Fantasy Football Unlimited - Bill Enright: A Life Built Around Fantasy Football & the Rise of Draft Nation
STACKED extracted the fantasy-relevant player signal from this podcast and kept the full transcript here for context.
1 hr
Duration
Estimated from transcript
Sep 11, 2026
Published
Fri, September 11, 2026
17
Player insights
13
Players mentioned
Topics
Bijan RobinsonDrake LondonJamaal CharlesKyle PittsAdrian PetersonAustin EkelerLeSean McCoyMichael VickMike WilliamsNick FolesPatrick MahomesSean TuckerTrent Richardson
Player analysis
Player insights
Adrian Peterson
NegativeUsage37:07
Adrian Peterson was a featured guest at the National Fantasy Football Draft Day event, participating in discussions with the fantasy community about his past NFL performances.
Insight pageAustin Ekeler
NegativeUsage37:07
Austin Ekeler was a featured guest at the National Fantasy Football Draft Day event, engaging with fans and discussing his NFL career.
Insight pageBijan Robinson
NegativeUsage0:16
The source expresses concern regarding the Falcons' offense, specifically noting that despite the presence of high-end talent like Bijan Robinson, the team is hindered by having two bad left-handed quarterbacks.
Insight pageNegativeBust47:12
The source expresses concern regarding the Falcons offense, noting that despite the presence of talented players like Bijan Robinson, the team is hindered by having two bad left-handed quarterbacks.
Insight pageDrake London
NegativeUsage0:16
The source expresses concern regarding the Falcons' offense, specifically noting that despite the presence of high-end talent like Drake London, the team is hindered by having two bad left-handed quarterbacks.
Insight pageNegativeBust47:12
The source expresses concern regarding the Falcons offense, noting that despite the presence of talented players like Drake London, the team is hindered by having two bad left-handed quarterbacks.
Insight pageJamaal Charles
PositiveValue15:11
Bill Enright lists Jamal Charles as one of his favorite fantasy football players of all time, noting his emergence helped drive the growth of fantasy football participation.
Insight pagePositiveValue47:43
Bill Enright highlights Jamal Charles as a legendary fantasy asset, noting his historic six-touchdown game against the Raiders and his emergence as a league-winning waiver wire pickup.
Insight pageKyle Pitts
NegativeUsage0:16
The source expresses concern regarding the Falcons' offense, specifically noting that despite the presence of high-end talent like Kyle Pitts, the team is hindered by having two bad left-handed quarterbacks.
Insight pageNegativeBust47:12
The source expresses concern regarding the Falcons offense, noting that despite the presence of talented players like Kyle Pitts, the team is hindered by having two bad left-handed quarterbacks.
Insight pageLeSean McCoy
NegativeBust47:17
Bill Enright recounts a painful fantasy loss caused by LeSean McCoy dropping a catch that would have secured a championship win.
Insight pageMichael Vick
NegativeUsage47:17
Bill Enright references a specific Monday night game where he needed Michael Vick to connect with LeSean McCoy for a championship-winning play.
Insight pageMike Williams
NegativeValue17:04
Bill Enright mentions Mike Williams as a notable Syracuse player who was drafted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Insight pageNick Foles
NegativeValue25:18
Bill Enright criticized Jim Cramer's selection of Nick Foles in a fantasy draft, labeling it a 'dumb pick' because the draft capital spent on him was poor value relative to where he could have been drafted.
Insight pagePatrick Mahomes
PositiveBreakout47:46
Bill Enright cites drafting Patrick Mahomes in his first year as a starter as one of his most memorable and successful fantasy hits.
Insight pageSean Tucker
NegativeValue17:39
Bill Enright identifies Sean Tucker as a current Syracuse player he follows.
Insight pageTrent Richardson
NegativeBust47:43
Bill Enright recalls drafting Jamal Charles over Trent Richardson as a key decision that helped him win a fantasy championship.
Insight pageFull transcript
Episode Transcript
0:00Football is back baby and whether you've been betting for years or you're just looking to put a little action on the
0:07games MyBookie needs to be added to your list of places to go line shopping.
0:12We've been talking about the teams we like and don't like for months.
0:16We're in on this Jets offense more than almost anybody and we're terrified of this Falcons offense even though you got Bijan,
0:23you got Kyle Pitts, you got Drake London but you got two bad left handed quarterbacks.
0:28And you certainly don't need to be tailing some fake betting expert on social media.
0:33Go to my bookie and find the plays you already know you like and take a shot.
0:39That's what's cool about my bookie. You can find the action you want and bet it wherever you are when the game kicks off.
0:47And if you're new to the club, the bet back bonus gives you protection on your first play.
0:52Sign up with promo code PLAYER to opt in to the bet back bonus and take your first shot with a safety net.
1:00If your wager loses, you get it right back, no questions asked.
1:04Football is finally here. Get in now and cash in on the season with my bookie with promo code PLAYER to get that bet back bonus.
1:12Bet on anything, anytime, anywhere. You're welcome. This is the fantasy football unlimited podcast with your host Kevin Murray.
1:18Welcome to the fantasy football unlimited podcast. Today's guest has spent the last couple of decades working across nearly every corner of the fantasy football industry.
1:27Fresh off draft nation, 2026, the event of the summer, you know, in circa at circa in Las Vegas, where he and
1:34his partners, they helped name a national holiday for fantasy football.
1:37It's the one and only bill Enright. Welcome to the show.
1:41Oh, thanks for having me. I'm really happy to be here.
1:44Happy to talk to some parents and football. Yeah, no, I'm so, so jealous of everybody that attended that first event.
1:51I mean, it looked like so much fun from the outside, so much great energy.
1:56I love fantasy football events and you know, it just fits right in Las Vegas.
2:01How are you feeling coming off of an event like that?
2:05You know, it was a blast. Everyone had a lot of fun, but there was a lot of work.
2:11It was, you know, eight months of work leading up to it.
2:1520 hour days while we're at the event. I'm glad everyone had a good time.
2:19I wish I could have had as good of a time as people partying and going in pools and drafted from cabanas.
2:27But we had a job to do. I think we did that job very well.
2:31But it was a lot of work and organizing and running around.
2:35And I think I did like 38,000 steps back to back days.
2:39I got there on a Tuesday. The event didn't happen until Thursday.
2:43I ended up staying until flew out Sunday night, landed in New Jersey Monday morning.
2:48And then I flew back out for another event for that Legacy League, the $100,000 entry league that Thursday.
2:54So like a quick 70 hours home and then back to Vegas.
2:58I was in Vegas for like 11 out of 14 days or something.
3:02That's a lot of time in Vegas. Yeah, especially in August, right?
3:06I mean, there's so many people that did that or, you know, there's obviously events going on this weekend coming up in Las Vegas.
3:14So a lot of people spending a lot of time in Las Vegas in August, which is crazy, but you might as
3:21well have a pool if you're going to be there.
