The Explosion of Fantasy Sports

Finally, pro football season has arrived. With it, comes the hectic and my case, embarrassing, fantasy football season. Each year, as the seasons approaches, men gather in basements, offices, and bars to choose their team; anticipating who will have a breakout year and who will remain the consistent stalwart of the fantasy leagues.
What is the most interesting about the last few years is not the change of players or who has been at the top of fantasy drafts, but the fantasy explosion itself. Almost every sports website carries its own version of fantasy football. ESPN, which I began using this year, has one of the best free programs out there. Not only does it have cool graphics and the awesome "da-na-na" sound when a pick is made during the draft, but it has a free fantasy stat tracker, so you can keep track of your players throughout the day. Yahoo, on the other hand, only has this feature the first few weeks. After that, they make you pay for it.
Also, not only have a multitude of sports websites hold their own programs, but every news, entertainment, and sports outlet has their own fantasy predictions, mock drafts, and updates. ESPN, for example, aired a mock draft with 12 of their announcers (Yes, I watched it, but only because it was on TV at the restaurant I was eating at) . Every newspaper I pick up has their own weekly fantasy predictions. Sports Illustrated and ESPN: The Magazine dedicate full issues every year to mock fantasy drafts. Even Verizon, who has a deal with NBC, has John Madden doing "V-Casts" of his fantasy picks and game day thoughts.
The fantasy market has not always been so flooded with fantasy information. In the early nineties, playing fantasy sports was not so easy. You could not just sign on to Yahoo and have them do all the work for you. Instead, it had to all be done by hand. Someone had to do all the number crunching, deal with point distribution, and trades. In fact, the first "rotisserie leagues" weren't even about football. They were created by baseball nerds who enjoyed calculating on-base percentages and WHIP's. If you are looking for a good description, read Moneyball by Michael Lewis.
Eventually, the phenomena has exploded into every sport imaginable. Now, the market is saturated by fantasy everything. There are fantasy leagues for every sport imaginable and, as I have heard, even fantasy Congress. I guess, in that league, you pick who gets the most bills passed or who spouts the most BS. Kind of like that guy in your league that thinks he can trick you into trading LT for Michael Vick or that dumb ass that believed SI when they said that Mark Brunell would be a good fantasy pick.