In a fantasy football league, players compete with one another to see who can assemble the best team of real-life professional football players. The team that scores the most points based on the actual performance of their players using NFL statistics during each week’s games wins.

A player is drafted onto a fantasy football team only after he has been selected in the NFL Draft by one of the teams and he’s been signed as an unrestricted free agent by a different team; otherwise, every NFL player on any roster would be fair game for selection in any given draft.

Playing in a fantasy football league differs from playing in a game of fantasy sports like basketball, baseball, or hockey. You can’t play in basketball as Michael Jordan, but an entire team of NBA players can be drafted and played with regardless of their actual professional basketball career. In baseball, you can play with any or all the players on your favorite team, no matter the player’s real-life career. Fantasy football depends on individual player performance during the NFL regular season.

Premier League Player Comparison is different as well. In baseball, fantasy gamers can select players from any affiliated minor league farm teams or independent free agents and create their lineup just like in reality.

In football, it is quite different. Only the players on the active NFL rosters at a given time are fair game for selection in a fantasy football draft and playing in leagues composed of NFL players.

This concept, known as “league purity,” has been called into question more times than we can count during the past decade as websites and message boards have popped up to discuss how fantasy sports work and why league purity exists. The following are some examples of that discussion.

When looking at the entire NFL player population, there is a collection of players that have generated MVP awards and Super Bowl appearances, plus those players who have been drafted in the first round of the NFL Draft but never produced career statistics commensurate to their draft selection. Other seemingly great players on their way to either achieving stardom or retiring under a cloud of injury are “worth” nothing by fantasy football participants.

Playing in a league that excludes these players is unfair and counterproductive. It can be detrimental to the player being drafted.

Although fantasy football leagues generate thousands of dollars in daily betting action each day and can be as complicated as an NFL roster, many would like to see NFL players added to fantasy sports. They believe that including a “pure” NFL player base in fantasy sports would benefit gamers who have experienced great success with a team built on the best available players at their assigned position(s). These casual fans would be able to continue playing with the same format without worrying about anyone drafting an incomplete team or picking on an injured or troubled player.