This story appears in the 2019 Fantasy Football special issue of Sports Illustrated. For more great storytelling and in-depth analysis, subscribe to the magazine—and get up to 94% off the cover price. Click here for more.
Brace yourself. I am going to explain to you why you've been playing fantasy football wrong for ... well, however long you've been playing fantasy football. Though to understand how you got on this misbegotten track, you need a brief lesson on the early days of the game.
Back in the 1980s and '90s, when fantasy was just starting to catch on, players kept score by hand, on a piece of paper, often using a slim wooden device with graphite running down the middle, called a pencil (pronounced PEN-suhl).