Universal Fantasy League

It’s finally here.

Those of you that know me know I’ve been working on the creation of a new fantasy sports website for the better part of a year now. I present:

www.universalfantasyleague.com

In 2006, I was getting disgusted with fantasy football. Not because my team sucked, because it didn’t, but because – let’s be honest, fantasy football has gotten away from the important statistics. You’ve got your long play bonuses, your 300 yard bonuses, defenses that sack a lot getting more points than defenses that actually give up fewer points.

But here’s when I knew fantasy sports needed a new direction. The first time I heard my kid brother use the phrase vulturing. “Tiki Barber gets yards, but Brandon Jacobs is going to vulture all his goal line carries.” Nevermind the fact that, as long as somebody scores, it helps the Giants equally. The Giants: remember, the team? What people used to root for on Sundays before fantasy football gave them the chance to cherry pick players from every NFL team and root for vulturing.

The ultimate team game had become anything but.

In that spirit, I created Universal Fantasy League. UFL is a fantasy league where, instead of drafting players, you draft teams from any real life sport of your choosing. Every real life sport has a point system that keeps all leagues relatively even in prominence.

Then I got a business partner.

Jared Macke, computer geek extraordinaire, offered to turn the idea in to a website. I consented. Jared took the ball and ran with it, programming a wonderful, easy-to-use site full of gadgets, nooks, crannies and tools I’d never thought of. Why not create a method by which users could input their own local leagues, like beer softball or little leagues, and then get fantasy points for those? Why not allow obsessed users to use components of existing real life leagues to compose BRAND NEW fantasy roster spots, like “SEC Team”, where players have to draft one SEC team from every sport?

The only reason why not, was because Jared hadn’t thought of it yet.

Now, we have a super-cool, kick ass website that’s easy to use and is going to make a huge impact on the fantasy sports market. We’ve got:

- Infinite customization, from which real life leagues are in your fantasy roster, to the scoring for each league, to when your league starts and ends.

- Globalization of fantasy: for the first time, sports which don’t lend themselves well to individual stats (soccer, tennis) can be great fantasy sports components

- A ton of awesome tools, like a draft scheduler. Remember how big of a pain in the ass it is to find out every person in your league’s draft availability by mail? Well, the UFL site does it for you.

And a ton of other great stuff. We hope you like it. We’re pretty proud.

Head to www.Universalfantasyleague.com and start a league today. You won’t be sorry.