Before I can share my research here on the Fantasy Football Encyclopedia I have to talk about the origins of the game of fantasy football.
In the 1994 edition of Fantasy Football Index magazine, Luke Esser discussed the birth of fantasy football. You can view the article by clicking the link below.
To quickly summarize the article and some of the history, fantasy football was born in a room at the Manhattan Hotel (now the Milford Plaza) in New York City. The Oakland Raiders were on an East Coast road trip in the fall of 1962 when Wilfred “Bill” Winkenbach (limited partner of the Oakland Raiders), Bill Tunnell (Oakland Raiders Public Relations Director), George Ross (Oakland Tribune sports editor) and Scotty Stirling (Oakland Tribune beat reporter) met in that hotel room and came up with idea that became fantasy football, a game played by over 60 million people today.
The first fantasy football league, the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League (GOPPPL) was formed in 1963. Some sources say the 3rd P in the name actually stood for Prediction? The original eight-team league held their first draft in the basement of Winkenbach’s house in East Oakland. The first pick in the GOPPPL draft was future Hall of Fame quarterback George Blanda of the American Football League’s Houston Oilers by Andy Mousalimas and Stirling, who partnered up as team owners.
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| The first GOPPPL draft. |
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