3:24And there's no better pool than Stadium Swim. Six pools, 143 foot screen.
3:28There's sports going on everywhere. They got an outdoor casino.
3:32They got the sport book kiosk that you can bet from.
3:35They have the best servers and bartenders in Vegas.
3:38And if you love sports or even if you don't, I can't say enough good things about Stadium Swim.
3:44I think it's one of the coolest places you can ever visit.
3:48Yeah, a really special location for sure. Now, I'm excited to get into your career journey.
3:53You share your backstory and obviously hear more about this Draft Nation event.
3:57But first, I found something, you know, that you wrote recently that I think is a perfect place to start.
4:04You said you discovered fantasy football in seventh grade.
4:07Take me back there. You know, what was that first league like?
4:11So seventh grade was like for me was 1997, 98.
4:14Had computers, had the Internet. So I'm not going back to like, oh, we used to do our scoring by hand or
4:21we used to do our scoring, checking the newspaper the next day.
4:25One of my league managers or friends that actually added his draft just last night.
4:30He used to do it scoring by hand, but he's an interesting cat.
4:34Like he enjoys the numbers and like checking everything.
4:37But I think originally we were on either Yahoo or CBS.
4:40Their commissioner product probably just came out. My friends and I have been having Super Bowl parties, Super Bowl pools.
4:47We were doing box pools in like, you know, the fifth grade and betting on games.
4:52Fifth, sixth, seventh grade, probably a really bad influence from our grandparents growing up in North Jersey.
4:58But we had this idea of like, hey, my cousin's friend who's in high school is doing this thing called fantasy football.
5:05We should all do it. So we just kind of like got together.
5:09We had a draft. I don't think it was like a full, it was probably like a really short team.
5:15Like we probably did 10 rounds, right? And there might have been eight of us.
5:20I forget the exact number, but two years later or a year later in eighth grade, I still have that league in
5:27place with the same core group of guys. There's nine of us.
5:31Now we expanded to it or there was eight of us were expanded to a 12 team league.
5:37Now we do an auction. So 26 years, 27 years in the running and then that league's still going on.
5:44Actually, that's why I flew back home from Vegas the second time because I had the auction draft at my house that day.
5:51So I went from 143 foot screen draft board at Stadium Swim to a 46 inch TV auction draft in my backyard in Jersey within 24 hours.
6:00But both of them were great, right? Both of them were fantasy football.
6:04One was a heavy hitter, $100,000 league. And the next one was called a $500 league with my friends from, you know, from middle school.
6:12So both of them are great. Both of them were very different.
6:16But fantasy football stands a testament of tax brackets, age groups, demographics, religion, race, whatever have you.
6:21I think a lot of people can find some commonality when it comes to fantasy football.
6:27Yeah, I love it. Two completely different leagues. Both, you know, creating that passion that we love about this great game.
6:33What was it that made you turn just, you know, interest in having fun in the game into an obsession?
6:40I love it. I love the NFL. I'm a third generation Giants season ticket holder.
6:45Football has been part of my family since, you know, I was a baby.
6:49Growing up in that kind of atmosphere where Sundays were for family dinner.
6:53You know, grandma, mom made, you know, meatballs, sauce, pasta, whatever have you, and New York Giants football.
6:59And that expanded as the NFL started to get more coverage.
7:03It's not just about the Giants anymore. Now it's about the whole league.
7:07And once we kind of caught on to that obsession, I grew up in the Michael Jordan era.
7:13So my friends growing up, some of them were New York Knicks fans and other ones were Chicago Bulls fans.
7:19So it wasn't just about your local team and that's who you support.
7:23So we had it that transition like, hey, we're all watching Michael Jordan on a regular basis.
7:29We're all watching the Knicks too because that's the local team.
7:33But hey, we can check out these other out-of-market games and follow just as closely as we do with the Knicks.
7:39And that transitioned to football, right? So, hey, we have the Giants on, but we can also watch Monday Night Football.
7:46We can also watch, you know, the 4 o'clock set of games.
7:50And then DirecTV came out with the Sunday package and that really opened up the doors for us to watch all the games all the time, every week.
7:59We used to go to a bar that allowed us in before we were 21.
8:04We couldn't drink, but you could sit there and watch football.
8:07They had every game on and it was awesome.
8:10It was like, it wasn't like the sports bars today.
8:14They maybe had like, you know, 12 TVs, but they were small, like 24-inch TVs or 32-inch TVs.
8:19But it was a place where you could watch all the games.
8:23And that obsession started just out of fun and started out of hanging out with the guys or the girls and watching
8:30the games and rooting for different players and rooting for different teams.
8:34And then fantasy fit right into that perfectly. No, I can relate to all of that.
8:39Who were your favorite players across the sports spectrum growing up?
8:43Yeah, so I'm a diehard Giants fan. Always rooting for the Giants.
8:47In the late 90s, they weren't that good. They had that Super Bowl run in the early 2000s.
8:53My favorite fantasy football player of all time, there's three of them, maybe four.
8:57LaDainian Tomlinson, I had him since his rookie year.
9:00We're just pounding the table, drafting him every year.
9:03He's the first player I ever bought a jersey of that wasn't a Giants player.
9:08That powder blue jersey, I was just obsessed with it.
9:11Randy Moss, Terrell Owens, and then a little bit later on was Jamal Charles.
9:16Those were kind of the players that when they started breaking into the league, I think those were really when the fantasy
9:23football participation went from, hey, we're going to have this draft once a year and we're going to set our lineups and
9:30maybe do some waivers to like, okay, I'm buying a magazine in May.
9:34I'm paying attention to the NFL draft. I'm doing my homework all summer long.
9:39We're having a draft at this date. We're going to do it in person.
9:43Like that's when it really became like everyone is on board with this groundswell.
9:48We just rode that wave all through the very early 2000s when we started high school to still now, you know, I'm 41 years old.
9:56Well, you definitely mentioned some legends there when it comes to fantasy football.
10:00I mean, Jamal Charles, I mean, all those guys, legends, LT is probably the goat, you know, for a lot of people.
10:07For you now, how about some Syracuse Orangemen that you loved growing up because you're a Syracuse guy, right?
10:13I am a Syracuse guy. When we were coming up through Syracuse, Donovan McNabb was already on the Eagles.
10:19Dwight Freeney was already on the Colts. They had a couple good receivers.
10:24Mike Williams got drafted to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
10:27Syracuse hasn't really popped off a lot of Super Bowl heroes.
10:30Of course, probably the biggest one is not a non-fantasy player.
10:34It's David Tyree. The helmet catch, that was an awesome play because we were following David Tyree.
10:39He actually grew up in New Jersey a short distance from me.
10:43Went to Syracuse like I did. Had that big Super Bowl catch, but he was a special teams guy.
10:49Like I think he was the, you know, a Pro Bowl or four special teams.
