Fantasy Football: The New Internet Porn

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If you want to move up the corporate ladder, your fantasy football allegiances have to become more hush-hush."

Alansky was once told by a senior executive at his company that any involvement in an office league could damage his reputation. "He actually asked me to stop playing," Alansky says. "I didn't, but whenever I talk about it now, I'm always looking over my shoulder to see who's listening."

Not all league members are living in the shadows. Shergul Arshad, 40, a director of business development at Cambridge (Mass.)-based shopping website StyleFeeder.com, has been playing in office fantasy leagues since the early '90s. A self-described "early pioneer," his only problem with today's fantasy football is that the Internet has made the sport too accessible. "Before the Internet, you had to compile player stats manually," he says. "I once called the Detroit Lions' front office to find out if Herman Moore was injured and would be playing that weekend. But now, with all the online tools, it's almost like my 7-year-old and 9-year-old could draft a team and be competitive."

He compares fantasy football's current popularity with fair-weather fans of the Boston Red Sox who wear pink hats to games. "Sox fans are turned off by these bandwagoners who come in and buy their pink hats and pretend that they know what they're talking about," he says. "I feel the same way about fantasy football. There are so many people who suddenly got interested, and they're just poseurs."

This is not reassuring news for managers, who fear that even insincere interest in fantasy sports could be a drain on productivity. However, some workers cite specific evidence that fantasy football actually makes them work harder. Kyle Kadane, an information technology manager who once worked for a telecommunications company in Overland Park, Kan., says that his former co-workers involved in fantasy football were sometimes the first ones to arrive at work in the morning. "One week there were a lot of injuries in the NFL, and a few players had some really monster games," he says. "So the next morning, there were two dozen guys in the office at around 6:45 a.m. making new drafts for their fantasy teams." The result, he says, was that they got an earlier jump on the day. "We actually got more real work done than if we'd waited to come in at the designated time."

Dustin Ashby, the commissioner of the World Championship of Fantasy Football—a high-stakes league with a $300,000 grand prize—thinks the positive attributes of fantasy sports are underestimated. "It's a healthy game," he says. "It bridges the gap between top-level executives and mailroom clerks. And that creates social dialogue and breaks down barriers of communication. It really does create a community in the workplace."

There is something special about an office-based fantasy football community. St. Amant learned that lesson firsthand. After quitting his job to focus on fantasy football didn't pan out (his teams still didn't win), he used his newfound free time to think and strategize about...fantasy football. He even wrote several books on the subject and became a frequent guest on ESPN, where he sometimes debated with fellow fantasy enthusiast Meat Loaf. It wasn't until years later, when he'd returned to advertising full-time, that he won his first fantasy league trophy. "I guess that's kind of ironic," St. Amant admits. Or maybe it's just proof that fantasy football, like anything in life, is more fun when you're being paid to do something else.

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