Fantasy Football is the most popular of all the fantasy sports available and continues to grow even faster with the explosion of websites and software to help with the game as well as the propagation of fantasy football magazines available today. According to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, the internet has been responsible for taking fantasy football from a hobby played out in sports bars and individual homes to a multi-billion dollar industry now. However nearly twenty million players participate in fantasy sports and the industry has a growth rate of around ten percent, shown by the FSTA.

Many fantasy football leagues consist with around ten or twelve individual teams. You have to draft real players and their performance really matters it pays to stay in touch with what is going on with them during the off season and pre-season. In some fantasy football leagues each owner must draft a new team every year, while in others you may be allowed to keep a handful of players which will not be entered in the draft. Some leagues have even gone as far as to create so-called dynasty leagues where an owner may maintain his team from the previous season and only draft incoming rookies. This is very similar to how a real football league works.

However players are not drafted and designated as "free agents". They may be chosen during the season by trading players that an owner may currently have and making them free agents. The rules that govern this practice vary from league to league.