10:54That was really cool to see as a Syracuse guy and a Giants guy, obviously.
10:59But now it's like, you know, Sean Tucker, Aronette Gadsden.
11:02And one of my buddies went to Syracuse with me.
11:05We grew up together. We went to college together.
11:08And we're always fighting for like who's going to get the Q Sky.
11:12So we kind of go back and forth on that.
11:16Where the other league mates, they don't really have that Syracuse connection.
11:20So we're not as worried about them stealing one of our fellow orange men.
11:24Love it. Love it. Well, yeah, I mean, obviously Syracuse, known for its basketball, especially back in the day.
11:30I remember being just a little tiny kid. And, you know, Derek Coleman and Sherman Douglas were, you know, were guys that we were playing.
11:38We're pretending to be out playing basketball in the backyard.
11:42But obviously, you know, you fast forward. You're a Syracuse 2005.
11:45You told your college class, you know, I want to talk about fantasy football for a living.
11:51And apparently people laughed. What was the 20-year-old Bill Enright thinking that would look like?
11:56What would a career look like? Obviously, there wasn't a blueprint for it.
12:00What were you thinking at that time? You know, it's interesting.
12:03I went to school for broadcast journalism. And if you look at any media show on TV, there's two or three people
12:10either on camera, behind the scenes, a producer, someone that came out of Syracuse, came out of the Newhouse School, and is involved in some media.
12:19This is kind of, when I was in school, this is like before pardon the interruption, around the horn.
12:25It was really, like there was no shoulder programming for sports TV at that time.
12:30It was SportsCenter. It was games. You know, maybe the sports reporters on a Sunday morning kind of thing.
12:36So you were either going to school to be a news anchor or to be a sports commentator, a play-by-play person, or to be like a producer.
12:45So my idea was not to be any of those things.
12:48My idea was to, you know, be someone that was an analyst for fantasy football.
12:53And my professor just point blank looked at me.
12:56He said, it'll never be big enough to support a career in that.
13:00And I don't know if she just didn't understand, like, the amount of people that had so much passion for it or my passion for it.
13:09But I just knew she was completely wrong. So I just, I didn't fight back.
13:13I didn't, I just, and I didn't take that as like, oh, she told me I can't do this and I'm going
13:21to, I'm going to go out and do it.
13:23I just kind of felt like, wow, my professor doesn't see what's happening with the internet and how TV is changing and
13:31how media is changing and the landscape of fans and everything that comes with, you know, social media or new media or like transformation or transformative technology.
13:39So I kind of took that opportunity as, hey, I'm really passionate about this.
13:44I love it. And everyone always says, if you love what you work, you'll never work a day in your life.
13:51And I, I bought into that. And I worked for an action sports company for two years after college.
13:57I traveled the world. It was awesome. I was in Switzerland and Japan and Australia and California five or six times a
14:04year and Colorado five or six times a year.
14:07And I was skiing in all the best places around the, around the world.
14:11I racked up like 120,000 miles. And in like 10 months, I'm on my, uh, United frequent flyer card.
14:18Um, and I just, it was like, all right, well, I'm 22 now.
14:22I graduated college. I'm, I'm, I've had this job for 18 or so months.
14:26I want to get back to football. The action sports stuff is awesome.
14:30I'm partying all around the world. I'm a young guy that is hanging out with like snowboarders and skiers and, and BMX
14:38people and all different kinds of action sports lifestyle people.
14:41But I wanted to get back to football. So how did you actually get your start in the fantasy sports industry?
14:48Football is back, baby. And whether you've been betting for years, you're just looking to put a little action on the games.
14:55My bookie needs to be added to your list of places to go line shopping.
15:00We've been talking about the teams we like and don't like for months.
15:04We're in on this Jets offense more than almost anybody.
15:07And we're terrified of this Falcons offense. Even though you got Bijan, you got Kyle Pitts, you got Drake London, but you got two bad left-handed quarterbacks.
15:16And you certainly don't need to be telling some fake betting expert on social media.
15:21Go to my bookie and find the plays you already know you like and take a shot.
15:26That's what's cool about my bookie. You can find the action you want and bet it wherever you are when the game kicks off.
15:34And if you're new to the club, the bet back bonus gives you protection on your first play.
15:40Sign up with promo code PLAYER to opt into the bet back bonus and take your first shot with a safety net.
15:47If your wager loses, you get it right back.
15:50No questions asked. Football is finally here. Get in now and cash in on the season with my bookie with promo code
15:57PLAYER to get that bet back bonus. Bet on anything, anytime, anywhere.
16:01You're welcome. So I ended up quitting and I got in touch with this guy that was looking for like a general
16:08manager of a fantasy football membership site. And I took that job.
16:12These two cousins, John and Ian Millman, they were high stakes fantasy football players.
16:16They started their own company. They ended up, they had other jobs.
16:20They were both working in finance and they sold it to like an entrepreneur investor kind of guy.
16:26The entrepreneur investor kind of guy didn't know what to do with it.
16:30They had just like this site which had rankings and some articles.
16:34So I kind of had this vision of, all right, well, let's create a membership.
16:39We'll have some, you know, reoccurring revenue from members.
16:42We'll introduce a video series. No one was doing, this was in 2000, I graduated.
16:47This is like 2009. So not a lot of people were doing video on the internet at that point.
16:53If you're hearing this now, like it's crazy to think, but it's the case, right?
16:58iPhones were only like a year and a half old.
17:01Like Instagram didn't exist yet. YouTube was still relatively new.
17:04Facebook was called the Facebook. You needed a college email in order to sign up.
17:09So I had this idea, my whole four years of Syracuse and two years of, or 18 months of the action sports was all in video.
17:17And I said, okay, well, we're going to introduce a video element in addition to articles.
17:23More people are going to gravitate toward watching instead of just reading.
17:26Or at least, you know, the watching element is going to increase over time.
17:31Video is going to be the new thing on the internet.
17:34There were different ways to make it easy to put that on a platform.
17:39We need some tools, right? We need some rankings.
17:42We need some waiver wire. We need rest of the season.
17:45We need anything that you'd see today. Cheat sheets, mock draft tools, draft tracker organizer.
17:50We were one of the first companies that had that technology.
17:54And we started implementing that into our membership base.
17:57And over time, it just continued to grow from there.
18:00We ended up selling it. And 10 years later, I found myself at a different job.
18:05But there's a whole lot in between. But the idea was, hey, I'm going to take over this site.
18:11I'm going to really add some new bells and whistles to it.
18:15I'm going to make it the best fantasy football site, information-wise, that anyone could possibly get.
18:20That's awesome. Well, talk about the in-between. How in the world did a kid from New Jersey end up hosting a show for the New England Patriots?
18:29Yeah, so we went to... SiriusXM had just launched a fantasy channel.
18:33And we were like the second year of that channel.
18:36We got on there. My co-host was Todd DeReeze.
