Great Play: New Fantasy Football Format Fundraises

A man from Milwaukee has created a new online service that he calls a new type of Fantasy Football but I consider more of a Pool host service, either way he has added in a Well-Met twist: a portion of the fee for a paid premium membership goes to charity.

You may still need to channel some
FFFu to win at Craction

Craction - www.craction.com - is the brain child of Milwaukeean Scott Schmidt. At Craction you can join a random public or create a private 'league' for free where on a weekly basis you pick teams from the schedule to win versus drafting a team for the season. This is why I consider it more of a Pool, Pick-em, type league than how most Fantasy leagues operate. His reasoning behind this format is that people should not have to spend so much time to still enjoy watching the games with the added interest from wanting your picks to win. Fantasy sports can take up hours a week of a man's - and yes some women's - time checking put your players, setting rosters, making drops and pick-ups or trades, and in sports like baseball that go on forever with many games a week you can really find it to be a time sink. But in Craction you just pick your teams for the week. You pick against a spread that Craction creates, not the Vegas spread, and his service scores for you. The process seems very simple, probably just a few minutes each week. With the addictive personalities that we all can have I can see how this can be a benefit - making the things that take up time in our lives easier and quicker is usually a good thing.



Like many online services for Fantasy sports - such as Yahoo, ESPN, and CBSSports - you can play for free or you can join a paid league. For free is just for fun, you get nothing out of it. In paid leagues you are in essence gambling - paying to play with the possibility that if you win  you win back money in some manner. Your league may pay all just to the winner or split it out to winner, runner-up, making the play-offs, etc. I have previously suggested here that those that pay to play and win could and should take some of their winnings and donate them to a charity. It wasn't your money to begin with (minus your initial investment or bet depending how you look at it) so why not say split it, keep half and donate half. Besides the personal satisfaction of helping out a worthy cause,  you can also declare it on your taxes. Well, at Craction Schmidt has taken the step of doing that for you. If you join as a Premium member - only $30 - a portion of the fee (what that portion is is not said) goes to the National Veterans Summer Sports Clinic.

Overall this new service seems to be well thought out, well done, and has a well-meaning philanthropic aspect to it so I give Schmidt kudos and say Great Play. The only beef is that I really consider it a Pool versus a Fantasy sport service - but hey if it gets people to try it out and join the Premium service and give to the VA's Summer Sports Clinic, more power to him.