COMMENTARY: Fantasy football: A game of mistrust

Fantasy football is played by more than 50 million Americans — and we’re all experts. Of course, my expertise usually costs me money while the genuinely smart analysts earn the big bucks.

As the 2024 season kicks off, we find ourselves drifting, while drafting, in a sea of advice. On YouTube alone, there are now more than 600 channels offering tips and tricks. For my new book, “Inside Fantasy Football: America’s Favorite Non-Contact Sport,” I examined the question we all wrestle with: Whose advice should I trust?

FantasyPros has been charting the accuracy of prognosticators since 2009, when it determined that Yahoo’s Andy Behrens was the season’s most accurate NFL ranker. “I’m glad someone runs an accuracy competition,” Behrens told me. But he added, “Being an accurate ranker, by their definition or anyone’s, doesn’t mean someone is a good fantasy manager. It’s a small piece of the content pie — although it definitely clicks well.”

FantasyPros determines not only the accuracy of leading experts, it also provides the Expert Consensus Rankings (ECR) used by almost every site that provides fantasy football information. “We take pride in having built a platform that showcases experts and provides tools to help them create their fantasy advice,” the head of FantasyPros, Andrew Sears, told me.

The snag is that not all the best analysts participate. Matthew Berry, widely regarded as the top tout, boycotts FantasyPros, and I asked why. “I have a real issue on a personal level with how FantasyPros conducts its business,” he said. “My personal opinion is that they are unethical. And it’s not a company that I want to support in any way, shape or form.”

Berry declined to elaborate, but others, familiar with the long-running feud, say it relates to how experts are allowed to update rankings on FantasyPros, particularly on Sundays, which could put some TV journalists at a disadvantage. There is also the prickly question of intellectual property: To what extent are football rankings proprietary?

Says Sears: “Our track record of working with thousands of experts is a testament to the positive relationships we’ve developed in the fantasy industry. It’s worth noting that Matthew Berry proudly displays our accuracy awards on his own website despite not wanting an association with FantasyPros.”

So, who is the best? “I think if you look at it objectively,” says Sears, “the person who has performed the best in our competitions has been Sean Koerner of the Action Network. He’s finished in the top 10 in eight out of the 11 years that he’s participated. He’s won it four times.”

Of course in September we all believe we have it figured out. This is the year we win our leagues! We’ve studied the stats, made our cheat sheets and watched dozens of videos. What could possibly go wrong?

Peter Funt’s book, “Inside Fantasy Football: America’s Favorites Non-Combat Sport,” is available at Amazon.