18:39We did an hour of NFL fantasy football. We did an hour of college fantasy football.
18:44Which is crazy because now college fantasy football is like back being popular.
18:49Yahoo's investing pretty heavily in it. The guys from On3 are starting to cover it.
18:53There's a really, really awesome guy named Felix that covers it for Campus to Canton.
18:58I love the shout-out. Felix Sharp. Yeah, what an incredible talent there.
19:02And you got guys like Eric Froton with Yahoo.
19:05So college fantasy football is starting to become popular.
19:08We did it 15 years ago. Started at SiriusXM.
19:11Ran that show for two or three years. It was a blast.
19:15I was driving from my house in Jersey to the SiriusXM studios doing a live show.
19:20I think I was the youngest host ever to have their own show on SiriusXM.
19:25It was awesome. I loved it. Loved live radio.
19:28Loved taking callers. And we started seeing more about podcasts.
19:31And we wanted to invest in podcasts. And the New England Patriots were very forward-thinking with their own digital property.
19:37New England Patriots or Patriots.com. A guy named Fred Kirsch had reached out to my business partner at the time and said,
19:45Hey, we're interested in doing a podcast. We'd like it to be fantasy football.
19:49Would your team be interested? We had the technology to do our SiriusXM show from our home and broadcast that on SiriusXM.
19:56And we figured out a way to do the same thing for New England Patriots.
20:01So I didn't have to drive up to New England.
20:04I went to Gillette a bunch of times. I had a great studio there.
20:09It was always fun being in person. But I didn't have to go up there twice a week.
20:15So we were doing twice a week Patriots.com. We were doing once a week SiriusXM.
20:19And we started to build our own podcast network within that fantasy football website through the Patriots.
20:25We had the rights to distribute it however we wanted.
20:28But they were kind of like the first NFL team to get on board with having programming dedicated, not just to the
20:35Patriots, but to the entire NFL through fantasy football.
20:38So really smart on them. They were obviously winning a bunch of Super Bowls at the time.
20:44It was a blast to be working for that organization during their historic run.
20:48That was a really, really cool experience too. I imagine for sure.
20:52And obviously getting into the podcast world before the podcast boom, I'm sure you obviously experienced a lot with that.
20:59You ended up having some legitimately elite fantasy pros accuracy finishes.
21:02How important were rankings accuracy to establish credibility back then?
21:05That was like a stamp of authority. I made it my goal to finish in the top 10 for a few years
21:13because I wanted to be able to say, you're not going to get better rankings anywhere else.
21:18We were selling a membership product. We wanted to attract new members.
21:22We wanted members to have trust in us. And that was a way for us to validate our own rankings.
21:28It's one thing to say, hey, I have the best rankings out there.
21:33It's another thing to say, I'm putting my rankings out there.
21:36So are all these other fantasy experts. And we're being graded on it.
21:40And that was really important for me to be able to say, hey, when you come to ffchamps.com, you're going to get the best of the best.
21:49And we set out for that goal. I think we finished in the top 10 twice or three times.
21:55And that's when I was doing like the heavy grinding of projecting players and depth charts and rankings and cheat sheets.
22:02And like I was in it, right? Like I was, I didn't have a staff.
22:07Like it was me and a couple freelance writers.
22:10So I was a little bit younger then. I still have the same amount of time.
22:15But my time, my priorities shifted. So like that was my job, right?
22:19Like to make sure that our rankings were the best.
22:22And I was just grinding with that every day throughout the season, throughout the preseason to make sure that we have the
22:30best in-season rankings and the best draft rankings. I don't, I still submit my rankings to Fantasy Pros.
22:35I don't do nearly as good as I once did.
22:39But now it's like once or twice a week kind of update thing instead of a once or twice a day update thing.
22:46Then comes Bull Market Fantasy and Jim Cramer. Whose crazy idea was it to combine Wall Street and fantasy football?
22:52Where did that idea come from? So Ian Ritchie, who's my business partner now, I ended up selling him ffchamps.com.
22:59Ian had a bunch of different websites. He was working for Scout at the time.
23:04He had a bunch of different websites and he kind of took all of these different fantasy sites, bought all of them
23:11and then sold them to a company that had just licensed the name Sports Illustrated.
23:16And part of that license was also buying a financial website called thestreet.com, which Jim Cramer owned.
23:21So I sold my company to Ian. Jim Cramer sold his company to...
23:25They've changed their name so many times. It was the Maven, then the Arena Group, and then they just changed Palladium AI or something.
23:33They changed their name four times in the last five years.
23:37I sold my company to Ian. Ian sold his company to Maven.
23:41Jim Cramer had the street. He sold that company to Maven.
23:44And Jim is a huge NFL fan. Ian knew that I was from close to New York City.
23:50He said to Jim one day, hey, you should meet this guy, Bill Enright.
23:55We'd love to do a fantasy football show to you.
23:58And Jim's like, I've been playing fantasy since the 80s.
24:01I love fantasy football. So within like two weeks of Ian selling his company and Jim selling his company, I'm in these offices of 14 Wall Street.
24:10I've worked from home my entire life. The only office that I know is either inside my house or in a studio.
24:17All of a sudden, I'm in this office in Wall Street.
24:20And I meet Jim Cramer for the first time.
24:23And he is exactly like he is on TV.
24:26The most energetic person I've ever met in my life.
24:30The smartest person I've ever met in my life.
24:32He's probably one of the funniest people I've ever met in my life.
24:37And he's one of the most passionate people. So we sit down.
24:41We have a very short conversation. He's got 10 people waiting outside his office for different meetings.
24:46And excuse me, I'm in there talking about fantasy football.
24:49Bill, we're going to have a lot of fun.
24:52You know, we'll do the show together. We'll pull it off.
24:56I'm like, okay. So the first episode that we were going to do was his staff's fantasy draft.
25:02And he had, you know, 10 analysts around. And him and some of his producers were in this draft.
25:08And we're filming at night. And it's after hours.
25:11And he's in his suit. I'm in, you know, probably like jeans and a t-shirt or something.
25:16And he drafted, I want to say Nick Foles.
25:19He drafted Nick Foles. And I said, wow, Jim, that was a really dumb pick.
25:24And he looks at me. And the whole room goes silent.
25:27And he doesn't say a word to me the rest of the night.
25:32So I'm like, oh, well, I just blew this.
25:35So they finish the draft. We all go home.
25:37I'm kind of like, oh, well, you know, I blew that.
25:41But whatever. I'm at Sports Illustrated now. Maybe this doesn't happen, this show with him.
25:46The next day I get there. And he's at his office at like 6.30 in the morning.
25:51I come in at 6.45, maybe 7 o'clock. Sees me walk past.
25:55He goes, hey, Bill, come on in. He's like, what did you think of that draft last night?
26:01I was like, oh, it was a lot of fun.
26:04What do you think of your team? He goes, I made a dumb pick and you called me out on it.
