Dexter Manley
Footballguy
Says he spends about 40 hours a week on his leagues. Has investors who paid his entry fees.
http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_page=1200...;u_sid=10520050
http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_page=1200...;u_sid=10520050
Published Sunday December 21, 2008
Fantasy is possible million-dollar reality
BY ROB WHITE
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
There are fantasy football experts.
And then there is Chad Schroeder.
The 35-year-old Omaha resident, together with a group of investors, has a chance to win $1 million in the first-ever Fantasy Football Open Championship this weekend. From an original field of 6,600 teams, 15 are still competing. Schroeder directs two - yes, two - of those 15 teams.
"I'm like anybody doing their local leagues with friends, but just at a higher level," Schroeder said.
Yeah, right.
An Aurora, Neb., native and University of Nebraska graduate, Schroeder worked for a local discount broker and would occasionally bet on sports. After being laid off about eight years ago, he realized he was making enough money betting on sports to make the leap to becoming a full-time gambler.
"I was looking for another job and there wasn't a whole lot out there," he said. "I was betting on the Internet and it was pretty easy to do, and I kept having bigger and bigger years. I've gone through a corporate layoff. It's not something I want to do again."
Schroeder recently changed his primary focus from sports gambling to high-stakes fantasy leagues because of the potential for higher profits. He and his investors - mostly a group of friends who were usually spending Sundays watching NFL games together - sunk $50,000 into 66 fantasy league teams this fall.
It's a mutual funds approach to fantasy football. But, unlike Wall Street, this investment seems to be paying off this year. Even if worst-case scenarios play out, Schroeder said, the group will make a tidy sum, bringing back a minimum of $18,000 profit on the original $50,000.
It's not for everybody, but it's working for Schroeder.
"I would say he has a gift for analyzing things," said Kelly Schroeder, Chad's uncle and one of the investors who account for about 40 percent of the overall undertaking. "He does a good job of cutting out the opinions of people who don't matter. He just looks at the whole picture better than anybody I've ever seen."
So when his nephew asked in August if he was interested in becoming part of the enterprise, uncle Kelly was all for it. Two leagues required $5,000 entry fees, others less.
"His perspective was the more teams that are entered, the more chance we'd have to do well," Kelly Schroeder said. "It gets rid of the luck factor. We trusted his judgement."
Chad Schroeder admits he was skeptical about the FFOC, which promises $2 million in overall prize money. Second place is worth $100,000, third place $50,000 and all 15 finalists get $3,500. The entry fee was only $125, though, so he took a shot and entered 23 teams.
He said he's confident now that the game is legitimate. He and investor Justin Herron, a local golf pro, have been flown to Las Vegas all-expenses-paid for the weekend to join the other finalists. NFL legend Jerry Rice is scheduled to present the $1 million check to the winner Monday night at the Bellagio Hotel. A permanent trophy, and traveling trophy, and another all-expenses-paid trip to award next year's traveling trophy, is promised to the winner.
But really, it wasn't until the past few weeks that Schroeder and his group started getting locked in to this tournament.
"It's been on the backburner because we were focused on the ones where we had more of a real, true chance to win money," Herron said. "The 12-team leagues where you get money if you win are easier to focus on. This one was so unpredictable, and with the cut lines it was really hard to follow."
In the FFOC, each entry was placed in a 10-team league, roughly 660 of them.
For the first nine weeks, each team would face an opponent from its league and either win or lose, and would also be assigned another win or loss based on whether its point total was in the upper or lower half of the league. Those 18 results determined the standings, and the top two teams in each league squared off head-to-head in Week 10. Week 10 winners then advanced to a championship bracket, with cuts made each week based on point totals.
For this final week, averages from Weeks 1 through 9, and Weeks 10 to 15, are factored in with this week's point total to determine the ultimate winner.
