It is that time of year again. Football fans are glued to their phones, checking stats and scores and debating who they should start this week. They are talking trash at their lunch tables to their opponents and arguing who has the better team; it is fantasy football season.

“I love playing fantasy. It’s cool because you can build your own team and see how it actually progresses in real life. It’s a glimpse of what it’s like being a coach in the NFL. Plus, you can play in a league with all your close friends which is really fun. It makes the competition more intense,” senior Josh Gorman said.

Fantasy football players can choose to play in a league for fun or they can play to win money.

“There are 10 people in the league I’m in,” senior Clay Bierk said. “We all put down $10 and the person who wins the league will get $100. We figured that playing for money would make the league more competitive.”

Before the NFL season started, each league held a draft where each of the league members picked the players they wanted on their team.

“During our draft, I had to go to a volleyball meeting so I had to AutoDraft, which is where the app automatically chooses players for you. I was really mad because in past years I auto drafted and it turned out awful, but my team didn’t turn out to be too bad this year,” Bierk said.

For Birek, there is more to fantasy football than just drafting good players: strategy.

“There’s kind of a strategy to it,” Bierk said. “I don’t pay that much attention to the projected points. I usually just look at how the teams are going to do in general, because if a team sucks,they probably won’t do that well.”

Not all fantasy football players compete for money.

“I don’t really pay that much attention to my team because the league I’m in isn’t playing for money. I only check it every once in awhile,” senior Drew Seers said. “I play fantasy every year because it makes watching games more exciting. You end up getting into the game more because you actually have a reason to care about the outcome of a game.”

NFL fans who are passionate about a team claim that their fantasy teams make it hard to watch some games.

“I’m a huge Steelers fan, so I always try to draft players on the Steelers but I always have trouble deciding between my fantasy team and my actual team. You kind of contradict yourself when you root for players on your own fantasy team to do well against the actual team you root for,” junior Daniel Loaney said.

Trash talking is a common practice amongst league members.

“My league has a group chat that is basically all trash talk. We’ll say things to our opponents to get in their heads. The worst is after you lose to someone and they rub it in your face. I’m a competitive person, so it really grinds my gears,” Gorman said.

League members are not stuck with the players they draft. Rather, they have to opportunity to make trades with other league members.

“I love tricking people into making bad trades. I’ll trade them multiple players who aren’t very good for one good player, so it makes it seem like an even trade. Sometimes [it] works, sometimes it doesn’t,” Bierk said.

Trash talk aside, members of fantasy leagues, like Gorman, claim that being involved makes watching NFL football more fun.

“It makes watching football better for me because I am able to learn more about the NFL and the different players,” Gorman said. “I can track their stats and passing yards. It helps me get to know the game of football better, which makes watching it more enjoyable.”