26:11I was like, yeah. He goes, I love that.
26:14Keep doing that. That's what I need around here.
26:17Everyone else, they're all yes men. They're all this and that.
26:20So I leave his office. I'm like, oh, wow.
26:23You know, he actually appreciated it. The next meeting I had was like the executive producer.
26:29She calls me in his office. She goes, you know, Bill, last night you told Jimmy he made a dumb pick and
26:36we don't really talk to him about, we don't really talk to him like that around here.
26:41I was like, he just told me he loved it.
26:44She's like, he did? I was like, yeah. He just brought me into his office.
26:49He said he loved it. She's like, oh my God.
26:52We were all so worried because no one talks to him like that around here.
26:57Long story short, Jim and I have bonded over that moment or relationship.
27:02We're like, we're buddies and we text every day and we talk about fantasy football every day.
27:07And he brings me to his Eagles games and we share, we co-manage a fantasy football team together.
27:13And we go to Superbowls together and we're friends.
27:16And it all started with me just kind of being myself and calling him out on a really dumb pick and no
27:23one else having like kind of the audacity to do that.
27:26But I knew that if I was going to work with him, when I was going to make a show successful with
27:34him, I'd have to be able to be myself.
27:36I don't know how to be anyone else. That's so good.
27:40What a great story. I love that. So is he any good at fantasy?
27:45He's very good. So there's a lot of similarities between the stock market, finance and fantasy football.
27:50We did three seasons on it. Our first season was incredible.
27:54We did it in studio. The second season COVID happened.
27:57We did it at home. The third season we did it for ESPN.
28:01There's just so much overlap between the stock market and how he approaches stocks and how he approaches investing and how I approach fantasy football.
28:09So when I call him out on a bad pick in the sixth round, it's not because the player's bad.
28:16It's because the price is bad. Yeah. You could have waited for that to go in the ninth round.
28:22And he does the same thing with stock. You bought Apple at 130.
28:26It's not a bad stock. It's a bad entry point.
28:29So we started and I knew nothing about the stock market.
28:33He started teaching me more and more about stocks.
28:36I started kind of like, oh, applying what he was teaching me to fantasy football.
28:41And we just kind of had good chemistry where we built around the idea of Jim being one of the greatest stock
28:48pickers of all time or financial analysts of all time, me being a really good fantasy football analyst and kind of like saying, how do these ideas mesh?
28:57What do we approach the same? And how can we take our financial investing advice and apply it to fantasy football, which
29:04a lot more people play fantasy football than invest in stocks.
29:07I don't know if that should be the case in America, but I think it is.
29:13And we just had a lot of fun with it.
29:16We made sure that we made it fun for people.
29:19That's awesome. So talk about your time at Sports Illustrated and what did working there mean to you when you first started?
29:26Yeah, really cool moment. Really cool because I got there in a non-traditional way.
29:31Like I said, I sold my company to a guy, to Ian Ritchie, who then sold his company to Sports Illustrated or
29:38the company that had the Sports Illustrated license. So I kind of showed up and I had a journalism background.
29:44I went to one of the best journalism schools in the country.
29:48Not really, I don't want to say welcomed is probably not the right word, but like people were kind of looking at me funny, right?
29:56Like what is this guy that's talking about fantasy football doing at Sports Illustrated?
30:01We're high class journalists here. So I kind of had to prove myself a little bit, which I didn't mind.
30:07I had to earn the respect again, which I didn't mind.
30:11Worked my butt off, proved my worth, made sure that people knew that, hey, I'm just as good of a journalist as anyone else.
30:19I just do it for fantasy football and not investigative reporting on the NFL's latest CBA.
30:24So it was kind of interesting being there. Obviously, it was great being there because Sports Illustrated still to this day is
30:31one of the most iconic names in sports. So growing up, getting SI kids, you know, getting a little older, getting Sports Illustrated in the mail.
30:39And now all of a sudden I'm working for that company.
30:43It was a really, really cool moment. Got to do a lot of things.
30:47Got to interview a ton of NFL players. Got to go to Super Bowls and have, you know, a presence on Radio
30:54Row and kind of like be part of a professional sports media organization.
30:59I was at Sirius XM. I was at the New England Patriots.
31:03But I wasn't, I had shows on those networks.
31:05But being at Sports Illustrated, like I was employed by them.
31:09So that was very different for me because I kind of came up in the entrepreneurial startup digital world.
31:15And now all of a sudden I'm at this big corporate company with like an HR team and an IT team and,
31:22you know, VPs and presidents and a publicly traded company.
31:25Like all that stuff that comes with being at a corporate company or a big large media company.
31:31And it was just different. It was something that I was just not used to.
31:36And I had to adjust and I had to make sure that I was having fun while also fitting into this like very professional corporate media world.
31:45I've seen so many different angles of this industry.
31:48What does your day-to-day look like these days? Yeah.
31:51So Ian Ritchie and I kind of partnered with Ed Bunnell and Rick Wolf in January of 2026.
31:57And we came up, Ian and I, we want, Ian's been doing live fantasy drafts.
32:01He's the founder of the Fantasy Football World Championships.
32:04He just sold to the NFFC. They kind of merged.
32:08So now they're the most dominant high stakes and, you know, elite fantasy football leagues out there.
32:13People are winning, you know, half a million dollars, a million dollars playing fantasy football through their contests.
32:19Ian's been running leagues out in Vegas for the last 15 years.
32:23Last four years, he'd been doing it at Circa.
32:26He brought me out and said, just come check out what we're doing.
32:30It's really cool. Circa is awesome. Just kind of come check out what we're doing and see what you think.
32:36And we kind of, I did that, went to some of his drafts.
32:41And I said, we should kind of have like a fan fest for fantasy football where everyone comes together.
32:47They can draft. We can have NFL players here.
32:50We can have a party at Stadium Swim. But we should do an event that kind of like is a party for people that love fantasy football boys.
32:59Let's do that. So we sat on that idea for a little while.
33:03Some things business-wise freed up our availability. And we said, okay, now's the time to launch that party.
33:09And we, I had worked with Ed and Rick on a different project when I was at Sports Illustrated.
33:15I was like, I wonder if they would be interested.
33:18Reached out to them. And they were like, we've been sitting on this idea for 20 years.
33:24We're in. So we have this great relationship with Circa.
33:27Now we have four, you know, very well-connected people in the industry.
33:31It was at the FSGA conference in, at Circa in February, where the four of us sat down and we said, all right, we're going to do this.
33:40We're going to announce it right now. And we're going to tell everybody about it.
33:45Like we'll host a cocktail party and we'll tell everyone about it.
33:48So we did that in February and then we're like, all right, well, now it's, you know, let's get going.
33:55We're doing this in August and it's already February.
33:58So for the last six months, that was my day-to-day every day.
34:02Trying to create this Draft Nation, National Fantasy Football Draft Day.
