Fantasy Football ghetto style

The Ghetto Football Poolies are all business as they get ready for their fantasy football pool draft done via video conference. Photo by Chris Dawson.

Arm chair quarterbacks are getting ready for the first Sunday of the NFL season. Aside from rooting for their favourite ball club the craze of fantasy football is becoming a bigger part of the game for football fans on both sides of the border.

It’s a beautiful early September night and the boys from the Ghetto Football Pool are gathering once again for the annual fantasy football draft that started on the porch of Mrs. Scarfone’s home on the East end of North Bay and has evolved into a high tech event.

This fantasy football draft started back in 1989 and in 2008 the boys gather at the FDM4 building on Airport road where participants move into the software companies North Bay board room to view long-time North Bay resident Mike Cutsey via video conference on the 56-inch big screen TV sitting in the comforts of his FDM4 office based in Henderson, Nevada near Las Vegas.

“At least I get to see the boys and hopefully I win my second pool in 19 years,” said Cutsey sitting in a tank top as the participants look enviously at the cactuses that can be seen outside the glass walls of his Nevada office. His only Ghetto Football Pool title came way back in 1991.

Claude Sharma is the Ghetto Football pool newbie. The Cogeco North Bay News producer was only 5 when the Ghetto pool began back in 1989.

“This is unbelievable, we don’t have anything like this down south,” said the Hamilton native about the impressive video conferencing setup.

Rob Laporte has been involved in the pool for 15 of the 19 seasons but has never won the coveted Ghetto Football Pool Trophy. Only a couple of seasons ago Laporte held an almost untouchable lead in the pool before he claims a “plague” swept through his fantasy roster.

“I’m a sadist,” he said jokingly.

“One of these years I am going to win.”

Anthony Scarfone always seems to pick a team which battles for league supremacy. This is one of his favourite nights of the year.

“In the grand scheme of things this ranks just behind the birth of my children,” he said tongue and cheek.

His brother Freddy has been a regular in the pool too. Some participants call him “The Human Rain Delay,” as he muses through the pages of his outdated fantasy football pool magazine trying to figure out who he should pick next.

The competition is fierce and each pick is critiqued but like many other fantasy football pools it becomes a night of laughing and enjoying a night with the boys.

“How many people can say they’ve stayed friends with the people they’ve grown up with for 20 years and for most of us we’ve been friends for 30 years so that’s the main reason why this happens,” said Ghetto Pool founder Frank Caruso.

About three hours after the first pick is made, the pool is done for another year as everyone packs up their lists of stats sheets and guys jeer each other on the way out the door. Like 1000’s of other fantasy football poolies, the fun will continue for another 17 weeks and all those poolies will find out if their sleepers panned out or if they’ll be “eating crow” when they realize the team they’ve picked really stinks.

Either way, nothing will stop the Ghetto Football Pool from making its 20th anniversary another very special occasion.