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This fantasy football trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and covers the whole hobby, not just this year's rankings. It starts with the origin story - Wilfred Winkenbach, the 1962 Raiders road trip, the GOPPPL and the Oakland bar where the first public league was born - then moves through the internet era: CBS in 1997, Yahoo going free in 1999, the NFL's own game, and the rise of DraftKings and FanDuel. There is a full block on how the game is actually played - PPR and standard scoring, snake and auction drafts, dynasty, best ball, superflex, guillotine and empire leagues, and jargon like FAAB, sleeper and Zero-RB - plus a run of the real NFL seasons that fantasy managers still talk about: LaDainian Tomlinson's 31 touchdowns, Peyton Manning's 55, Randy Moss's 23, Chris Johnson's 2,509 yards and more. The League, Matthew Berry and the Tommy Pham slap round things out. Roughly a third of the questions are warm-ups any league regular can handle; the rest climb toward commissioner-level detail. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia, ESPN's own glossary and the primary sources they cite, and each explanation adds one more fact worth knowing.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Oakland businessman devised modern fantasy football in a New York hotel room on a 1962 Raiders road trip?
Wilfred Winkenbach
Winkenbach was joined in that hotel room by Raiders PR man Bill Tunnel and Oakland Tribune reporter Scotty Stirling.
Q 02What word fills the blank in the first fantasy football league, the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin ___ League?
Prognosticators
The GOPPPL was still active in 2015 and still using its original scoring system more than fifty years on.
Q 03In what year did the GOPPPL hold its first draft, in its founder's Oakland home?
1963
The league had eight members drawn from AFL administrators, pro football writers, and people who had bought or sold ten Raiders season tickets.
Q 04Under the GOPPPL's original scoring, how many points was a touchdown pass, rush or reception worth?
25
A kickoff, punt or interception returned for a touchdown was worth a whopping 200 points, and a field goal was worth as much as a touchdown.
Q 05In 1969, the first public fantasy football league was founded at which Oakland sports bar?
King's X
Owner Andy Mousalimas had taken part in the very first GOPPPL draft, and the game then spread by word of mouth to patrons visiting his bar for trivia contests.
Q 06Before he turned to football, fantasy football's inventor devised a 1950s fantasy game for which sport?
Golf
Participants picked a roster of pros and the lowest combined stroke total won, an idea that predates the football league by roughly a decade.
Q 07Rotisserie League Baseball, the 1980 game that popularized 'roto' scoring, took its name from what?
A New York City restaurant
Founder Daniel Okrent, a Strat-O-Matic devotee, later said he would probably have invented rotisserie anyway but the board game 'unquestionably' helped.
Q 08Which site was first to offer free fantasy football, in July 1999?
Yahoo
Some competitors dropped their paid models in response, while smaller sites such as RotoWire pivoted to selling paid content instead.
Q 09Which network launched an online fantasy football competition in 1997?
CBS
That same year the fantasy news site now known as RotoWire was launched.
Q 10Pigskin Playoff, a 1989 newspaper game played by phone, awarded each week's top scorer a trip to where?
Hawaii
Players entered four-digit codes on a toll-free line to pick their teams, and the game is now regarded as an early ancestor of daily fantasy football.
Q 11Per the Fantasy Sports & Gaming Association, roughly how many people played fantasy sports in the US and Canada in 2022?
62.5 million
About four in five of them played fantasy football, and the FSGA estimated the whole industry was worth more than $7 billion by 2019.
Q 12The 2006 law exempting fantasy sports from the internet gambling payment ban was attached to which bill?
The SAFE Port Act
The UIGEA never actually defined unlawful internet wagering; it only restricted the movement of money.
Q 13Which is the only US state whose statutes explicitly prohibit online fantasy sports?
Montana
Louisiana and Arizona, whose bans were never written into law, both launched online fantasy offerings in 2021.
Q 21In a 'best ball' league, what does a team's weekly point total automatically reflect?
The highest-scoring players at each position
Trades and the waiver wire are usually eliminated too, which is the format used on platforms like Underdog and DraftKings.
Q 22What happens each week in a 'guillotine' league?
The lowest-scoring team is eliminated
The eliminated team's players all become free agents, so the waiver wire gets richer as the field shrinks to one.
Q 23After the first season of a dynasty league, each subsequent draft includes only which players?
Q 14In a PPR league, how many fantasy points does a player earn for each reception?
1
Half-PPR leagues split the difference at 0.5, and ESPN and NFL.com both use full PPR as their default setting.
Q 15Under default NFL.com, ESPN and Yahoo scoring, how many points is a passing touchdown?
4
Rushing and receiving touchdowns are worth six, which is why quarterbacks need volume to keep pace with elite running backs.
Q 16In default NFL.com scoring, a passer earns one point for every how many passing yards?
25
Rushing and receiving yards pay out at one point per 10, so a 300-yard passing day equals a 120-yard rushing day.
Q 17In default ESPN, Yahoo and NFL.com lineups, the flex spot takes a running back, wide receiver or which other position?
Tight end
The default lineup is one QB, two RB, two WR, one TE, one flex, one kicker, one D/ST and six bench spots.
Q 18A 'superflex' league lets teams start which position in the flex slot, where it is normally not allowed?
Quarterback
Because you can start two quarterbacks, QBs get drafted far earlier in superflex than in a one-QB format.
Q 19In a snake draft, the owner picking first in odd rounds picks where in even rounds?
Last
The 'serpentine' order exists purely for fairness, so no team gets two top picks in a row.
Q 20In an auction draft, what decides which owner ends up with a nominated player?
The highest bid
Every owner has an equal shot at every player, unlike a snake draft where your target can be taken before your turn.
NFL rookies
Keeper leagues are the middle ground, usually letting teams retain somewhere between five and ten players.
Q 24In fantasy football, what does IDP stand for?
Individual Defensive Player
IDP scoring rewards tackles, sacks, interceptions and QB hits instead of using a whole team's defense as one unit.
Q 25In fantasy football, what does the acronym FAAB stand for?
Free Agent Acquisition Budget
Managers spend from a fixed pool through blind bids, so a desperate owner can blow the whole budget on one waiver pickup.
Q 26In fantasy jargon, what is a 'sleeper'?
A player expected to outperform his draft position
The opposite is a 'bust', a term that can describe a single bad week or a whole wasted season.
Q 27The 'Zero-RB' draft strategy means passing on running backs during which part of the draft?
The first four or five rounds
The theory is that running back is the most volatile and injury-prone position, so you load up on receivers first and take fliers on backs later.
Q 28'Streaming' a roster spot from waivers each week is most common at which position?
Defense/special teams
The idea is to chase favorable matchups, which is why streamed defenses tend to face the league's worst offenses.
Q 29The FX comedy 'The League' followed six fantasy football friends living in which city?
Chicago
The show was largely improvised and ran for seven seasons, moving to the new FXX channel for its fifth.
Q 30On 'The League', the championship trophy called 'The Shiva' is named after whom?
The guys' high school valedictorian
Andre briefly renamed it 'the Dre' after winning it, and the resulting bad luck was dubbed 'DrAIDS'.