Times Football League

The Times Football League (TFL) is a fantasy football league that began play in Anchorage, Alaska, in 1990. The league was initially formed entirely of employees of the now-defunct Anchorage Times, but over the years it has grown to include non-Times owners. Originally a 12-team league, expansions in 1994 and 2002 increased the league to 16 teams. The league's championship game is called the Sweeney Bowl, named in honor of former Times sports editor John Sweeney. The league trophy is dubbed the T. Rex and is likewise inspired by Sweeney, whose hunched posture and three-finger typing technique resembled the famed dinosaur at a keyboard.

Origins

In 1990, Ken Sain, an editor at the Times, proposed the idea of a fantasy football league. Twelve employees, most of whom hailed from the sports department, signed up for the first season. The league was an instant success. Mirroring the journalistic backdrop of the league, some owners began writing news stories to trumpet the exploits of their imaginary teams. The first Sweeney Bowl was captured by Sweeney's Balboa Constrictors. In an ironic footnote, Sweeney was no longer a Times employee when he won the championship, having been dismissed by The Newspaper two months earlier. Of the league's current 16 teams, five have owners who have participated in every TFL season. The five owners who have participated in every TFL season are Mike Taylor, Charles Bingham, Scott Lacy, Wit Tuttell and Steve Katz. Ken Sain has participated in every TFL season, but he served as commissioner during the second season and did not own a team. That 1991 season was the only year when the person serving as commissioner didn't also own a team in the league.

Closing of the Times

On June 2, 1992, three months before the start of the league's third season, the Anchorage Times folded. The league's 12 owners soon scattered across the continent in search of work and the Times Football League seemed destined to fold along with the paper that hatched it. In July 1992, Scott Lacy, a former Times sportswriter living in Arizona, became determined to resurrect the league. He coaxed back most of the original owners, recruited a few new ones, and in late August 1992 the TFL's third draft was held in Sain's Los Angeles apartment. The third draft was conducted almost entirely by telephone, with 10 of the 12 owners unable to travel to the draft site.

TFL Convention

In 1995, the league planned its first league convention. The convention was slated for the weekend of the National Football League season opener, in Orlando, Florida, and ten of the 14 owners attended (including Casey Brogan, who flew 5,000 miles from Anchorage) The convention was deemed an immediate success, and the league quickly established it as an annual event. Subsequent conventions were held in New Orleans (1996), Denver (1997), Boston (1998) and Las Vegas (1999). In 2000, the TFL convention was awarded to Anchorage to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the league. The 2001 convention was in New York City, putting many of the league owners in Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001. The next conventions were Chicago (2002), Buffalo (2003), Pittsburgh (2004), Cleveland (2005) and Phoenix (2006).

Technology

As fantasy football exploded in popularity, the Times Football League used increasingly sophisticated technologies to keep its far-flung members in touch. In 1996, the league debuted TFL TrashTalk, an online message board in which members could communicate with each other. By the late '90s, fantasy services by ESPN and Yahoo had appeared on the landscape, each offering a suite of online tools to ease the administrative burden of the nation's fantasy commissioners. But the TFL stubbornly resisted this direction and continued to develop its own web site, TFL Central. The TFL's web site grew increasingly sophisticated over the years. In 2003, TFL Central added the capacity to make player transactions entirely online; previously, the process was a manual one, requiring the league's commissioner to sift through transaction requests one by one. Today, league drafts are conducted entirely online, powered by Web technologies developed by the TFL.

Glossary

YTG! - Acronymn of applause for a spectacular comment posted in TrashTalk. Attached at the front of the acronymn is the first letter of the last name of the person being applauded. (Ex: A notable post by Denver owner Mike Taylor would elicit, "TYTG!"

WIM - Acronym for "Woe Is Me", an utterance most frequently attributed to Dugway owner Ken Sain.