Fantasy Football Started With Raiders

by Tom LaMarre

When the National Football League kicks off its 2020 season in September, it will mark the 58th anniversary of Fantasy Football, but it actually started with the Oakland Raiders and the American Football League.

As Andy Kantowski wrote in the Las Vegas Review-Journal this week, what was known as the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League, or GOPPPL for short, was started by Raiders front office staff and sportswriters on a three-week trip to play the New York Titans, Buffalo Bills and Boston Patriots in 1962.

I know all about it because I was a member of the league, not in the beginning because I was in the eighth grade at St. Jarlath’s School in Oakland, but when I landed the job of Raiders beat writer for the Oakland Tribune in 1971.

You had to be affiliated with the Raiders in some way to be a member of GOPPPL.

Bill Winkenbach, who was owner of Superior Title Co. in Oakland and a minority partner of the Raiders, got the idea for the league with Scotty Stirling, the Raiders’ beat writer for the Tribune, and Bill Tunnell, the Raiders’ public relations director.

I knew Wink because he and my Dad were friends in the St. Jarlath’s Dad’s Club.

One night, Stirling phoned Andy Mousalimas, an Oakland bar owner who had about 125 Raiders season tickets through his company, and said: “I think we’ve got something going. Come on down, you’ll enjoy it.”

Stirling, who wound up being general manager of the Raiders, then GM of the Golden State Warriors and later a radio talk show host and color commentator on Raiders radio, would up being partners with Mousalimas on one of the teams.

The other seven teams in the original league consisted of Sports Editor George Ross of the Oakland Tribune and Bob Valli, another Tribune sportswriter; Winkenbach; Bob Blum, radio voice of the Raiders; Phil Carmona of the Raiders ticket office; Ralph Casebolt, also of the Raiders ticket office and Bill Downing, future president of the Oakland Chamber of Commerce; Ticket Manager George Glace of the Raiders and Ron Wolf, Personnel Director of the Raiders; and Tunnell.

Each team picked four running backs, four receivers, two quarterbacks, two fullbacks, a kicker, a kick returner, a defensive back, a linebacker and a defensive lineman.
Stirling and Mousalimas made quarterback George Blanda (pictured) of the Houston Oilers, who later was chosen as a kicker, the first pick of the initial draft and fullback Jim Brown of the Cleveland Browns went second.

“I should’ve taken Jim Brown,” Mousalimas said later.

Points were awarded for touchdowns, field goals, extra points, two-point conversions and safeties.

By the time I joined GOPPL in 1971, the Tribune team consisted of the sports editor, Ross and later Valli; the Raiders beat writer, me through 1977, and the San Francisco 49ers beat writer, Dave Newhouse.

As I recall, the Tribune team made money every year I was part of it, except one.

GOPPPL expanded to other teams in the AFL and Fantasy Football has grown into something of a national phenomenon.

And GOPPPL is still going strong under new ownership.

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