History

Where it all Began

The first unofficial year of VB Worthless Fantasy Football took place in the late 90s, circa 1998-1999. The original VB Worthless Fantasy Football members (although the league wasn't called this yet) were Brandon Rhynes, Kael Blanchard/Cummings/Robinson, Justin Orr, Colby Fingerhut, Jake Hunter, and the one who started it all, Coach Randy Haakenson. Coach "Haak," as seen pictured to the right, was the one who introduced us all to the world of fantasy football. Instead of talking to girls in the morning before school, we were talking to the Haak about draft strategy...every morning of every day.

Through high school this group remained intact, in what you could call the "Newb Era," (1998-2003). In fact, there was one time when the Haak himself picked us all up in front of the high school to drive back to Butterfield to draft. We thought we were so cool. The young Haak, Matthew, was not as impressed.

A New Era

After high school Brandon and Kael went their separate ways, as did Coach Haak. However, we did not completely leave Haak. He was honored by the creation of a league trophy that came into the light in 2010, awarded to Jake Hunter when he beat Justin Orr 116-110, led by the 26 points of Matt Forte in the championship.

The period after high school (2004) and the first year of the "Haak," (2010), saw several members come and go. Members who were briefly in the league during this time were Dexter Pendergraft, Matt Belk, Ryan Banhart, Chase Young, and Jay McAllister. This period of time (2004-2009) will be known as the "Dark Ages," since there was no trophy, payouts, or 100% competitiveness in general.

As mentioned above, The new era of "The Haak," was ushered in with the creation of the "Haak trophy." This present era, established in 2010, started with 12 members. 10 of whom are still current members of VB Fantasy Football (Dexter Pendergraft and Matt Belk were in the league during the 2010 and 2011 season). Andy Ottinger and Zack Wallmark joined in 2011, bringing the league to the highest member total we've ever seen at 14, then Dexter and Matt dropped after 2011, bringing the league back to 12 members.

Since 2012, we have had the same group of 12 guess guys except for one substitution. Uncle Bowman left after the 2018 season. Dain Santarelli took Uncle Bowmans place starting in 2019 and has been a current member for 2 years. Dain made a splash with an epic press release email and forgot to live up to the hype over the next two seasons, failing to make the playoffs. The league is more competitive with Dain, as crappy as Dain has been, Uncle Bowman was and will always be the worst.

At the time of the original website, Andy was the current champion for the year 2017. Since then, he won in 2018 to become the second person in the league to win two championships (Colby) and two championships in a row (Colby). He fell couldn't pull off the impossible 3 peat as Alex finally won in 2019 after years of blowing it in the playoffs even though he has the most regular season wins (just guessing--probably not--Jake probably does (Jake leads with most ship losses (1-4 all time).

In 2020, Colby won his third championship against Jacob, which proved to be a classic 2020 VB Worthless Fantasy championship. 2020 was a crazy year, so naturally Jacob made the ship (autodraft every year). Once the playoffs hit Jacob was hitting is stride and actually managing his team. The championship featured Alvin Kamara going off for 6 touchdowns in one game, which you'd think was a given win for Colby, but Jacob looked to win going into Monday night with his whole roster blowing up. You all know the rest of what happened--I'll just say Jacob will not be drafting AJ Dillon this year.