Men Playing Fantasy Football For 35 Years Recall Keeping Score By Hand

DENVER (CBS4) - In a garage in southwest Denver a group of friends has gathered to play a game they have been playing for 35 years.

"I had never heard the term used," Doug Hendrixson said when he first heard of the game. "But it sounded interesting and I wanted to check it out."

"It was just new to all of us and we didn't know what to do," Dave Turk said about when they first started. "I know my strategy the first year was terrible."

Well that game is now played by more than 33 million people.

"I heard from a friend a type of fantasy thing with football that he was in," said Ken Barkema about starting this league. It's a fantasy football league, of course, but it wasn't so obvious when this group was formed back in the early 1980s.

"There were about as many people who didn't know what fantasy football was back then who do know what it is today," said Hendrixson, one of the league's original members.

Turk is also an original member of the ABL, short for Anheuser Busch League, both recruited by their former coworker Barkema, who believes he started the league in 1981 and sheepishly admits he has won the most titles.

They still use the same draft board, with faint reminders of drafts past, when players were selected for one reason and one reason only.

"It was just touchdowns and field goals," Turk said of the original scoring system. "We had to do it by hand so couldn't get too fancy with it."

"We had a QB, two running backs, two wide receivers, a tight end, a kicker and a defense," Barkama says about the lineup. "It was all TDs and no yards."

ABL members say the strategy of picking players each week based on the best match-ups hasn't changed much, but the process of actually setting the lineup sure has.

"You would pick your lineup and then make a telephone call," explained Turk.

"And you had to call before 11 on Sunday morning to the person that you were playing," added Barkema.

And with fewer games on TV, and no Internet to check scores, you wouldn't know how all of your players did until you got the Monday morning paper.

"You'd be lying awake at night waiting to see that box score wondering if your player scored a TD because you were behind by 4 points and you needed a TD and you just didn't know," said Barkama about waiting until the day after the games to learn who had won the fantasy match-up.

But even as stats became more readily available, more games were broadcast and fantasy football became an online game, the ABL stuck to its offline, touchdown only scoring format for 25 years.

"We had one fellow really pushing us to go high tech because he wanted more than just TDs," said Turk about the league eventually switching in the mid-2000s. "Being a bunch of old guys we were kind of reticent to make that move but he convinced us and then we all bought in really fast."

Turk now runs the online score-keeping, and Barkema actually flies in from Oregon for the draft.

"It is more fun now," Barkema said of the changes since 1981. "You go online and see instant scoring so you know exactly where your game score is."

And even though it is common these days for people to be in multiple leagues, not the ABL members, they say they are too loyal to their first and only fantasy football league.

Mark Haas is CBS4's weekend sports anchor and sports reporter. Read his bio or follow him on Twitter @markhaastv or on Facebook.