The CFFL Story Chapter 1: The Early Years

I started playing fantasy football in 1995 in what passed for an “online” league at the time. The league was on a service called CompuServe, which some of you fellow old fogies may remember. I don’t remember too many details about it, other than I won the league in 1996, and it had a keeper policy where you gave up draft picks to keep players. A year or two later I joined a league at the company I worked for, which was my first experience in a league with people I knew. I decided I liked that much more.

In 1998 I started my consulting career with Custom Information Services (CIS) in Arlington, TX. The next year I decided that CIS was woefully lacking in the fantasy football department. And since CIS had ramped up hiring due to Y2K (cough) there were more than enough suckers to fleece. With that, the CISFL was born.

My goal was to have a 12 team league, but in the days leading up to the draft we were short on commitments. I put on a full court press throughout the company and was practically begging people to join. The press ended up being too effective though, and on draft day we ended up with 14 teams. I couldn’t begin to name everyone who was involved that first year but the roll included me, Mike Marshall, Randy, Steve and Ken. There were also the twin teenage sons of one of our co-workers who shared a team that first year. There were a couple of young guns from the sales department whose names escape me, and the controller and his wife who I think had separate teams. I barely remember them except for their last name – Quackenbush. Plus we had a good friend of mine who didn’t know much about football but wanted to help me out, who had an even better name – Fenstermacher (pours one out).

I recall I had set a deadline for people to send me their team names, but one owner never submitted anything, even after I had threatened that anyone who didn’t respond would be stuck with whatever name I gave them. So at the draft I announced the name I had selected for this owner, saying that I was taking into account not the only the person’s job (sales), but their physical appearance as well. The team name? Weasels.

No records from the draft exist. I imagine I had to handwrite everyone’s picks. The only pick I remember was that an owner who shall remain nameless (it was Randy) drafted Barry Sanders – approximately a month after Sanders retired. This was also the first known instance of a draft mulligan in league history, a courtesy we would not always extend (to be covered in a future R&C).

There was no website for the league. I ran everything off of software that I had installed on my home PC. I don’t recall but I imagine people had to email me their lineups and add/drops each week. On Tuesday mornings I would get up early to connect my 28.8k modem and download the stats from the weekend’s games. Then I would run the reports for the week and email them out to everyone.

The software of course is long gone, and with it the history of that first year. Here is the sum total of what I remember about that season:

1. My team (Error 20s) and Maulers were in the same division, which I think Maulers won.
2. Error 20s and Maulers met in the playoffs, I think in the semi-finals, where Error 20s emerged victorious.
3. Error 20s went on to win the league, thus fulfilling the whole “fleecing of suckers” prophecy.