34:05And we pulled it off. So like, that was like my last six months.
34:10Um, now I'm very focused on two or three more events that we're probably going to announce in the near term.
34:17Um, and then making sure the 2027 National Fantasy Football Day is, is even better than the first one.
34:23I love it. No, I was, I was at that FSGA conference and, you know, I've been, you know, I kind of
34:30trying to keep my ears open when it comes to these kinds of events in, in this industry, what happens in this space.
34:37And so I love the ramp up to this event.
34:41It was, it's, you know, there's, there's other events in the space, but this is definitely, you know, unique, um, talk about the holiday thing.
34:49Who, who, who first said fantasy football needs a national holiday?
34:52That was, uh, that was Rick Wolf. Um, that was Rick Wolf.
34:56So the national, the national calendar day people, that's like avocado day or, you know, hug your brother day or national hot dog day.
35:04They get 33,000 submissions a year. And they only take about 15 of those 15.
35:09They might be interested in attending like one every five years.
35:12We submitted our, um, Rick Wolf, uh, put together this great presentation.
35:16We submitted our application. Um, they accepted it. We were pleasantly surprised, but they accepted it out of the 33,000 submissions they get a year.
35:24They only take 15. They accepted it. They said the announcement for national fantasy football day, got more traffic in their history than any other holiday.
35:33So the next thing we know, like we're on the phone with the CEO and the founder and they're like, we want
35:40to come, we want to cut a ribbon. This is going to be huge.
35:44We're going to sign it. We're going to, we're going to have a proclamation.
35:49We're like, Oh, wow. Like people are buying in already.
35:52This is going to be great. So kudos to Rick Wolf for that.
35:56Um, it's now official August 21st, 2026 was the first ever national fantasy football holiday and August 21st for the rest of,
36:03uh, for the rest of my life, at least will always be a national fantasy football holiday.
36:09We have the, we have the official calendar holiday for, uh, for fantasy football.
36:13The first one ever. You had analysts and celebrities and former NFL players, league drafts, stadium swim, you know, competitions and a gala.
36:21It looked incredible. I'm so jealous of the people that made it to that event.
36:26So from your vantage point, was this draft nation event a success?
36:30I think it was a tremendous success from a lot of different, um, a lot of different points, right?
36:36The, the, the fact that we pulled off this incredible event, we had over a thousand people there.
36:42We only had six months to do it. We had sponsors.
36:45We had every fantasy analyst that you can name Sirius XM did, did two days of live broadcasting.
36:51We had drafts. You mentioned the celebrities. We, we, we really pulled off an epic event.
36:56We wanted to give people, um, not just a Vegas experience, but a Vegas experience with a heavy fantasy football and NFL influence.
37:04And we did that in spades. We had a big presence.
37:07Adrian Peterson, Austin Eckler, Earl Thomas, Jeff Garcia, uh, Michelle Beatle was our, our MC.
37:12Everyone from Michael Fabiano, Howard Bender, Jen Piacente, Kendall Venezuela, Adam Ronas, Lawrence Jackson.
37:16I can go on and on about all the different brands that came out.
37:21Football guys was, was there. Um, fantasy alone was there.
37:24It was just a big presence from the industry, which we've absolutely were.
37:28We were very grateful for because we think of everyone as our colleagues, right?
37:33Like we're all in the same industry. We've all worked together at one place or another and we're all, and we're all really good friends.
37:41Um, the fantasy football industry is, is interesting like that, right?
37:45Like it's not like the Coke and Pepsi people where they're like battling for market share.
37:50The fantasy industry, it's a lot more friendly. Um, and there's a lot of overlap and a lot of people have been
37:57working together or working at this company and you have me on your podcast and he has you on his podcast and
38:04you come on that radio show and he, and she goes on that radio show.
38:09So it's a really good community. Um, I think it's a very special community.
38:13So to have all those people come out and support it, have all the athletes and the celebrities there.
38:20And then on top of that, have people bring their leagues from home, come out and draft with strangers, come and do
38:27a best ball, come and do a high stakes league.
38:30Um, and the different celebrities that were there, they were just as passionate about fantasy football, Richard Christie from the Howard Stern show.
38:37He was drafted, uh, with a bunch of people every day and Thomas ever Scott and James Roday.
38:43And it was just really cool to see these, you know, celebrities or, or NFL players like interact with the fantasy community
38:50and sit down and have a fantasy draft or sit down and talk about, you know, week three in 1999 or whatever
38:57it is where Adrian Peterson or also Declare, I guess not in 99, but 2008, 2010, um, talking about these games and
39:04it was just a really cool experience. Um, and it was a Vegas party, man.
39:09Like we had two nights of open bars. We had Mike's hard lemonade.
39:14It was our, our title sponsor give doing great giveaways.
39:17Asa spades, uh, the champagne company was, was doing great giveaways.
39:20Bud Light was another sponsor doing great giveaways. We had a recover 180 given great, great giveaways.
39:26So we gave people an experience in Vegas that had a fantasy football twist and that you wouldn't be able to get anywhere else.
39:34And that was our goal. And we pulled it off in a really big way.
39:38Oh yeah. Huge. I mean, from the outside looking in again, very, very jealous about, about those that attended, uh, you know,
39:46you got trophy smack running around doing their thing.
39:48You know, it looked like so much fun. Trophy smack.
39:52They brought the party. And what I mean by that, like if they, Josh and that whole crew, like they brought the
39:59fun, they brought the beer pong and the flip cup and the foosball and the life-size beer pong.
40:05And like they, and all the different awesome trophies that they have, that has to be one of the most fun companies
40:12to work for because they're so creative that like their creativity, their creativity is so high that like you can't help but
40:19have fun when you're around those guys. My wife came out with me.
40:23Um, and she never met anyone from the fantasy industry that I worked with before.
40:28So I introduced her to, you know, hundreds of people that weekend.
40:32And she was like that guy, Josh from trophy smack.
40:35He's a lot of fun. I was like, he's just, he like, they were the pulse of making sure that everyone had a good time.
40:43And I can't thank them enough for being like, just incredible partners on that project because without them, like, yeah, people would
40:50have been drinking and jumping in the pools, but like they made it like a carnival for adults.
40:56That's a great way to put it. They brought like the, they brought the carnival aspect to the national fantasy football draft day.
41:04I mean, that's Matt Walsh. I mean, from top down inside out, that's an incredible company with the best products in the,
41:11in the world when it comes to fantasy leagues.
41:14So what can you share about the vision of this event moving forward?
41:18Yeah, we, one, we want to have more leagues and we want Yahoo or CBS or ESPN, one of those three to
41:25get involved or all three to get involved in a big way because we want to have a cabana dedicated just to
41:32Yahoo leagues where 10, 12, eight, whatever it is, women, men, other come draft their home leagues at national fantasy football draft day.
41:39There was 20 fantasy drafts going on outside of our event that weekend.
