Brian Westbrook made one of the smartest football plays we can remember seeing in a long time yesterday. In the process, he likely had an impact on millions of dollars, and it has nothing to do with betting lines or bonuses. Westbrook, in case you missed it, had a clear path to the end zone on a long run just before the two-minute warning against the Cowboys. But with the Eagles leading 10-6 and Dallas out of time outs, Westbrook deliberately went down at the 1-yard line. The Eagles simply knelt down three times after the two-minute warning and won the game. Had Westbrook scored, as strange as it sounds, Dallas would have had at least a fraction of a chance to score quickly, convert an on-side kick, and score again — extremely unlikely, but more likely than a veteran QB somehow dropping one of three snaps. Now, to the game within the game: fantasy football. As of last August, it was said that the number of people playing fantasy football was a “fast-growing 36.8 million.” So lets say for the sake of growth and rounding that it’s now 40 million. Let’s also say that many of those people are in multiple leagues — some more than two, some two and some just one — to bring the total number of teams to 80 million. Let’s say most leagues have 10 teams, making the total number of leagues 8 million. Now, Westbrook is a prominent player who is surely on a roster in virtually every league. With most leagues having already entered the fantasy playoffs, some teams were eliminated already, but let’s say that Westbrook was still playing in half of the 8 million leagues (a reasonable guess based on some leagues being down to 6 or 8 teams and some being down to 4 by this past weekend), thus giving him an impact in 4 million leagues. Let’s say that in 1 of every 20 of the leagues in which he was still playing, Westbrook not scoring a TD on that play at the end was the deciding factor in a game (that seems to be a reasonable, perhaps even low estimate, considering it’s universally 6 points, but we’ll go with it). That’s 200,000 fantasy games he impacted. Let’s say for the sake of argument the average entry fee in a league is $50, meaning a total prize pool of $500 for a 10-team league. While it’s hard to know exact breakdowns of money, let’s say that the difference in winning or losing because of Westbrook’s decision was $125 (factoring in how far either team would have gone in the playoffs had they advanced, how much leagues pay for winning a championship, etc.). That $125 is probably the biggest guess, but we hope you agree that it sounds at least reasonable. That means Westbrook’s decision, solely in fantasy football terms, influenced 200,000 leagues times $125, for a total impact of $25 million — the same value as the five-year contract extension Westbrook signed two years ago. Now, we realize you could play this game every week with close calls, guys being pushed out of bounds at the 1, etc. The difference here, in our minds, is that it was a game with fantasy playoff implications and it was an outcome based on a rational decision, not a stroke of luck or a routine piece of game action. It was a great football decision; whether you liked it or not probably depended on your level of addiction to fake football, your level of monetary investment and, most importantly, which side of the ball you were on. For the record, we lost both our playoff games yesterday. Westbrook was an opponent in one game, and we still lost handily. So even luck can’t overcome a mediocre roster and injuries.
An extended Fasola-link, with pictures of the lad, is coming up next.

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