In the last few weeks, sports fans at Sacramento State joined millions around the world purchasing magazines, watching television shows and listening to radio analysts in preparation for the start of another fantasy football season.

The players of fantasy football take it as seriously, some spending hours each day studying game films and stats to make changes to improve their teams.

“Sophomore year (of high school) I was spending four hours a day on it,” Sac State freshman Jason Otole said. “I was reading the newspaper, surfing the Internet, and recording games on TV to study later.”

The game involves drafting players for your team, and each player is scored based on his stats. Draft day for fantasy football can be as meticulous as the NFL, complete with rounds, transactions, and designated times.

Nearly every major sports Web site offers fantasy football games with prices ranging from free to pass $500 to start a team. CBS Sportsline’s premier league, Double Diamond, offers a cash prize of $3500 but costs $499.95 to play.

Originally, drafts were held in-person and by paper. Today, most fantasy football is done online. A search of “Fantasy Football” on Google returned 4.5 million pages.Many students at Sac State, including senior Visna Keaat, have not joined fantasy football due to the time commitment and price of playing.

“It would be hard for me because I don’t keep up on the stats,” Keaat said. “I don’t have time for it; I’m either playing Madden or watching games on TV.” The time commitment has been a hurdle for Otole this year. “I hope to do it this year,” Otole said. “I haven’t had a lot of time to spend on it.”

In Otole’s best season of playing, he won $130 for second place in a league with a $40 buy-in. Like Otole, freshman Chris Marotto began watching the games with more intensity after playing Fantasy Football.

“I’ve always been a Niners fan so I never watched Priest Holmes,” Marotto said. “But once I got him on my team, I started watching all the Chiefs games.” Morotto spends just one and a half hours a week on playing, checking only twice a week.

“I’ve done pretty well just haven’t won a league yet,” Morotto said.Players of fantasy football tend to either focus on offense or defense. There is even the option to draft an entire NFL team. But stats, not wins and losses, determine who wins fantasy football leagues. Otole said the best strategy is to go for the best player on each team instead of focusing on getting players from good teams.

“My strategy is to get cheap players on weak teams,” Otole said. “If you can get the best wide receiver from a weak team, he’s going to score better than the third best receiver from a championship team.”

Steven Blakesley can be reached at [email protected].