while rushing and receiving scores pay six, so a quarterback needs three scoring throws to match two touchdowns by a running back.
Q 16ESPN and Yahoo kickers earn bonus points for which kind of kick?
Long-distance
Long-distance kicks pay extra: both sites give three points inside 40 yards, four from 40 to 49 and at least five from 50 out, so leg strength shows up in the score.
Q 17In default ESPN, Yahoo and NFL.com lineups, the flex spot takes a running back, wide receiver or which other position?
Tight end
Tight end is the third option, yet few are ever flexed: only a handful of tight ends score well enough, so the spot usually goes to a running back or receiver.
Q 18A 'superflex' league lets teams start which position in the flex slot, where it is normally not allowed?
Quarterback
Quarterback: because a team can start two of them, passers fly off the board far earlier in superflex drafts than in one-QB leagues.
Q 19In a snake draft, the owner who opens round one picks where in round two?
Last
Last: the order reverses every round in the interest of fairness, so whoever picks last in round one also opens round two with back-to-back picks.
Q 20In an auction draft, who chooses which player goes up for bidding next?
Each owner in turn
Each owner in turn names a player and the highest bid wins him, so everyone has a shot at any star, unlike a snake draft where a target can vanish before your pick.
NFL rookies
NFL rookies are the prize because dynasty teams keep most or all of their players from year to year, so the yearly draft is the main way to add fresh talent.
Q 24In fantasy football, what does IDP stand for?
Individual Defensive Player
Individual Defensive Player leagues lean on tackles for points, so every-down linebackers, who pile them up weekly, are the foundation of most lineups.
Q 25In fantasy football, what does the acronym FAAB stand for?
Free Agent Acquisition Budget
Free Agent Acquisition Budget: each manager gets a fixed season-long pool for blind bids on waiver players, so a desperate owner can blow the lot on a single pickup.
Q 26In fantasy jargon, what is a 'sleeper'?
A player expected to outperform his draft position
A player expected to outperform his draft position comes cheap, which is why managers hunt sleepers: a late-round pick who produces like an early one is a draft's best value.
Q 27The 'Zero-RB' draft strategy means passing on running backs during which part of the draft?
The first four or five rounds
The first four or five rounds go to receivers and other positions, on the theory that running backs get hurt most often, so cheap backups can turn into starters by midseason.
Q 28Adding a new defense each week to face the weakest offense is a waiver tactic known as what?
Streaming
Streaming works because defenses score on the other side's mistakes, so even an ordinary unit can thrive against a weak offense and many managers never draft one early.
Q 29The FX comedy 'The League' followed six fantasy football friends living in which city?
Chicago
Chicago is home to the six friends; after four seasons FX moved the comedy to its new channel FXX to help launch it, and the show ran three more seasons there.
Q 30A fantasy manager who drafts a 'handcuff' is picking the real-life understudy to whom?
Their own star running back
Their own star running back: the handcuff is an insurance policy, a backup whose value soars only if the starter gets hurt, so the manager keeps that team's carries either way.