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Many people geek out over fantasy sports.

From the bubbly inner excitement of when the season starts to the heartbreak of being ousted in playoffs (with the countless nights of donning your team's jersey and screaming at the television in between), there is nothing more satisfying to the sports fan than the regular season and, if you're lucky, playoffs. But the ultimate expression of passion by any sport fanatic is assuming the role of armchair manager and creating your very own online fantasy sports team.

For the non-sports geek or fairweather fan, it is just a waste of time, a virtual illusion that means nothing. They don't understand. For the sports guru, competing in an online fantasy league, molding the perfect team, making the difficult but necessary decisions to improve it and earning perennial bragging rights is the ultimate prize.

A fantasy sports pool is simple. When competing in one, you literally take on the position of team manager as you, and the other members of a pool, build a team from scratch by drafting actual players from a league, choose who starts on game days and track your team's progress as you go head-to-head against the other teams in the pool. The players' performance in your league directly follows their performances in real life, so it's up to you to choose who you think are the best possible options for game days.

There are fantasy sports leagues for many popular sports, such as football, baseball and basketball. A popular fantasy sports host is Yahoo! Sports (ca.sports.yahoo.com/ fantasy), but many league websites also offer the service, such as NBA.com and NFL.com.

Although fantasy sports have become more popular lately, it isn't anything new. John Young is the operations manager of the Fanshawe Student Union and is part of one of the very first ever fantasy football pools made in North America, created back in 1977.

Even for someone who has been a part of a league for over three decades, Young said the thrill to play in one will never leave him. "It's fun. It's a way to connect with people of similar interests."

The pool started from humble beginnings as a simple workplace diversion. Three of Young's coworkers — along with three other friends — started the game. That core group has stayed almost the same, though people have come and gone throughout the years, he said. "It's meeting with the same people, conversing and trying to get their tendencies of over 30 years of fantasy football." Now that's sports geekery at its finest.

Over the past 35 years, Young has seen a drastic transformation in the way fantasy sports is done. It's gone from primitive, almost barbaric beginnings to the technologically advanced system it is today. "In 1977 there was no Internet; we got all of our information from the London Free Press and had to do it by hand. We'd often have to go to different papers, because if there was a space allotment problem, they would cut off the stats so we'd have to look to find out what the stats were for different games when it came to passing and receiving. So a lot of hard work, analyzing and taking the information and multiplying by longhand to determine scores." Okay, maybe it wasn't barbaric, but it sure wasn't as easy to do things as it is today, with the click of a mouse.

The way fantasy sports leagues have been done may have changed over time, but the passion to win will always stay the same for the sports geek. I asked Young to rate himself on a scale of one to 10, one being casual and 10 being obsessive when it comes to fantasy sports. "I would say in the early years, I was probably closer to nine or 10, but I've calmed it down and it's a casual, fun thing now," he said. Young confessed that although it is easy to become obsessed with winning, it isn't necessary.

"I've seen some 10 people lose all the time, because they overthink. You have to be knowledgeable, and I think knowledge is power."

Kevin "Beef" Masterson is the Biz Booth supervisor at the Fanshawe Student Union, and he is a fantasy sports veteran of over 20 years. Like Young, he recounted how different it was to operate your team during the glory days. "We were all baseball geeks. Back then the commissioner would do the stats by hand, and during the baseball season, you would get maybe two updates in the standings, so you would have to anticipate how your team was doing without actually knowing, because there were no computerized stats. And then we bought a service that we would fax in our lineups too, and they would fax us the reports, and then the computer age took over."

Unlike Young, Masterson said that absolute obsession is vital when it comes to success in fantasy sports. "You need to be a 10. You have to be. If you want to win, you have to be a 10, you really do," he said. "I couldn't do it and just be casual about it, there's no way, it's not in my makeup. If I'm in it, I want to win it." But, like Young, he said that his interest in competing in a fantasy league for so many years has changed. "Before I was married, it was obsessive. You would watch every game; there wasn't any Sunday where you weren't totally obsessing over the whole thing."

Masterson did note, however, that over time, competing in fantasy sports could really take over your life. "You get to the point where you're either going to become Meat Loaf (the musician), who's in like 400 pools ... It's king of all consuming. You're following it all the time, every day you're clicking on it, you're talking trades with guys; it really dominates your time."

Many people enjoy sports. Some love to just watch it on TV, others would rather play it, and many love to do both. Most people who do any of these things proclaim themselves to be sports enthusiasts. And that's okay. But, for some, "enthusiast" just isn't enough, and there's only one last distinction that you could possibly attain. That last distinction is known as sports geek. But you're not a sports geek until you've created a fantasy sports team, that's just common law. There's no greater sense of satisfaction than ownership of your own fantasy team and the achievement of winning the league. But beware and know the fine print: competing in one can get obsessive and almost addictive. Once you're in, it's hard to get out.