How could Schroeder's group not be tuned into this one all season? Well, another of their teams has a chance to win $75,000 this weekend. Schroeder said that team entered the weekend in first place out of 35 teams.
"To win that championship would be unbelievable, but really I don't even care about that one right now," Schroeder said. "It's kind of crazy."
Another of their teams is playing for $25,000 in another game, Schroeder said. Another is shooting for $10,000 in yet another game.
"I didn't even have the codes and password for this league until about two weeks ago," Kelly Schroeder said of the FFOC. "We were looking more at the high-dollar (entry fee) ones. This was such a long shot. It's like buying a lottery ticket and forgetting about it until after the drawing."
But Chad Schroeder never totally forgot, working up to 40 hours a week on the 66-team enterprise, checking lineups, scouring the Internet for injury reports, finding the best matchups in each game, reviewing the rules for each particular league, picking up free agents.
"It's mental hell," he said. "At times on one team I'll need a guy to do well, but on another team I'll need him to do bad because I'm playing against him."
Investors say Schroeder combines equal parts analysis and clairvoyance to put together the best lineups. Herron said Schroeder makes 100 percent of the decisions but might ask for input 1 percent of the time.
"He knows more about what's going on through research than most, and he also has a really good gut," Herron said. "When it comes to having a gut feeling, if the so-called experts might think someone is going to do well and Chad has a gut feeling he won't, more often than not Chad is right."
Schroeder said his draft strategy isn't overly complex. He drafts running backs and wide receivers in earlier rounds, passing on quarterbacks - unless one he really likes slides further than he should have. He tries to avoid drafting the same player repeatedly, though with 66 teams, there's plenty of duplication.
"I do some ratings of players, but I don't really have a plan," Schroeder said.
He said it's only a slight coincidence that Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers and Houston quarterback Matt Schaub are both on each of his two teams competing for $1 million. He was debating whether to start them or other quarterbacks, or possibly start one on one team and one on the other.
Picking up rookie running back Steve Slaton, undrafted in each league, was a key midseason acquisition for each team. The transaction process in the FFOC involves making blind bids with a pre-set season limit of $100 in imaginary money. He liked rookie running back Matt Forte of Chicago before the season and drafted him in many leagues, but Forte isn't on one of his $1 million contenders.
One of Schroeder's $1 million contenders, Cocktails and Dreams XIV, got off to a good start Thursday, as Indianapolis wide receiver Reggie Wayne had 108 receiving yards and a touchdown, allowing that team to jump into second place. But Indianapolis quarterback Peyton Manning had an even bigger night, allowing several teams to jump past Cocktails and Dreams (the other team in the final) and push it down to 10th place.
All of Schroeder's fantasy teams are called some variation of Cocktails and Dreams.
"He's well-known through the on-line chat rooms and forums," Herron said. "They know that name, and they know that he's a guy who dominates people."
While Schroeder has won big money in past fantasy leagues in golf, NASCAR and baseball, he said he's sticking to baseball and football now where there are more high-stakes leagues.
He said he only dabbles in NCAA tournament brackets, even though he's a big college basketball fan. He concentrates on football, basketball, baseball and golf for most of his non-fantasy league betting, most of which comes on "player prop" bets - betting on player performances rather than those of teams.
He might have stumbled into his current profession, but he said life as a professional gambler has treated him all right so far.
"My parents weren't too proud of it when I started doing this, but they became more comfortable with it once they started understanding how much I was making," he said.
Down the road, Schroeder said he might try taking a run at poker, which he plays but "not seriously."
He's also considering starting a subscription fantasy league advice service.
After this weekend, his résumé could be impressive.
"I think I'm fairly credible," he said.
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And I put in way more then 40 hours a week! I think after reading this i need a to re organize from dynasty to hi stake redraft and national contests! I finnished with profits in redrafts, national contests, as I always do! but a loss on dynastys as for scond year in a row just no luck in playoffs! Any investors out there? I wanna go after these guys next year!