41:44And when I told them, I went up to their cabana, told them what we were going on and they were like,
41:51I can't believe we didn't know about this. We're here anyway.
41:54We'd love to hang out and party and do all the activities that you're talking about.
41:59So that's number one. I want to have more home.
42:03I'm such a, I'm such a fan of home leagues.
42:06It's one thing to play against industry experts. It's one thing to play high stakes, but if you start back from where
42:13it all started for me, at least it was those home leagues.
42:17And I still play in four different home leagues with my friends from middle school and college.
42:22And so home leagues are important to me because I think it brings a new element of friendship and experience and camaraderie to national fantasy football draft day.
42:32So that's number one. We want to have more home leagues there.
42:35Number two is we really want to expand our offerings during the day.
42:40The parties at night were fantastic. The black hole came out on Saturday night.
42:44There was 200, 300 Raider fans all dressed up in their Raider gear.
42:48And we gave them a trophy for the best fan base.
42:52And they were a lot of fun. Saturday night, we gave out different awards to everybody.
42:57Friday night was the pool party. That was a lot of fun.
43:01I want to make sure that we're giving people an experience during the daytime where they can either, Hey, I woke up
43:08hungover in Vegas and I'm not ready to have another drink yet, but maybe I want to do trivia or maybe I
43:15want to do an autograph signing with a, with a player.
43:19Maybe I want to do a meet and greet.
43:22Maybe I want to do a fantasy draft. I want to be able to give people more experiences during the day so
43:29that when they're ready to party at night, they're like, Oh man, what a day that was instead of just, Hey, what a party that was.
43:37That's number two. Number three, we're talking about expanding.
43:40I don't know if we're going to do that in year two.
43:44I have, I'm only one voice out of four.
43:47So we have to do some internal discussions on, on when would be the appropriate time to expand.
43:53Do we want to perfect what we're doing in Vegas at Circa, which will always be the headquarters for national fantasy football
44:00draft day because they are the best partners in the world.
44:03And I, in my opinion, there's no better place as a sports fan than to be at Circa between their sports book
44:10and stadium swim and just everything they have going on there.
44:14So we'll always have a presence at Circa, but I don't know if I'm ready to take that next step yet to
44:21say New York city, Washington, DC, Miami, LA, Chicago, Dallas, um, these hotbeds of NFL teams around the country.
44:27I don't know if I want to do that yet in year two.
44:32Um, some of my other partners might want to, we haven't had that discussion yet when we do, we'll be sure to
44:39make an announcement very quickly on whether or not we're going to expand, but I don't know if we'll ever be able to, to perfect it.
44:47I want to get a couple more things right before I start jumping into other cities, but just, uh, like I said, I'm only 25% of the boat.
44:56I love it. Well, the vision, obviously it's, it's beautiful.
44:59I think, I think there's so much potential there.
45:02And I love, again, I love the home league experience more than more than as much as anybody.
45:08And so, uh, it just makes sense. So many people do go to Vegas with their leagues.
45:14The fact that, you know, you just got to get them, you know, get, get them the, the, the word, get them,
45:21get the news to them about what, what's a, what opportunities there are and, and get them there.
45:26Cause it's just a perfect event for, for the home league in a call.
45:31You know, I think all this comes down to just that, that fantasy football experience and the camaraderie, the connection, the competition, obviously it's great.
45:39It's great winning titles, but if you have a home league that you're drafting with since, since middle school, I mean, that's as good as it gets.
45:48So for you, do you have any great memories playing this game?
45:52Looking back at all the, all the years you've played football is back baby.
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47:08You're welcome. My favorite memories. Winning is always the best.
47:11Losing is always the worst. I can name you like if Michael Vick connected with LeSean McCoy on that Monday night game
47:18when there was, you know, a minute left and he got, you know, point or three more yards, which would have got
47:26me 0.3 more points and I would have won the championship.
47:29Like, yeah, all that stuff comes to mind. Uh, those losses certainly hit harder and they kind of stay etching your memory.
47:36Um, a little bit longer, but like drafting guys like Jamal Charles over Trent Richardson, which helped me win a championship.
47:43Um, drafting guys like Patrick Mahomes the first year became a starter.
47:47Um, and he has that, that record breaking season.
47:50Um, drafting guys like LaDainian Tomlinson, a rookie at a TCU when everyone else was drafting Emmitt Smith.
47:56Um, your hits tend to stick out, especially when you have a lot of conviction.
48:00Um, Randy Moss during the 07 run when like he was with like the Raiders the year before and he like, he
48:08wasn't really putting up a whole lot of fantasy stats anymore.
48:11And then he comes out and you know, has over 20 touchdowns that year.
48:16Um, having like those moments, those memorable moments when you hit on a player and they have one of those historic seasons, they're always a lot of fun.
48:25Um, Jamal Charles had like six touchdowns in one game against the Raiders that put me into the fantasy championship that, that like, and you need that, right?
48:34Like, uh, man, like I, I need a miracle here.
48:37I need Jamal Charles to score six touchdowns. And then he does it like those kinds of things are what you'll always remember.
48:44And then those losses, man, like I still remember LaShawn McCoy needing to like catch that ball for three yards and he, and he just dropped it.
48:53Um, it was a tough catch to make him, you know, but like those losses always hurt.
48:59My friend that I beat one year, um, he still brings up the kicker that I had on my team that, that ended up, uh, beating him.
49:07Uh, you know, he lost because of a kicker.
49:10I won because of a kicker. Like you fight so hard to make it to the championship.
49:16And then all of a sudden, like it comes down to one play, like the entire season, everything that just happened, like
49:23it comes down, like you can remember one play from it.
49:27Um, I think that's pretty special. And I, I don't think you get there anywhere other than in fantasy and not just
49:34fantasy football, like any other fantasy sport. Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's fantastic.
49:38I think about, you know, like a waiver wire pickup of, I mean, Jamal Charles was a waiver wire.
49:44Pickup for some people, you know, you know, when he's free in his first year, when he, when he broke out.
49:51Right. So I got my, one of my best buddies that's won the most championships in my home league.
49:57I, part of his logo is Jamal Charles because of what it meant to him to, to win some championships on the back of, of Jamal.
50:05But all this stuff is so much fun playing the game.
50:09And for someone that has kind of seen the best that fantasy has to offer, what is it about the league culture
50:16and traditions and rivalries and community in fantasy that makes it so special?
50:20Yeah. So my, my best friend and I, we go back and forth every year.
50:25His team name is King Kong. Um, and I just like one year I bought when we were playing each other one
50:32year, I, he grew up around the block for me.
50:35One year I brought like a, I bought like a stuffed animal, like monkey or like an ape or gorilla.
50:42I don't know. Um, and like, I ripped holes in it and I shoved the pencil in its eye and like, I
50:49put it under his, I put it under his windshield wiper at like six o'clock in the morning and like, he's going to work the next day.
