Journal Prompt 7

The discourse community that I chose was fantasy football. It's hard to say how many people actually play fantasy football, but I would say more than a million. But in my league I have eleven other teams including mine. Each league cuts down the community to less people since there is a limit to how many teams are allowed to be in the league. Ranging from six teams to 20 teams. There are also different websites too, including ESPN, Yahoo, NFL, etc. that allow people to create leagues for themselves and their friends. And there's no limit to how many teams someone might have.

To be in a fantasy football league there is a lot of communication that one needs to know. For example words like free agent, waiver wire, trade, add/drop, injury reports, and practice schedules. There's communication between teams for trading players through calls, text messages or even emails through the site. But, also one can send a trade to see if someone will accept it, decline it, or send a trade back. There is also communication when everyone drafts their teams unless the computer does it for the league, but that's uncommon since everyone likes picking the guys they want. While drafting there's always communication where people in the league can voice their opinion of who got drafted where.

All fantasy leagues have a purpose and the purpose to win it all. Everyone is competing for the top spot and have the privilege to brag about how good their team is and how good they picked their team. Some of the times, there is betting involved. Where the winner gets all the money in the pot, so everyone's trying to win the money involved. Also, to pick the best team during the draft is definitely another purpose to fantasy football, but that shouldn't be the case because a team can be made with free agents and trades.

There are many rules to fantasy football. Once a player is on another person's team, the only way he can be picked up is if the player is dropped or traded. If dropped though the team with the worst record has the first say in whether he would like to pick him up, if not then it keeps going until it finally reaches the team with the best record. If not picked up by anyone he then clears waivers and is a free agent, where anyone who pleases can pick him up if wanted. Also, not every team makes the playoffs, so everyone better hope the team that gets picked has a winning record.

This is one discourse community has many hidden terms that many people who are not apart of fantasy people wouldn't know. For example back to the injury reports, which have to looked at very carefully because it determines whether the players that are on a team will play or not. Paying close attention to P for probable, Q for questionable, and D for doubtful. Probable means he most likely will play depending on a set back, questionable is a 50-50 ordeal based on game-time decision, and doubtful is pretty straight forward meaning the player won't play. Each are vital to determine who wins during the week head to head since every point counts. Finally, it's important to keep track of the practice schedule because if a player doesn't practice then it usually means they aren't going to play. So fantasy football owners have to know DNP, did not practice, LP, limited practice, and FP, full practice.