50:58He's like, what the, what the hell is this?
51:01Um, like different trash talking. I'm a big trash talker.
51:04And a lot of my friends that I grew up with are trash talkers.
51:08So we love the back and forth of like, we go way beyond, like, I'm going to kick your butt this week.
51:16Um, like we have, we have fun with it.
51:18Um, we talk a lot of trash. Um, and that sometimes isn't boil over.
51:23Like, have I had to go over to my friend's house at midnight because the Mar Hamlin had that incident on the
51:30field and no one knew what was going to happen.
51:33And like fantasy football is like the least of the concerns right now.
51:38And it was just, you know, like one of those things where like, Hey, we need to figure this out and we
51:45need to figure it out right now. I'm like, okay, but someone just, you know, literally died on the field.
51:51Can we wait until the morning? No, we have to figure it out now.
51:56Um, yeah, sometimes things boil over a little bit and, and things can get heated.
52:00Um, but at the end of the day, if you are true friends, you know that, Hey, it's just fantasy and, uh, we'll get past this.
52:09I might beat your butt. You might be my butt, but, um, at the end of the day, we're going to have
52:16a drink over it and five years from now, we'll, we'll laugh about it.
52:21Um, but I, um, um, I, I love the fact that I can still compete against my friends, talk trash to them
52:28and have a winner or a loser. The idea to the, the idea of fantasy football or fantasy sports to like an
52:35outsider that probably sounds like the nerdiest, geekiest, lamest thing ever.
52:38But if you play fantasy, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
52:42You get it. You get it. And whether it's fantasy football or any other fantasy sport, there's a lot of special things.
52:49I mean, I'm obviously I'm biased to fantasy football.
52:52Now rumor has it that your love for fantasy football is only matched by your hatred of baseball.
52:58Is that still true? And what exactly did baseball do to Bill?
53:02Yeah. I, I, I, you know, it's funny. Um, never grew up playing baseball, never grew up watching play baseball.
53:08I think it's, I think it's a very boring game.
53:12The problem now is my son is 10 years old.
53:15He plays baseball seven months out of the year.
53:18My, my partner's son, Ian Ritchie's son is, is the pitcher for the Atlanta Braves.
53:23Um, my other partner son, Ed, his son was a pitcher in college.
53:27Um, Ed still plays, still plays baseball. So I'm, I'm surrounded mainly my son.
53:31I'm surrounded by people that love baseball. So I have to dial back my hatred for it.
53:37Um, I went on like a three year run where I didn't watch a single at bat, not a, not a single
53:44swing, not a single pitch of, of any professional baseball that has since changed.
53:49Um, I tune into, to the Braves when J.R is pitching.
53:52Obviously I watched my, my son play. I helped coach my son's team, even though I don't know anything about the game.
53:59Um, I'm more of like the, the game changer guy, which, uh, is, is a very stressful job, by the way.
54:06I don't know if you know anything about game changer, but like you have to track every single pitch, hit swing, ball,
54:13strike, strike on swing, strike on looking ball outside, ball low runner takes a bait.
54:18Like you need to pay attention to every single pitch so much so that like, I'm like glued to my phone the
54:25entire game I'm watching and I'm doing this. One of the kids comes up to me and he's talking to me about something.
54:33I don't know what he's saying. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
54:35That's a good idea. Go do that. I have no idea.
54:39My wife's beat. The dugouts are small. So like the fans are right there.
54:44My wife starts laughing. I was like, well, what's going on?
54:47She goes, you have any idea what he just said to you?
54:51I said, no, I'm doing the game changer. I'm without a strike or a ball.
54:56That's all I care about right now. She was, he just asked you if he, he should get hit by a pitch on purpose.
55:04I was like, Oh God. Now, like I just, I'm so clueless.
55:07Like I'm so zoned in on that game changer app when I'm coaching this baseball that I don't even pay it.
55:14I'm telling the kids to go out there and intentionally take a hit, but it's actually become a lot of fun.
55:21I don't enjoy the game. I'm never going to sit down and watch a Yankees game just because the Yankees are on.
55:28But my, my hatred for baseball has since decreased a bit.
55:32It's not significantly, just a bit. Okay. I go.
55:35It makes sense. Makes sense. That's fair too. And yeah, shout out to all the dads out there that are dedicated to their kids sports.
55:43I'm a volleyball dad, girls, volleyball dad. They call me the team mom.
55:47Cause I'm so dialed in all the apps and all the different tracking matches.
55:51It's a lot, isn't it? It's a lot. It's a lot, but I wouldn't change.
55:56I wouldn't change it at all. Yeah. So when you were in middle school, you know, fantasy football gave you a community
56:03and you've spent much of your adult life building media shows companies, and even a national holiday around this great game at
56:11this point, what does fantasy football actually mean to Bill Enright?
56:14A lifestyle. I think if I had to sum up in one word, that's the word I'd use.
56:20Um, my wife, who I've been with since I was a freshman in college or a freshman in high school, she knows
56:27that Sundays are for, you know, family and food and football.
56:31Um, and so are Mondays and Thursdays and sometimes Wednesdays and sometimes Saturdays, um, holidays, certainly, um, fantasy football and, and, and,
56:38and, and, and being part of this industry, it's a lifestyle.
56:41Like you're working on the weekends, you're working on holidays.
56:44You have to have an understanding from your family, from your, whoever, your support system that like, Hey, yes, this is fun.
56:52It's a blast. I wouldn't change it for the world, but there's going to be some sacrifices.
56:57And if on Sunday you have plans to go to a farm, you better, you know, apple picking, uh, during the fall,
57:04you better change those plants to the Saturday afternoon.
57:07Um, so there's a lot that goes into it that you have to make some sacrifices.
57:12Those sacrifices are, are, are worth 10 X. Um, but if I had to sum it up, I I'd say fantasy football for me is, is a lifestyle.
57:21I love it. Living that fantasy life. I love it.
57:25Well, I truly, truly enjoyed this conversation and having you on this show.
57:29Is there anything you want to share that we didn't cover before we close things out here?
57:34Um, stay tuned for 2027 announcement for national fantasy football draft day.
57:38We got some fun things cooking already. If you were there year one, or if you have FOMO from missing out on
57:45year one, be there for year two, because it's going to be just as epic.
57:50Can you share with the listeners and viewers where they can find your work and learn more about draft nation?
57:57Yeah. So check out full-time fantasy.com. You can follow me on Twitter at bill Enright.
58:01Um, check out some, there's still time to play in some, some high stakes, fancy leagues, check out the circus circus, uh,
58:09fantasy series, check out the, the NFFC. We have contests going on all through kickoff all through labor day weekend, all the
58:16way into week one of the NFL season. Awesome stuff from bill Enright for those listeners and viewers out there.
58:22Thank you so much for checking out this episode.
58:25Thank you for listening to the fantasy football unlimited podcast until next time, be sure to follow and subscribe to all of
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